Self‐Contained Monolithic Carbon Sponges for Solar‐Driven Interfacial Water Evaporation Distillation and Electricity Generation

Zhu, Liangliang; Gao, Minmin; Peh, Connor Kang Nuo; Wang, Xiaoqiao; Ho, Ghim Wei

doi:10.1002/aenm.201702149

Cited by 479 publications

(338 citation statements)

References 42 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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“…[85] Inspired by this technology, many researchers used some common, abundant, and low-cost organic porous materials (e.g., foam, [67,[86][87][88] lotus seedpods, [89] wood, [64] bamboo, [90] and cotton [66] ) to readily fabricate different photothermal convertors. [85] Inspired by this technology, many researchers used some common, abundant, and low-cost organic porous materials (e.g., foam, [67,[86][87][88] lotus seedpods, [89] wood, [64] bamboo, [90] and cotton [66] ) to readily fabricate different photothermal convertors.…”

Section: Carbonized Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Given this phenomenon, Zhou and co-workers first utilized the evaporation induced salinity gradient to generate electricity with a power value of 12.5 W m 2 during steam production under one sun (Figure 9c). [67] In addition, a thermoelectric module could be used to reserve and recycle the thermal energy of vapor condensation during steam condensation to further obtain electricity with solar energy as the only energy input (Figure 9c). Besides from the utilization of desalination process, as-generated vapor and its condensation process were also conducted to produce electricity.…”

Section: Applications Associated With Water Evaporationmentioning

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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“…[29][30][31][32][33] Consequently, the highly promising photothermal effect was not duly exploited to unleash a maximum impact on the electrocatalytic performance. This will inevitably cause considerable heat losses to bulk electrolyte by rapid thermal diffusion, hence leading to poor photothermal utilization.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[29] This eventually leads to a fast heat transfer from the CM/TiO 2−x / CP electrode to electrolyte, and induces massive heat losses around the electrode, thus causing poor photothermal utilization. [29] This eventually leads to a fast heat transfer from the CM/TiO 2−x / CP electrode to electrolyte, and induces massive heat losses around the electrode, thus causing poor photothermal utilization.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Hybrid Solar Absorber–Electrocatalytic N‐Doped Carbon/Alloy/Semiconductor Electrode for Localized Photothermic Electrocatalysis

et al. 2019

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and transportable renewable hydrogen fuel and valuable chemical feedstock. In view of this notion, photochemical, photoelectrochemical, and photovoltaic-driven electrochemical catalytic hydrogen and oxygen evolution are extensively studied. [6][7][8][9][10] Though photocatalysis involves direct conversion, it suffers from low solar energy absorption and conversion efficiency, the use of sacrificial agents, slow reaction rate, and instability. [11][12][13][14] To overcome these obstacles, photoelectrochemical strategy is explored as it holds the promise of a more efficient means. [14] Even that, it is hampered by the adversaries of semiconductor catalysts selection, photoelectrode preparation, limited spectral absorption, unsatisfactory reactivity and solar conversion efficiency. [13] Then, a roundabout way of photovoltaic-driven electrochemical water splitting via alkaline water electrolyzers was considered. [10,15] The technology can achieve a solar conversion efficiency over 15%, which is highly competitive, let alone the benefits of program controllability, sustainable productivity, and system upgradability with cheaper and more efficient photovoltaic cells. [15,16] Still, further efficiency improvement can be expected since the overall efficiency of electrochemical splitting of water is hindered by the inherent thermodynamics and sluggish kinetics, including high overpotential, low current density, and moderate energetic efficiency. [17][18][19][20][21][22] Despite immense efforts in designing various composition and structure to optimize the intrinsic activity of catalysts, the progress remains insufficient.Recently, supplementing thermal energy to perform catalytic conversion and vaporize water to surpass the conventional performances is attracting more attention. [23][24][25][26][27][28] Rationally, capitalizing the full potential of solar energy, beyond the limitation of UV light excitation, that are not absorbed by photo catalyst or photovoltaic cells for water splitting will undoubtedly augment the efficiency to further accelerate technological deployment. Hence the introduction of photothermal energy to electrochemical reaction can be a feasible pathway to facilitate enhanced solar energy conversion to chemical fuels. However, the biggest challenge lies in the discordant solar absorber electrode and electrolytic cell design. Typically, the catalyst is constructed in a form of film electrode, infiltrated Converting and storing intermittent solar energy into stable chemical fuels of high efficiency depend crucially on harvesting excess energy beyond the conventional ultraviolet light spectrum. The means of applying highly efficient solar-thermal conversion on practical electricity-driven water splitting could be a significant stride toward this goal, while some bottlenecks remain unresolved. Herein, photothermic electrocatalytic oxygen and hydrogen evolution reactions are proposed, which bestow a distinctive exothermic activation and electrochemical reactivity in a reconstructed electrolyzer system, and ...

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Self‐Contained Monolithic Carbon Sponges for Solar‐Driven Interfacial Water Evaporation Distillation and Electricity Generation

Cited by 479 publications

References 42 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

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

A Hybrid Solar Absorber–Electrocatalytic N‐Doped Carbon/Alloy/Semiconductor Electrode for Localized Photothermic Electrocatalysis

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