Research on sustainable off-grid desalination technology of solar interfacial evaporation

Abstract

As the problem of global environmental pollution becomes more and more serious, freshwater resources are increasingly scare, desalination has become a research hotspot. The traditional desalination energy consumption is high, solar interface evaporation technology can directly use renewable energy, which is clean and environmentally friendly. It is an environmentally friendly off-grid desalination process that can achieve the goals of reducing the cost of seawater desalination and zero carbon emissions. The research significance and prospects of off-grid desalination technology, the basic connotation of solar interface evaporation technology, and various efficient photothermal conversion materials were introduced. Photothermal conversion materials mainly included photothermal carbon materials, metals and oxides, polymer materials and its related materials. Various interface evaporation desalination processes driven by solar energy were summarized, mainly including solar interface multi-stage flash evaporation and multi-effect distillation technology, membrane distillation technology, greenhouse seawater desalination technology, solar humidification and dehumidification technology, and multi energy coupling desalination technology. Finally, the future research directions of utilizing solar interface evaporation technology for off-grid desalination were discussed in response to current global environmental and energy problems.

Keywords

• solar energy
• off-grid desalination
• renewable energy
• interfacial evaporation
• nano-materials