High-efficiency solar steam generation based on blue brick-graphene inverted cone evaporator

Abstract

Solar steam generation, as a novel technology, has attracted received extensive attention in recent years. In order to further improve the evaporation performance of the solar steam generation system. In this work, a bi-layer inverted cone structure was prepared by daubing graphene on blue bricks for efficient solar steam generation. The excellent light-heat properties of the blue brick were characterized. The effects of system performance with different graphene concentrations were investigated. With the increase of graphene concentration, the evaporation rate of the system increases rapidly, and then gradually stabilizes at 1.09 kg m−2 h−1. At the same time, a 3D inverted cone composite structure is designed. The optical absorption efficiency could reach 97.3% by light is intercepted by diffuse reflection, and the evaporation area is also increased, the evaporation rate is increased by 0.12 kg m−2 h−1. Compared with the evaporation efficiency of plane structure, 90° inverted cone structure increased by about 8%. In addition, the blue brick-graphene shows an excellent water purification capacity, all four primary ions concentrations after purification are significantly reduced and the ion rejection ratios of four primary ions are close to 99.8%. Hence, we conclude that this work could provide a new method for high-efficiency solar steam generation to solve water resources scarcity.