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
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Solar-driven interfacial evaporation
TL;DR: Tao et al. as discussed by the authors discuss the development of the key components for achieving high-performance evaporation, including solar absorbers and structures, thermal insulators and thermal concentrators.
Journal ArticleDOI
Challenges and Opportunities for Solar Evaporation
TL;DR: In this article, a review of recent developments in photothermal materials, with a focus on their photothermal conversion mechanisms as light absorbers, is presented, and the potential applications of this attractive technology in a variety of energy and environmental fields are described.
Journal ArticleDOI
Materials for solar-powered water evaporation
TL;DR: In this article, the fundamental principles of materials design for efficient solar-to-thermal energy conversion and vapour generation are summarized for both fundamental research and practical water-purification applications.
Journal ArticleDOI
Structure-property-function relationships of natural and engineered wood
Chaoji Chen,Yudi Kuang,Shuze Zhu,Ingo Burgert,Ingo Burgert,Tobias Keplinger,Tobias Keplinger,Amy Gong,Teng Li,Lars Berglund,Stephen J. Eichhorn,Liangbing Hu +11 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors provide a materials and structural perspective on how wood can be redesigned via structural engineering, chemical and/or thermal modification to alter its mechanical, fluidic, ionic, optical and thermal properties.
Journal ArticleDOI
Architecting highly hydratable polymer networks to tune the water state for solar water purification
TL;DR: It is demonstrated that enhancing the hydrability of the h-LAH could change the water state and partially activate the water, hence facilitating water evaporation, and raises the solar vapor generation to a record rate of ~3.6 kg m−2 hour−1 under 1 sun.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Tailoring Graphene Oxide-Based Aerogels for Efficient Solar Steam Generation under One Sun.
TL;DR: Graphene oxide-based aerogels with carefully tailored properties are developed to enable efficient solar steam generation under one-sun illumination.
Journal ArticleDOI
Flexible thin-film black gold membranes with ultrabroadband plasmonic nanofocusing for efficient solar vapour generation
TL;DR: Large area, flexible thin-film black gold membranes are demonstrated, which have multiscale structures of varying metallic nanoscale gaps (0–200 nm) as well as microscale funnel structures that allow heat localization within the few micrometre-thick layer and continuous water provision through micropores.
Journal ArticleDOI
Multifunctional Porous Graphene for High‐Efficiency Steam Generation by Heat Localization
TL;DR: The novel 3D nanoporous graphene demonstrates a highly energy-effective steam generation with an energy conversation of 80% in a heat generator to convert solar illumination into high-energy steam.
Journal ArticleDOI
High-performance green flexible electronics based on biodegradable cellulose nanofibril paper
Yei Hwan Jung,Tzu-Hsuan Chang,Huilong Zhang,Chunhua Yao,Qifeng Zheng,Vina W. Yang,Hongyi Mi,Munho Kim,Sang June Cho,Dong-Wook Park,Hao Jiang,Juhwan Lee,Yijie Qiu,Weidong Zhou,Zhiyong Cai,Shaoqin Gong,Zhenqiang Ma +16 more
TL;DR: Successful fabrication of key electrical components on the flexible cellulose nanofibril paper with comparable performance to their rigid counterparts and clear demonstration of fungal biodegradation of the cellulose-nan ofibril-based electronics suggest that it is feasible to fabricate high-performance flexible electronics using ecofriendly materials.
Journal ArticleDOI
A Bioinspired, Reusable, Paper‐Based System for High‐Performance Large‐Scale Evaporation
Yanming Liu,Shengtao Yu,Rui Feng,Antoine Bernard,Yang Liu,Yao Zhang,Duan Haoze,Wen Shang,Peng Tao,Chengyi Song,Tao Deng +10 more
TL;DR: This paper-based system with enhanced surface roughness and low thermal conductivity exhibits increased efficiency of evaporation, scale-up potential, and proven reusability and is also demonstrated to be potentially useful in seawater desalination.