Dome-arrayed chitosan/PVA hydrogel-based solar evaporator for steam generation

Minyue Zhu, Xiaojie Liu, Yanpei Tian, Andrew Caratenuto, Fangqi Chen, Yi Zheng

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

28 Scopus citations

Abstract

Water evaporation systems with solar energy as the primary driving energy have received extensive attention in recent years. This work studies the preparation method and performance of hydrogel evaporators using chitosan and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) as a framework and carbon nanoparticles (CNPs) as the photothermal material. The evaporation rate of CPC (chitosan/PVA and CNPs) hydrogel obtained reaches 2.28 kg m−2 h−1. Simultaneously, a three-dimensional structure is designed based on the two-dimensional double-layer evaporation system in this study. An evaporator with a tiny-pool structure and a hydrogel with a dome-arrayed structure is designed. These two structures achieve highly efficient evaporation rates of 2.28 kg m−2 h−1 and 3.80 kg m−2 h−1, respectively. These optimized designs improve the evaporation rate of the overall system by ~ 66.7%. The developed evaporation devices provide a promising pathway for developing the double-layer evaporators, which promote the new development of water purification with a solar-driven evaporation system.
Original languageEnglish (US)
JournalScientific Reports
Volume12
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 1 2022
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Generated from Scopus record by KAUST IRTS on 2023-09-23

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General

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