Osmotic Pumping and Salt Rejection by Polyelectrolyte Hydrogel for Continuous Solar Desalination

Zeng, Jian; Wang, Qingyang; Shi, Yang; Liu, Ping; Chen, Renkun

doi:10.1002/aenm.201900552

Cited by 152 publications

(116 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…The pores of the PHF generator are filled with P(SA), and because of the osmotic pressure gradient between bulk seawater (Π ≈ 27.6 atm) and P(SA) hydrogel (Π ≈ 230 atm), the seawater can be quickly pumped in large quantities. [ 136 ] This approach provides good absorption, but its swelling ratio can reach 100. More importantly, the high ionic strength causes most salt ions to be repelled at the interface between the seawater and the foam, and the small amount of salt that penetrates the foam will be trapped by the ionic group due to its neutrality and then transferred to the bulk water by the crosslinking network ( Figure a).…”

Section: Salt Mitigation Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Salt Mitigation Strategies of Solar‐Driven Interfacial Desalination

Wang

et al. 2020

Adv Funct Materials

205

102

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Solar‐driven interfacial desalination (SDID), which is based on localized heating and interfacial evaporation, provides an opportunity for developing environmentally friendly and cost‐effective seawater thermal desalination. However, localized heating and rapidly generated interfacial steam may cause salt to accumulate on the evaporator's surface and block the channel of steam evaporation. Salt accumulation inevitably reduces the light absorption and service period of the solar absorber, resulting in a significant decrease in evaporation efficiency over time. Salt accumulation makes it difficult to produce SDID devices with high energy efficiency and long‐term stability for large‐scale use in remote poverty‐stricken areas. Therefore, the exploration of novel and effective strategies for addressing salt accumulation through both material design and structural engineering has attracted more attention in recent years. This review presents an overview of the state‐of‐the‐art advancements in salt‐resistant photothermal evaporation and discusses the critical issues for achieving salt mitigation SDID, focusing on the classification of salt mitigation strategies based on photothermal evaporation configurations, the basic mechanism of salt mitigation, and the architectural design of photothermal materials. Finally, the important challenges and prospects of SDID are discussed to providing a meaningful roadmap to efficient salt mitigation SDID.

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Section: Salt Mitigation Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Salt Mitigation Strategies of Solar‐Driven Interfacial Desalination

Wang

et al. 2020

Adv Funct Materials

205

102

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“…[ 21,22 ] Capillary effect is usually wielded to drive water transport from reservoir to evaporation site, based on which, various strategies to transport water either in one or multiple dimensions have been proposed, and these approaches also brings other benefits, such as heat loss reduction and salt rejection. [ 23,24 ]…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Structure Architecting for Salt‐Rejecting Solar Interfacial Desalination to Achieve High‐Performance Evaporation With In Situ Energy Generation

et al. 2020

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requirement has given rise to research thrusts being focused on the development of solar-driven evaporation based desalination technologies. [4][5][6][7] The research on using solar energy in the desalination process has a long history. [3,8,9] In a traditional singleslope basin-like solar still (Figure 1a), saline water is heated and subsequently evaporated by directly exposing to solar radiation. Solar energy is absorbed and converted into thermal energy by a black light-absorbing liner that is situated at the bottom of the solar basin. [10] Due to this design, the solar absorber is immersed in bulk seawater and it hardly receives a fraction of the incoming solar radiation owing to poor light penetration through the thick water layer. Furthermore, the produced heat is easily dissipated into the bulk water, and further lost to the surroundings through water surface radiation, convection and conduction. Due to the above reasons, the resulting solar-tosteam conversion efficiency is inevitably low. Nanoparticle dispersed fluid was then demonstrated to harness solar energy and found to be a great boon to direct water vapor generation. [11,12] A solar conversion efficiency of up to ≈70% can be possibly achieved because heat loss to bulk water is mitigated ( Figure 1b). [13,14] However, research on this advancement didn't last because of the development of solar interfacial heating strategy, which is shown in Figure 1c. The concept of interfacial evaporation was first put forth in 2014 by two reports simultaneously, [15,16] and received a surge of attention and interest immediately in the following years. The most prominent feature of solar interfacial evaporation lies in the position of the solar absorber, which is at the interface between saline liquid and the above air. This special configuration not only minimizes heat loss from the solar absorber to bulk water, but also provides significantly more surface area for prompt vapor release. Also, solar radiation is photothermally localized at the surface of solar absorber, giving rise to high surface temperature, which enables fast heat transfer to water. With it, water transported from reservoir can be heated and evaporated immediately to achieve a higher rate of steam generation. In addition to the differences in heating strategies, it should be noted that all the solar stills follow the same evaporation-condensation route for desalination and clean water collection, and to this end, a similar device structure (e.g., solar still with sloping cover) is usually employed.The past few years have witnessed a rapid development of solar-driven interfacial evaporation, a promising technology for low-cost water desalination. As of today, solar-to-steam conversion efficiencies close to 100% or even beyond the limit are becoming increasingly achievable in virtue of unique photothermal materials and structures. Herein, the cutting-edge approaches are summarized, and their mechanisms for photothermal structure architecting are uncovered in order to achieve ultrahigh conversion e...

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“…As a result, solar steam generation process will be stopped without a sufficient water supply. To address this issue, innovative strategies have been proposed 21 . For example, the accumulated solid salts can be removed by a supererogatory washing process 22,23 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To address this issue, innovative strategies have been proposed. 21 For example, the accumulated solid salts can be removed by a supererogatory washing process. 22,23 Alternatively, water transport channel has been designed to transport salt back to bulk water under a concentration gradient.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Designing a bioinspired synthetic tree by unidirectional freezing for simultaneous solar steam generation and salt collection

Shao

Tang

et al. 2020

EcoMat

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Solar steam generation with thermal localization was recently proposed for highly efficient solar‐thermal desalination. However, to achieve high steam productivity with long term stability remains a critical challenge due to salt accumulation at the evaporation surface. Here, we designed a T‐shaped synthetic tree that could simultaneously achieve high steam productivity and salt collection with the structure characteristics of interfacial thermal evaporation, ambient energy harvesting and edge‐preferential crystallizing. Under 1 sun, the synthetic tree exhibited a steady water evaporation rate of 2.03 kg m−2 hours−1 over 60 hours, achieving solar thermal efficiency of 75%. Salt was continuously rejected at the edge of the evaporator with a steady collection rate of 59.879 g m−2 hours−1, which did not affect water evaporation. This new design principle to simultaneously harvest water and salt provides a new avenue for solar energy utilization.

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Osmotic Pumping and Salt Rejection by Polyelectrolyte Hydrogel for Continuous Solar Desalination

Cited by 152 publications

References 60 publications

Salt Mitigation Strategies of Solar‐Driven Interfacial Desalination

Salt Mitigation Strategies of Solar‐Driven Interfacial Desalination

Structure Architecting for Salt‐Rejecting Solar Interfacial Desalination to Achieve High‐Performance Evaporation With In Situ Energy Generation

Designing a bioinspired synthetic tree by unidirectional freezing for simultaneous solar steam generation and salt collection

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