Recyclable CNT-coupled cotton fabrics for low-cost and efficient desalination of seawater under sunlight

Kou, Hui; Liu, Zixiao; Zhu, Bo; Macharia, Daniel K.; Ahmed, Sharjeel; Wu, Binhe; Zhu, Meifang; Liu, Xiaogang; Chen, Zhigang

doi:10.1016/j.desal.2019.04.005

Cited by 156 publications

(74 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…More confined water pathways were proposed to minimize the contact with water, thus saving the heat from conduction loss. 2D water supply employs hydrophilic intermediary materials such as cellulose, [ 91 ] cotton and silk fabrics, [ 47,92–94 ] vertically oriented graphene structures, [ 81 ] air‐laid paper, [ 95 ] etc., for water delivery. In this way only a thin confined water layer is in contact with solar absorbers to supply water for evaporation (Figure 4b).…”

Section: Design Principles To Approach 100% Efficiencymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When salt crystals form and accumulate on solar absorbers' surface, the primary method to remove it is physical cleaning, which refers to simple rinsing and washing. [ 88,93,129–133 ] This method is particularly suited for flexible membrane‐type devices as demonstrated in Figure 11b, [ 111 ] which are easy to clean and do not involve heavy intervention work compared to bulk materials.…”

Section: Salt Rejection Strategies For Long‐term Solar Desalinationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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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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Section: Design Principles To Approach 100% Efficiencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Salt Rejection Strategies For Long‐term Solar Desalinationmentioning

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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“…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 17,19,24–26 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…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. 17,19,[24][25][26] However, considering the value of mineral resources in seawater, it is better to simultaneously harvest steam and salt during the solar-thermal utilization process.…”

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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“…Few other methods are involving the treatment of wastewater including zero-valent iron treatment [62], electrocoagulation-electro oxidation process [24], zincoxide nanoparticle [52], photo-Fenton reaction [60] and removal of Cr(VI) process [57]. The modified cotton cloth was used for different application in the research nowadays including water treatment [35,67], SiCl 4 coated cotton cloth for oil removal [25], carbonized cotton cloth as supercapacitors [23,64], removal of toxic dye reduction [2], and electro-catalyst and splitting [72].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of CuO, MoO3 and ZnO nanomaterial coated absorbers for clean water production

et al. 2020

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Solar energy is one of the most powerful sources for many sustainable applications. Recently, efficient water distillation has attracted significant attention. The fresh water productivity depends on how efficiently the system harvests the incoming solar energy and converts it into useful heat. In the present work, nano-coated absorber plates (NCAPs) were examined in the single slope solar still (SSSS) for clean water production. The NCAPs were CuO, MoO 3 and ZnO, respectively. The CuO-NCAP was fabricated with the thermal evaporation method while the radio-frequency Magnetron Sputtering technique was used to fabricate the MoO 3 and ZnO NCAPs. The attained particle size of the CuO, MoO 3 and ZnO are 30-34 nm, 25-30 nm and 30-35 nm, respectively. The sphere (CuO), plate (MoO 3), and wedge (ZnO) like morphologies are identified with field emission-scanning electron microscope. All the NCAPs and reference solar still were tested under the same environmental conditions. The climatic parameters (solar influx, ambient temperature and wind) and SSSS's temperatures including water temperature (T w), internal air temperature (T int-air), inner cover (T ic), outer cover (T oc), and absorber plate temperature (T NCAP) were measured at 30 min intervals with the help of Type-J thermocouples. Herein, we present an evaporative heat transfer (h ew), efficiency, and cost analysis of the SSSS with CuO, MoO 3 and ZnO-NCAPs. Three different feed waters fetched from the surface well water, hill side well water and hill side pond water were used in this work for evaporation. The result reveals that the evaporation of conventional single slope solar still, CuO, MoO 3 and ZnO NCAPs were 2.1 l/m 2 day, 2.9 l/m 2 day, 2.7 l/m 2 day and 2.6 l/m 2 day, respectively.

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Recyclable CNT-coupled cotton fabrics for low-cost and efficient desalination of seawater under sunlight

Cited by 156 publications

References 47 publications

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

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

Effect of CuO, MoO3 and ZnO nanomaterial coated absorbers for clean water production

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