Enhancing solar steam generation using a highly thermally conductive evaporator support

• 作者: Yida Wang Xuan Wu Pan Wu Jingyuan Zhao Xiaofei Yang Gary Owens Haolan Xu
• 来源期刊: 科学通报（英文版）
• 年，卷（期）: 2021,（24）
• 所属期刊栏目: ARTICLES
• 页码范围: 2479-2488
• 页数: 10页
• 语种: 英文

摘要

Interracial solar steam generation is an efficient water evaporation technology which has promising applications in desalination,sterilization,water purification and treatment.A common component of evaporator design is a thermal-insulation support placed between the photothermal evaporation surface and bulk water.This configuration,common in 2-dimensional (2D) evaporation systems,minimizes heat loss from evaporation surface to bulk water,thus localizing the heat on the evaporation surface for effi-cient evaporation.This design is subsequently directly adopted for 3-dimensional (3D) evaporators with-out any consideration if it is appropriate.However,unlike 2D solar evaporators,the 3D evaporators can also harvest additional energy (other than solar light) from the air and bulk water to enhance evaporation rate.In this scenario,the use of thermal insulator support is not proper since it will hinder energy extrac-tion from water.Here,the traditional 3D evaporator configuration was completely redesigned by using a highly thermally conductive material,instead of a thermal insulator,to connect evaporation surfaces and the bulk water.Much higher evaporation rates were achieved by this strategy,owing to the rapid heat transfer from the bulk water to the evaporation surfaces.Indoor and outdoor tests both confirmed that evaporation performance could be significantly improved by substituting a thermal insulator with ther-mally conductive support.These findings will redirect the future design of 3D photothermal evaporators.