Photothermal Membrane Distillation for Seawater Desalination

Politano, Antonio; Argurio, Pietro; Profio, Gianluca Di; Sanna, Vanna; Cupolillo, A.; Chakraborty, Sudip; Arafat, Hassan A.; Curcio, Efrem

doi:10.1002/adma.201603504

Cited by 480 publications

(254 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Localized heating in the feed channel can be achieved by integrating MD into industrial processes (22) or by using a solar absorber plate above the feed channel (23) to provide supplementary heating along the module length, but such a system is still limited by an inherent reduction in cross-membrane temperature difference due to heat transfer, for example, temperature polarization. Localized heating at the surface of the feed membrane interface (24)(25)(26) can provide an effective solution to overcome these challenges. In this work, we demonstrate nanophotonics-enabled solar membrane distillation (NESMD), where membrane distillation is based on direct, localized solar heating of a nanoparticle (NP)-infused membrane.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Nanophotonics-enabled solar membrane distillation for off-grid water purification

Dongare

Alabastri

Pedersen

et al. 2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

392

262

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With more than a billion people lacking accessible drinking water, there is a critical need to convert nonpotable sources such as seawater to water suitable for human use. However, energy requirements of desalination plants account for half their operating costs, so alternative, lower energy approaches are equally critical. Membrane distillation (MD) has shown potential due to its low operating temperature and pressure requirements, but the requirement of heating the input water makes it energy intensive. Here, we demonstrate nanophotonicsenabled solar membrane distillation (NESMD), where highly localized photothermal heating induced by solar illumination alone drives the distillation process, entirely eliminating the requirement of heating the input water. Unlike MD, NESMD can be scaled to larger systems and shows increased efficiencies with decreased input flow velocities. Along with its increased efficiency at higher ambient temperatures, these properties all point to NESMD as a promising solution for household-or community-scale desalination.our billion people around the world face at least 1 month of water scarcity every year (1, 2). To meet increasing water demand, it has become necessary to exploit saline water, abundant in the ocean and in brackish aquifers, and convert it to potable water (3, 4). Presently, there are more than 18,000 water desalination plants operating in 150 countries, producing 86.8 × 10 6 m 3 of water per day, enough for 300 million people (5, 6). The annual energy consumed by these plants is nominally 75 TWh, accounting for 50% of their operating costs (7-9) and 0.4% of the world electric power consumption (10). The possibility of directly using renewable energy would reduce this highly demanding cost of operation and make affordable clean water more accessible around the world.Many of the current desalination techniques involve phase change, and thus are inherently energy intensive. Among these, membrane distillation (MD) has gained recent attention because it can distill water at lower temperatures than conventional distillation (i.e., boiling) and lower pressures than reverse osmosis (RO) (11-16). In the conventional direct-contact MD process, hot saline water (feed) and cold purified water (distillate) flow on opposite sides of a hydrophobic membrane (Fig. 1A). The temperature difference between the two flows produces a vapor pressure difference across the membrane, leading to (salt-free) water vapor transporting through the membrane from the warmer feed to the colder distillate, where it condenses. However, MD suffers from several inherent limitations. Heat transfer reduces the cross-membrane temperature difference, resulting in lower vapor flux across the membrane and thus lower efficiency. This temperature difference is further decreased along the length of the membrane module, resulting in a maximal usable length of a single module.When no recirculation or heat recovery is used, energy is also lost when hot feed water exits the membrane module. Heating the volume of feed wat...

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

Nanophotonics-enabled solar membrane distillation for off-grid water purification

Dongare

Alabastri

Pedersen

et al. 2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

392

262

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“…[103,169,170,174] Among them, the incorporation of photothermal materials and MD technology has attracted intensive attention because of its low-energy and low carbon footprint features. [174] They found that Ag nanoparticles were able to notably increase the feed temperature at the membrane surface, which was 23 K greater than the bulk water under the illumination of UV light at 366 nm. In 2016, Curcio and co-workers first demonstrated the successful imbedding of thermoplasmonic Ag nanoparticles into microporous PVDF membranes as photothermal module during the nonsolvent-induced phase inversion process.…”

Section: Photothermal-assisted Membrane Distillationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Harnessing Solar‐Driven Photothermal Effect toward the Water–Energy Nexus

et al. 2019

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Producing affordable freshwater has been considered as a great societal challenge, and most conventional desalination technologies are usually accompanied with large energy consumption and thus struggle with the trade‐off between water and energy, i.e., the water–energy nexus. In recent decades, the fast development of state‐of‐the‐art photothermal materials has injected new vitality into the field of freshwater production, which can effectively harness abundant and clean solar energy via the photothermal effect to fulfill the blue dream of low‐energy water purification/harvesting, so as to reconcile the water–energy nexus. Driven by the opportunities offered by photothermal materials, tremendous effort has been made to exploit diverse photothermal‐assisted water purification/harvesting technologies. At this stage, it is imperative and important to review the recent progress and shed light on the future trend in this multidisciplinary field. Here, a brief introduction of the fundamental mechanism and design principle of photothermal materials is presented, and the emerging photothermal applications such as photothermal‐assisted water evaporation, photothermal‐assisted membrane distillation, photothermal‐assisted crude oil cleanup, photothermal‐enhanced photocatalysis, and photothermal‐assisted water harvesting from air are summarized. Finally, the unsolved challenges and future perspectives in this field are emphasized. It is envisioned that this work will help arouse future research efforts to boost the development of solar‐driven low‐energy water purification/harvesting.

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“…Recently, plasmonic effects have been applied in many applications including green energy harvesting such as thermal and solar energies as in [2]. For example, in [3][4][5], the application of thermos-plasmonic in membrane energy process was discussed. Nevertheless, such a technology led to design efficient Terahertz detectors with a thermoelectric response [6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Plasmonic Monopole Antenna Array on Flexible Photovoltaic Panels for Further Use of the Green Energy Harvesting

Al-Adhami¹,

Erçelebi²

2018

PIER M

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Abstract-Due to urgent needs for exploring new energy resources, a novel approach is developed in this paper to integrate the functions of a photovoltaic (PV) panel with an ultra-wide band (UWB) antenna array as a unit for collecting solar energy and RF radiation power. The UWB antenna is printed on the front panel of the PV surface. The antenna structure is customized with minimum shadowing effects on the PV surface, by using eight monopoles connected to one SMA port as a single antenna array. Then, to ensure the bandwidth enhancement, each monopole is coupled to three Split Ring Resonators (SRR) structured in a single column as a matching circuit. Next, an experimental study is performed to investigate the amount of the harvested energy from both the PV and the antenna array. The antenna experimental measurements are conducted to realize the I-V characteristics for the PV and produced output voltage and efficiency from the RF radiation power at 900 MHz only. Numerically, the proposed antenna array performance is simulated by CST MWS and HFSS software packages. Finally, the antenna performance in terms of S 11 and the radiation pattern at 900 MHz are measured and compared to the simulated results to end up with excellent agreements.

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Photothermal Membrane Distillation for Seawater Desalination

Cited by 480 publications

References 28 publications

Nanophotonics-enabled solar membrane distillation for off-grid water purification

Nanophotonics-enabled solar membrane distillation for off-grid water purification

Harnessing Solar‐Driven Photothermal Effect toward the Water–Energy Nexus

A Plasmonic Monopole Antenna Array on Flexible Photovoltaic Panels for Further Use of the Green Energy Harvesting

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