Low Cost, Robust, Environmentally Friendly Geopolymer–Mesoporous Carbon Composites for Efficient Solar Powered Steam Generation

Liu, Fenghua; Zhao, Ben; Wu, Weiping; Yang, Huihui; Ning, Yongqiang; Lai, Yijian; Bradley, Robert H.

doi:10.1002/adfm.201803266

Cited by 129 publications

(87 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…The continuously increasing demands for economic development and increasing pollution lead to severe water scarcity in a growing portion of the world. [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] However, the state-of-the-art water desalination devices still suffer from several issues in energy efficiency, long-term performance, salt fouling, light blocking, and clean water collection in real-world applications. [3][4][5] A recent report combining solar harvesting and heat localization for evaporation achieved a relatively high energy efficiency over 85%, [6] opening up new opportunities for efficient solar desalination.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multifunctional Solar Waterways: Plasma‐Enabled Self‐Cleaning Nanoarchitectures for Energy‐Efficient Desalination

Xiong

Yang

et al. 2019

Advanced Energy Materials

125

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Evaporating seawater and separating salt from water is one of the most promising solutions for global water scarcity. State‐of‐the‐art water desalination devices combining solar harvesting and heat localization for evaporation using nanomaterials still suffer from several issues in energy efficiency, long‐term performance, salt fouling, light blocking, and clean water collection in real‐world applications. To address these issues, this work devises plasma‐enabled multifunctional all‐carbon nanoarchitectures with on‐surface waterways formed by nitrogen‐doped hydrophilic graphene nanopetals (N‐fGPs) seamlessly integrated onto the external surface of hydrophobic self‐assembled graphene foam (sGF). The N‐fGPs simultaneously transport water and salt ions, absorb sunlight, serve as evaporation surfaces, then capture the salts, followed by self‐cleaning. The sGF ensures effective thermal insulation and enhanced heat localization, contributing to high solar‐vapor efficiency of 88.6 ± 2.1%. Seamless connection between N‐fGPs and sGF and self‐cleaning of N‐fGP structures by redissolution of the captured salts in the waterways lead to long‐term stability over 240 h of continuous operation in real seawater without performance degradation, and a high daily evaporation yield of 15.76 kg m−2. By eliminating sunlight blocking and guiding condensed vapor, a high clean water collection ratio of 83.5% is achieved. The multiple functionalities make the current nanoarchitectures promising as multipurpose advanced energy materials.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multifunctional Solar Waterways: Plasma‐Enabled Self‐Cleaning Nanoarchitectures for Energy‐Efficient Desalination

Xiong

Yang

et al. 2019

Advanced Energy Materials

125

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“…As shown in Figure S3 (Supporting Information), we can readily fabricate a PPy origami with a diameter as large as 22 cm at lab conditions. The estimated cost of PPy paper is $18 m −2 (Table S2, Supporting Information), which is among the lowest cost of the reported materials, around half of that of geopolymer–mesoporous carbon composites . Further characterizations including scanning electron microscopy (SEM) imaging (Figure c,d), Raman spectroscopy (Figure S4a, Supporting Information), and energy‐dispersive X‐ray spectroscopy (EDS) (Figure S4b, Supporting Information) confirm the chemistry and successful coating of PPy onto cellulose paper (Note S1, Supporting Information).…”

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confidence: 98%

“…Over the past 5 years, a number of photothermal materials with designed chemistry and structures have been investigated for high‐efficiency solar steaming . The studied materials range from plasmonic metal nanoparticles (NPs) to carbonaceous materials . Some reported materials exhibit excellent performances; however, many of them suffer limitations due to the utilization cost of noble metals, or the integration of complex or fragile nanostructures .…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…

materials. [18][19][20][21][22][23] Some reported materials exhibit excellent performances; however, many of them suffer limitations due to the utilization cost of noble metals, or the integration of complex or fragile nanostructures. [3,4,6,7,16,17,24] For some materials, the fabrication involved e-beam deposition, [3,16] synthesis and reduction of graphene oxide (GO), [18,21] chemical vapor deposition of graphene foams, [24] and freeze-drying for aerogels, [21,22] which can be time consuming and costly for manufacturing.

