Solar-driven interfacial evaporation for water treatment: advanced research progress and challenges

Abstract

Solar-driven interface evaporation (SDIE), with widely distributed solar energy as the driving force, simple and portable photothermal evaporation structure as the core component, efficient energy conversion, and excellent seawater desalination...

Enhancing solar absorbance using a 2D graphene oxide/CuO composite film for efficient solar desalination

“…Consequently, the convection loss was ∼13.9%. Besides, the heat conduction was calculated using eqn (7), as follows:…”

“…Thus, the temperature increase in the bottom water mainly comes from the heat conduction by the environment. According to eqn (7), the energy gained by the ISSG device from the environment through heat conduction is 31.7%. Fig.…”

“…5,6 To date, ISSG has been widely implemented in desalination, sewage treatment, photothermal power generation, solar sterilization and other related aspects. [7][8][9] Nevertheless, the improvement in the ISSG performance is limited by energy loss due to thermal radiation and heat transfer to the surrounding environment and water. 10 Furthermore, the water path transporting bulk water to the evaporation surface is still unsatisfactory.…”

Integrated Solar Evaporator with Salt Resistance and Lipophobicity Derived from Waste Newspapers for Efficient Desalination

“…Freshwater scarcity remains a major global challenge, due to global population growth, industry development, and climate change. − Considering the abundant seawater and solar energy resources, solar-driven seawater desalination is one of the most effective approaches to boost freshwater supply. Compared with the traditional desalination technologies, solar steam generation (SSG) attracted much more attention owing to its eco-friendly nature, low cost, and high efficiency. − The ideal SSG system always possesses broadband light absorption, lower thermal conductivity, and timely water transportation. − The photothermal materials can locate the widely absorbed solar energy onto the upper surface and reduce energy loss to the surrounding environment, thus converting most of the absorbed energy into heat to generate steam. − Therefore, compared with previous reports, VOCs and thermal management are more and more concerned by researchers. − The development of low-cost and efficient SSG systems is still in great need for favorable economic and social benefits.…”

Progress on TiO2-based materials for solar water interfacial evaporation

“…Recent reviews published on solar water interfacial evaporation have summarized the current development of SWIE in terms of photothermal conversion materials, structural design, energy management with an emphasis on the salt-rejection capability (Zechang et al, 2022), improvement in self salt propelling mechanisms (Sheng et al, 2021), recent advances in photothermal materials in wastewater purification (Li et al, 2022), effect of super-wettability on SWIE (Luo et al, 2022), different material-based SWIE (Guan et al, 2021) (Dong et al, 2022) (Yan et al, 2022), and many others (Han et al, 2022) (He et al, 2021) (Bai et al, 2020). However, when reviewing the different aspects of advances in SWIE, none has discussed TiO 2 -based photothermal materials that might empower SWIE as a whole, which is one of the most exciting materials in solar water evaporation.…”