Efficient solar water desalination with wood evaporators

Biomass based solar evaporators are feasible means of water evaporation and solar desalination with the significant advantages of sustainability and cost-effectiveness. In this work, the solar interfacial evaporators were prepared on the five different wood, with the vertically aligned porous channels to achieve the efficient solar water evaporation and desalination. Owing to the excellent synergistic photothermal effect of PDA and Fe (II,III), all the five wood evaporators showed the high solar evaporation rates, approximately 2–3 times better than the control group of the bulk water. The evaporation efficiency can achieve as high as 100% among these wood evaporators. Furthermore, the outdoor field tests with the real seawater demonstrated the high desalination performance as the water was collected about 5.72 kg m⁻² daily and the quality met the WHO standard. The findings in this work demonstrate significant practical potentials in the feasible access to freshwater, beneficial to solve the global challenges of water shortage and energy crisis.

Duke Scholars

Author Weiwei Shi DKU Faculty