Plasmonic Wood for High‐Efficiency Solar Steam Generation

Zhu, Mingwei; Li, Yiju; Chen, Fengjuan; Zhu, Xinhua; Dai, Jiaqi; Li, Yongfeng; Yang, Zhi; Yan, Xuejun; Song, Jianwei; Wang, Yanbin; Hitz, Emily; Luo, Wei; Lu, Minhui; Yang, Bao; Hu, Liangbing

doi:10.1002/aenm.201701028

Cited by 784 publications

(543 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…[5][6][7][8][9] Therefore, in order to achieve higher solar-tovapor conversion efficiency and improve water evaporation rate, researchers are paying more and more attention to designing a new type of solar steam generation system, which can minimize heat loss during the heating process and enhance the solar-to-vapor conversion efficiency. 9,16,17 Among them, high efficiency photothermal materials that can absorb the light and convert it to heat are the key to maximize the rate of the solar water desalination. Among them, the solar still (solar steam generation device) is one of the most effective methods to alleviate Yuliang Zhang and Shengjia Cao contributed equally to the work water shortage.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

In situ chemo‐polymerized polypyrrole‐coated filter paper for high‐efficient solar vapor generation

et al. 2019

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It is well recognized that combining nonpotable water with solar energy to desalinate water and produce water vapor is an effective route to solve the shortage of fresh water. However, the solar vapor generation suffers from either low solar energy efficiency or complex and high-cost devices. Herein, we explore a black membrane based on polypyrrole (PPy) and filter paper to enhance solar-to-vapor conversion performance, thus providing a low-cost, stable, and strong efficient solar vapor generator. This device displays high solarto-vapor conversion efficiencies of up to approximately 92.2% and 95.6% under irradiation of 1 and 4 kW m −2 , respectively. Therefore, this paper-based high solar-to-vapor conversion and scalable evaporator provides a promising solution to the problem of freshwater scarcity and nonrenewable recourses.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

In situ chemo‐polymerized polypyrrole‐coated filter paper for high‐efficient solar vapor generation

et al. 2019

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“…[31] On the basis of above interaction mechanism, Orrit and co-workers first reported a plasmonic photothermal effect of nanometer-sized gold particles in 2002. In addition, if designed into flexible and portable plasmonic photothermal devices, these plasmonic metals usually have to be compounded with some supporting substrates, including nanoporous anodic aluminum oxide (AAO), [40] wood, [41] porous membrane, [42,43] and hydrogel, [44] through blending method or in situ growth. [39] However, these plasmonic metals only exhibit high absorption efficiency for a few characterized wavelengths, resulting in low light-to-heat efficiency.…”

Section: Plasmonic-based Solar Absorbersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[41,60,70,71,138] Thanks to this unique structure, woodbased evaporator exhibited a higher water evaporation rate (1.31 kg m −2 h −1 ) than that of porous membrane-based evaporator (0.75 kg m −2 h −1 ) under simulated 1 sun illumination. Theoretically, for the same thickness and channel size, the vertical channels possess much higher water transport rate than the tortuous channels, due to their shorter transport pathway and lower transport barrier.…”

Section: Strategies For Enhancing Water Evaporation Efficiencymentioning

confidence: 99%

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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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“…On the contrary, the dark performance degraded linearly as RH rose up, implying the dark evaporation was dominantly governed by the ambient RH. [38][39][40] However, in-depth understanding of evaporator-seawater interaction is not yet revealed systematically. The ambient RH is therefore found to subtly affect solar evaporation because a low-RH zone is built up near the hot surface region and imposes more influential impact on water evaporation than the surrounding ambient RH (Figure 4f).…”

Section: Wwwadvsustainsyscommentioning

confidence: 99%

Systematic Study of the Effects of System Geometry and Ambient Conditions on Solar Steam Generation for Evaporation Optimization

Zhang

Ravi

Tan

2019

Advanced Sustainable Systems

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growing use of solar energy in steam generation techniques. [8][9][10] Steam generation is a crucial energy-intensive step in seawater desalination, which is typically followed by water vapor condensation to collect the desalinated water. By wielding interfacial evaporator to localize solar heat and boil sea water, steam (clean water) can be produced at a significantly higher rate than naturally ubiquitous evaporation process without the support of solar absorbers. [1,11,12] Of late, with a wide variety of new solar-absorber materials mushrooming, the solar desalination approach has begun to bear fruit. [13][14][15][16][17][18] To maximize the evaporation rate (ER) which is a key performance metric of solar steam generators, enormous efforts are underway, primarily focused on enhancing the light absorption, heat management, and water transport. [1,19] However, current studies often overlook the impacts from environment and the system itself. The understanding of the system-ambience interplay is still lacking in this area. Those neglectful factors, such as humidity that broadly changes with place and time, may be capable of manipulating the solar evaporation process. However, quite opposite to the common notion that the relative humidity (RH) affects ER, recent reports have confirmed that the solar evaporation is still able to maintain a high rate even when the RH greatly increases, [20,21] but understanding of how the evaporation can be sustained under such high humidity is still inadequate. [22] It is therefore more pressing to systematically study how the various system/ambient factors influence the evaporation process than to engineer a new solar absorber material, which sums up the motive of this work.This work shines light on the roles of relative humidity level of the ambience/system, waterlogged surface level, specific weight, carbonization thickness, and water salinity in influencing the water evaporation in a solar steam generation system, where microchanneled balsa wood was employed as an ideal research model for quantitative comparisons. Focusing on the system geometry and ambient conditions, the study aims to uncover the insights of the interplay between solar steam generation and practical operating environment, and provide constructive strategies for performance optimization of solar steam generators without any further sophisticated modifications on materials or system design. Solar steam generation as an emerging solar desalination technology has drawn tremendous research attention owing to its enticing prospects in tackling the rising water crisis across the globe. Despite the numerous reports on materials with high evaporation rates, little is known about how the system geometry and ambient conditions impact the evaporation rate. The ambient relative humidity (RH), which can potentially impact on the evaporation process in the system is one such element that is not well studied. In this work, microchanneled balsa wood is employed as the research model in the quantitative investigations of these ...

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Plasmonic Wood for High‐Efficiency Solar Steam Generation

Cited by 784 publications

References 29 publications

In situ chemo‐polymerized polypyrrole‐coated filter paper for high‐efficient solar vapor generation

In situ chemo‐polymerized polypyrrole‐coated filter paper for high‐efficient solar vapor generation

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

Systematic Study of the Effects of System Geometry and Ambient Conditions on Solar Steam Generation for Evaporation Optimization

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