Low-cost zinc-oxide nanoparticles for solar-powered steam production: Superficial and volumetric approaches

Abstract

Using renewable energy, especially solar energy, is an essential requisite for preventing global warming and climate change. Solar-powered steam generation is one of the recent solutions to the problem of environmental pollution and can be a promising way to generate clean energy. In this study, the superficial and volumetric approaches of the zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO) in solar vapor generation have been compared experimentally. For the volumetric approach, the nanofluid performance at different mass concentrations (0.001%, 0.002%, and 0.004%) on the solar vapor generation was examined. For the superficial approach, the evaporative performance of delignified mulberry wood coated by ZnO nanoparticles as an absorbent (ZnO-Wood) was investigated. Moreover, the effect of nanoparticle size on optical and evaporative properties was evaluated. Finally, the economic performance of the ZnO nanofluid was compared to the other nanofluids. The results indicated that the evaporative efficiency of the nanofluids containing ZnO(50 nm) nanoparticles at 3 suns (3 kW/m2) was approximately two times greater than that of water (18%). However, the evaporative efficiency of ZnO-Wood was 3.15 (56%) times greater than that of water. In addition, the results of the nanoparticle size effect showed that increasing the size of nanoparticles from 20 nm to 50 nm in the superficial and volumetric approaches increases the evaporative efficiency by roughly 10% and 3%, respectively. Finally, the cost analysis of nanofluid for solar vapor generation illustrated that ZnO nanoparticles are cost-effective compared to other nanoparticles presented in the literature.