Interfacial Engineering of Attractive Pickering Emulsion Gel-Templated Porous Materials for Enhanced Solar Vapor Generation

Abstract

Solar vapor generation is emerging as one of the most important sustainable techniques for harvesting clean water using abundant and green solar energy. The rational design of solar evaporators to realize high solar evaporation performances has become a great challenge. Here, a porous solar evaporator with integrative optimization of photothermal convention, water transport and thermal management is developed using attractive Pickering emulsions gels (APEG) as templated and followed by interfacial engineering on a molecular scale. The APEG-templated porous evaporators (APEG-TPEs) are intrinsically thermal insulation materials with a thermal conductivity = 0.039 W·m−1·K−1. After hydrolysis, t-butyl groups on the inner-surface are transformed to carboxylic acid groups, making the inner-surface hydrophilic and facilitating water transport through the inter-connected pores. The introduction of polypyrrole layer endows the porous materials with a high light absorption of ~97%, which could effectively convert solar irradiation to heat. Due to the versatility of the APEG systems, the composition, compressive modulus, porosity of APEG-TPEs could be well controlled and a high solar evaporation efficiency of 69% with an evaporation rate of 1.1 kg·m−2·h−1 is achieved under simulated solar irradiation. The interface-engineered APEG-TPEs are promising in clean water harvesting and could inspire the future development of solar evaporators.

Preparing an ATP/P (n‐BuMA‐St)/Fe3O4 Oil‐Absorbing Resin Composite via a Double Pickering Emulsion Template Method and Elucidation of Its Properties

“…It can be clearly seen that the emulsion type is double emulsion, and that the large emulsion contains many small emulsions with high emulsion concentrations. In the double Pickering emulsion, Fe 3 O 4 and ATP are closely distributed on the surfaces of small droplets and large droplets, respectively, which are beneficial to the uniform distribution of the two inorganic particles in the emulsion and allow the preparation of inorganic‐organic composite materials with higher uniformity [25] …”

“…In the double Pickering emulsion, Fe 3 O 4 and ATP are closely distributed on the surfaces of small droplets and large droplets, respectively, which are beneficial to the uniform distribution of the two inorganic particles in the emulsion and allow the preparation of inorganic-organic composite materials with higher uniformity. [25] Effect of modified ATP dosage on oil absorption performance of resin m butylmethacrylate :m styrene ratio of 1 : 2, O/W ratio of 1 : 2, dispersed phase concentration of 90 %, crosslinking agent dosage of 2 %, and initiator dosage of 0.4 %. In Figure 10, with an increase in modified ATP dosage, the oil absorption rate first increases and then decreases.…”