Journal ArticleDOI
Tree-Inspired Design for High-Efficiency Water Extraction.
Mingwei Zhu,Yiju Li,Guang Chen,Feng Jiang,Zhi Yang,Xiaoguang Luo,Yanbin Wang,Steven D. Lacey,Jiaqi Dai,Chengwei Wang,Chao Jia,Jiayu Wan,Yonggang Yao,Amy Gong,Bao Yang,Zongfu Yu,Siddhartha Das,Liangbing Hu +17 more
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TLDR
The tree-inspired design offers an inexpensive and scalable solar energy harvesting and steam generation technology that can provide clean water globally, especially for rural or remote areas where water is not only scarce but also limited by water extraction materials and methods.Abstract:
The solar steam process, akin to the natural water cycle, is considered to be an attractive approach to address water scarcity issues globally. However, water extraction from groundwater, for example, has not been demonstrated using these existing technologies. Additionally, there are major unaddressed challenges in extracting potable water from seawater including salt accumulation and long-term evaporation stability, which warrant further investigation. Herein, a high-performance solar steam device composed entirely of natural wood is reported. The pristine, natural wood is cut along the transverse direction and the top surface is carbonized to create a unique bilayer structure. This tree-inspired design offers distinct advantages for water extraction, including rapid water transport and evaporation in the mesoporous wood, high light absorption (≈99%) within the surface carbonized open wood channels, a low thermal conductivity to avoid thermal loss, and cost effectiveness. The device also exhibits long-term stability in seawater without salt accumulation as well as high performance for underground water extraction. The tree-inspired design offers an inexpensive and scalable solar energy harvesting and steam generation technology that can provide clean water globally, especially for rural or remote areas where water is not only scarce but also limited by water extraction materials and methods.read more
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Journal ArticleDOI
A Biomimetic Interfacial Solar Evaporator for Heavy Metal Soil Remediation
TL;DR: In this article , a tree-inspired interfacial solar evaporator was designed for soil remediation, which achieved a high evaporation rate (3.1 kg m −2 h −1 ) under 1.0 sun illumination.
Journal ArticleDOI
Greener transformation of lignin into ultralight multifunctional materials
TL;DR: In this paper, the inherent thermal instability of technical lignin, which is heat treated in order to create a purely elastic material, was exploited for shape recovery after deformation.
Journal ArticleDOI
One-step ultrafast deflagration synthesis of N-doped WO2.9 nanorods for solar water evaporation
Haifeng Yang,Haifeng Yang,Yousong Liu,Zhiqiang Qiao,Xiaodong Li,Yunchuang Wang,Hebin Bao,Guangcheng Yang,Xueming Li +8 more
TL;DR: In this article, a photo-thermal material with the oxygen vacancy and N co-doping is synthesized by an ultrafast one-step NaN3 deflagration method.
Journal ArticleDOI
3D‐Printed Bionic Solar Evaporator
Zhao Lei Wang,Ziheng Zhan,Lei Chen,Guihui Duan,P. Y. Cheng,Hui Kong,Yongping Chen,Huigao Duan +7 more
TL;DR: In this paper , a bionic solar evator consisting of a hydrogel solar absorber and bionic microchannels fabricated by the projection microstereolithography based 3D printing technique is proposed.
Hierarchically Superhydrophobic Stereo‐Complex Poly (Lactic Acid) Aerogel for Daytime Radiative Cooling
TL;DR: In this article , a degradable and superhydrophobic stereo-complex poly (lactic acid) aerogel with low thermal conductivity, high compression strength and self-cleaning ability was developed.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
3D self-assembly of aluminium nanoparticles for plasmon-enhanced solar desalination
TL;DR: In this article, a plasmon-enhanced solar desalination device, fabricated by the self-assembly of aluminium nanoparticles into a three-dimensional porous membrane, is demonstrated.
Journal ArticleDOI
Solar steam generation by heat localization
TL;DR: Development of an approach and corresponding material structure for solar steam generation while maintaining low optical concentration and keeping the bulk liquid at low temperature with no vacuum, which provides a novel approach to harvesting solar energy for a broad range of phase-change applications.
Journal ArticleDOI
Water desalination using nanoporous single-layer graphene
Sumedh P. Surwade,Sergei N. Smirnov,Ivan Vlassiouk,Raymond R. Unocic,Gabriel M. Veith,Sheng Dai,Shannon M. Mahurin +6 more
TL;DR: It is shown that single-layer porous graphene can be used as a desalination membrane using an oxygen plasma etching process and exhibits a salt rejection rate of nearly 100% and rapid water transport.
Journal ArticleDOI
Solar Vapor Generation Enabled by Nanoparticles
TL;DR: Solar illumination of broadly absorbing metal or carbon nanoparticles dispersed in a liquid produces vapor without the requirement of heating the fluid volume, enabling important compact solar applications such as sterilization of waste and surgical instruments in resource-poor locations.
Journal ArticleDOI
Wood-Derived Materials for Green Electronics, Biological Devices, and Energy Applications.
Hongli Zhu,Wei Luo,Peter N. Ciesielski,Zhiqiang Fang,Junyong Zhu,Gunnar Henriksson,Michael E. Himmel,Liangbing Hu +7 more
TL;DR: The goal of this study is to review the fundamental structures and chemistries of wood and wood-derived materials, which are essential for a wide range of existing and new enabling technologies.