Self-Floating Efficient Solar Steam Generators Constructed Using Super-Hydrophilic N,O Dual-Doped Carbon Foams from Waste Polyester

Energy & Environmental Materials

article

Huiying Bai¹  Ning Liu¹  Liang Hao¹  Panpan He¹  Changde Ma²  Ran Niu¹  Jiang Gong¹  Tao Tang² 

[1] Key Laboratory of Material Chemistry for Energy Conversion and Storage, Ministry of Education, Hubei Key Laboratory of Material Chemistry and Service Failure, Hubei Engineering Research Center for Biomaterials and Medical Protective Materials, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology;State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences

关键词: carbon foam;    solar desalination;    solar energy;    solar steam generator;    waste plastics;   

DOI  :  10.1002/eem2.12235

来源: Wiley

【 摘 要 】

Solar evaporation is recognized as a prospective technique to produce freshwater from non-drinkable water using inexhaustible solar energy. However, it remains a challenge to fabricate low-cost solar evaporators with obviously reduced water evaporation enthalpy to achieve high evaporation rates. Herein, N,O dual-doped carbon foam (NCF) is fabricated from the low-temperature carbonization of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) waste by melamine/molten salts at 340 °C. During carbonization, melamine reacts with carboxylic acids of PET degradation products to yield a crosslinking network, and then molten salts catalyze the decarboxylation and dehydration to construct a stable framework. Owing to rich N,O-containing groups, 3D interconnected pores, super-hydrophilicity, and ultra-low thermal conductivity (0.0599 W m −1  K −1 ), NCF not only achieves high light absorbance (ca. 99%) and solar-to-thermal conversion, but also promotes the formation of water cluster to reduce water evaporation enthalpy by ca. 37%. Consequently, NCF exhibits a high evaporation rate (2.4 kg m −2  h −1 ), surpassing the-state-of-the-art solar evaporators, and presents good anti-acid/basic abilities, long-term salt-resistance, and self-cleaning ability. Importantly, a large-scale NCF-based outdoor solar desalination device is developed to produce freshwater. The daily freshwater production amount per unit area (6.3 kg) meets the two adults' daily water consumption. The trash-to-treasure strategy will give impetus to the development of low-cost, advanced solar evaporators from waste plastics for addressing the global freshwater shortage.

【 授权许可】

Unknown