Designing 3D ribbed evaporating layer of solar-driven multistage desalination device for enhanced evaporation performance

Abstract

Solar-powered passive multistage distillation devices demonstrated outstanding potential in freshwater production, but improving evaporation performance remained a major challenge. In this study, we found that the extended evaporation area was effective in improving evaporation performance. Therefore, a multistage distillation device with a three-dimensional ribbed evaporation layer was fabricated and explored. The ribbed evaporation layer was found to produce more evaporation flux with lower temperature and heat loss compared to the planar shape. As a result, the single-stage device demonstrated an evaporation rate of 1.19 kg m-2h−1 with an energy conversion efficiency of 81.5 % under 1 kW m−2 light intensity. In particular, the ribbed evaporation layer enhanced the efficiency of latent heat transfer and utilization in multistage devices. Therefore, the stable evaporation rate of the 10-stage device reached 4.12 kg m-2h−1, which was about 1.6 times that of the original device. In summary, we explored a new method to improve the evaporation performance of MSD devices, which is of great significance for efficient seawater desalination.