Biomimetic optimized concept with Murray networks for accelerated solar-driven water evaporation

Abstract

Solar-driven interfacial water evaporation provides a green and environment-friendly means for seawater desalination and wastewater purification. However, it is still challenging to simultaneously optimize the overall light absorption, water transport, and thermal management of the evaporators. Herein, we ingeniously designed a 3D artificial tree evaporator by integrating Murray networks with plants transpiration for fast water transport and accelerated evaporation. The excellent water transport, abundant intermolecular hydrogen bonds, supplementation of environmental energy, and heat-isolated evaporation structure of the artificial trees boost the escape behavior and vaporization process of water molecules at the interface. Thus, this nature-inspired artificial tree could not only maximize the solar energy absorption, but also utilize the environmental energy for evaporation, which achieved evaporation rate of 2.46 kg m–2h−1 and total energy efficiency of 99.28% under 1.0 sun irradiation (with an ambient energy supplement of 4.64%). The use of this evaporator could continuously produce pure water from real seawater samples in the natural environment that was much higher than the requirements of World Health Organization (WHO) and US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) drinking water standards, highlighting its expanded value of this optimized design concept in practical desalination applications.