Ternary hierarchical structure based solar‐driven evaporator for long‐lasting concentrated brine treatment
Wen He,
Lei Zhou,
Yilan Wang,
Lejian Yu,
Yaqi Hou,
Shaoyang Bi,
Miao Wang,
Xu Hou
Affiliations
Wen He
State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces, Engineering Research Center of Electrochemical Technologies of Ministry of Education College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University Xiamen China
Lei Zhou
Research Institute for Biomimetics and Soft Matter, Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory for Soft Functional Materials Research, Jiujiang Research Institute, College of Physical Science and Technology Xiamen University Xiamen China
Yilan Wang
State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces, Engineering Research Center of Electrochemical Technologies of Ministry of Education College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University Xiamen China
Lejian Yu
State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces, Engineering Research Center of Electrochemical Technologies of Ministry of Education College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University Xiamen China
Yaqi Hou
The Institute of Flexible Electronics (IFE, Future Technologies) Xiamen University Xiamen China
Shaoyang Bi
Department of Mechanics Tianjin University Tianjin China
Miao Wang
The Higher Educational Key Laboratory for Biomedical Engineering of Fujian Province, Department of Biomaterials, Research Center of Biomedical Engineering of Xiamen College of Materials, Xiamen University Xiamen China
Xu Hou
State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces, Engineering Research Center of Electrochemical Technologies of Ministry of Education College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University Xiamen China
Abstract Solar‐driven evaporation has been a promising desalination method for treating concentrated seawater, since it is cost‐effectiveness, simplicity, and environmentally friendly. However, this method faces an unavoidable long‐term problem that the salt generated in the evaporation processes would affect and hinder its evaporation efficiency. Because the salt inevitably crystallizes on the surface of photothermal evaporation materials, and this crystallization process increases with time to impair the material area of the sunlight absorption and evaporation. Here, we show a ternary hierarchical structure based solar‐driven evaporator that reduces the evaporation material surface coverage of the salt to get long‐lasting concentrated brine treatment capacity. This evaporator is constructed by plugging vertically arranged hollow tube arrays across a porous plate. The top, middle, and bottom of the evaporator respectively serve as the salt crystallization site, the evaporation site, and the light absorption site. Meanwhile, the self‐cleaning of the evaporator can be achieved by back diffusion of the crystallized salts. As a result, this efficient and durable evaporator exhibits freshwater production of 10.21 kg/(m2·day) in outdoor experiment in the treatment of the concentrated natural seawater (21.3 wt%).