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confidence: 99%

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Portable Low‐Pressure Solar Steaming‐Collection Unisystem with Polypyrrole Origamis

et al. 2019

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Solar steaming has emerged as a promising green technology that can address the global issue of scarcity of clean water. However, developing high‐performance, cost‐effective, and manufacturable solar‐steaming materials, and portable solar steaming‐collection systems for individuals remains a great challenge. Here, a one‐step, low‐cost, and mass‐producible synthesis of polypyrrole (PPy) origami‐based photothermal materials, and an original portable low‐pressure controlled solar steaming‐collection unisystem, offering synergetic high rates in both water evaporation and steam collection, are reported. Due to enhanced areas for vapor dissipation, the PPy origami improves the water evaporation rate by at least 71% to 2.12 kg m−2 h−1 from that of a planar structure and exhibits a solar–thermal energy conversion efficiency of 91.5% under 1 Sun. When further controlling the pressure to ≈0.17 atm in the steaming‐collection unisystem, the water collection rate improves by up to 52% systematically and dramatically. Although partial energy is utilized toward obtaining low‐pressure, evaluations show that the overall energy efficiency is improved remarkably in the low‐pressure system compared to that in ambient pressure. Furthermore, the device demonstrates effective decontamination of heavy metals, bacteria, and desalination. This work can inspire new paradigms toward developing high‐performance solar steaming technologies for individuals and households.

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“…[11] Therefore, devices solely powered by solar energy are not suitable for practical and industrial applications that require high-speed evaporations such as distillations, purification, sterilization, and so on. [12] The cost of using optical devices to enhance the illumination intensity will be significantly high, while Joule heating (or thermal effect of current, the most fundamental and useful property of electricity), is inexpensive, robust and promising for sustainable energy utilizations.Flexible heaters have also been one of the hotspots of the research on functional materials in recent years due to their high heating efficiency, light weight, and superior mechanical properties. They have been used for wearable electronics, hot plates, electric blankets, smart windows, and so on.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Graphene–Carbon Composites for Solar and Low‐Voltage Powered Efficient Interfacial Evaporation

Liu

Wang

Bradley

et al. 2020

Advanced Sustainable Systems

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Nanocarbon materials have great potential for sustainable energy harvest and energy utilizations, such as solar thermal stream generation, and interfacial evaporation. However, the evaporation rate is far too low for practical applications. The technologies are not ready yet for industries requiring rapid, energy‐efficient, and low‐cost evaporation processes such as distillation and sterilization. A flexible ultrathin graphene–carbon cloth (CC)‐based carbon–carbon composites is prepared by in situ electrochemical reduction of graphene oxide. The carbon–carbon composite materials demonstrate high performance in photothermal evaporation; more importantly, all carbon‐based devices can also be operated as low‐voltage Joule heating elements in wide temperature range up to 389 °C. Even when a very low voltage of 3 V is applied, the graphene–CC heater can reach a very high heating speed up to 112 °C s–1, and a steady‐state temperature up to 292 °C within 10 s only. The low‐voltage heater promises to be the most effective solution for high‐speed interfacial evaporation since its evaporation rate can reach up to 45.87 kg m−2 h−1, enhanced by one order of magnitude compared to the best solar power photothermal seawater desalination devices ever reported.

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Low Cost, Robust, Environmentally Friendly Geopolymer–Mesoporous Carbon Composites for Efficient Solar Powered Steam Generation

Cited by 129 publications

References 58 publications

Multifunctional Solar Waterways: Plasma‐Enabled Self‐Cleaning Nanoarchitectures for Energy‐Efficient Desalination

Multifunctional Solar Waterways: Plasma‐Enabled Self‐Cleaning Nanoarchitectures for Energy‐Efficient Desalination

Portable Low‐Pressure Solar Steaming‐Collection Unisystem with Polypyrrole Origamis

Graphene–Carbon Composites for Solar and Low‐Voltage Powered Efficient Interfacial Evaporation

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