Abstract
Abstract Interfacial solar vapor generation has revived the solar-thermal-based desalination due to its high conversion efficiency of solar energy. However, most solar evaporators reported so far suffer from severe salt-clogging problems during solar desalination, leading to performance degradation and structural instability. Here, we demonstrate a free-standing salt-rejecting reduced graphene oxide (rGO) membrane serving as an efficient, stable, and antisalt-fouling solar evaporator. The evaporation rate of the membrane reaches up to 1.27 kg m−2 h−1 (solar–thermal conversion efficiency ∼79%) under one sun, out of 3.5 wt% brine. More strikingly, due to the tailored narrow interlayer spacing, the rGO membrane can effectively reject ions, preventing salt accumulation even for high salinity brine (∼8 wt% concentration). With enabled salt-antifouling capability, flexibility, as well as stability, our rGO membrane serves as a promising solar evaporator for high salinity brine treatment.
Highlights
Harvesting the abundant solar energy to evaporate water has attracted tremendous attention for solar desalination and water purification [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]
Once the reduced graphene oxide (rGO) membrane is self-floated under illumination, it can enable solar-thermal conversion and interfacial vapor generation for water purification
The proposed free-standing rGO membrane was synthesized from the Graphene oxide (GO) suspension via hydrothermal reduction and freeze-drying methods (Figure 2A)
Summary
Harvesting the abundant solar energy to evaporate water has attracted tremendous attention for solar desalination and water purification [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]. Previous works proposed several saltrejecting strategies, such as hydrophobic materials to prevent salt adhesion [22, 23] or well-designed water channels for salt ion diffusion [24]. Conventional hydrophobic material surfaces commonly suffer from insufficient water supply, while the increased saltdiffusing channels would lead to extra conductive heat loss, both of which will reduce the energy conversion efficiency. Enabling effective salt rejection while maintaining a high evaporation rate is still of great challenge for solar desalination far
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