3D Photothermal Cryogels for Solar-Driven Desalination
Siew‐Leng Loo, Lía Vásquez, Muhammad Zahid, Federica Costantino, Athanassia Athanassiou, Despina Fragouli
Abstract
solar evaporation of a synthetic seawater through PPC10, shows an at least 99.99% reduction of Na while all the other elements are reduced to a subppm level. We attribute the superior solar evaporation and desalination performance of PPC10 to its (i) higher photoabsorption efficiency, (ii) higher heat localization effect, (iii) open porous structure that facilitates vapor removal, (iv) rough pore surface that increases the surface area for light absorption and water evaporation, and (v) higher water-absorption capacity to ensure efficient water replenishment to the evaporative sites. It is anticipated that the gained know-how from this study would offer insightful guidelines to better designs of polymer-based 3D photothermal materials for solar evaporation as well as for other emerging solar-related applications.