Abstract
The application of solar-driven water evaporation process in clean water production via solar distillation is recently intensively investigated. The phase change and mass transfer processes during the solar-driven water evaporation process can directly leave behind the salts, heavy metals, organic dyes, etc and simultaneously produce the clean water vapor. However, if the water source is contaminated by volatile organic compounds (VOCs), solar-driven water evaporation may accelerate VOCs volatile and enrich them in the condensate. In this work, the enrichment of VOCs in distillate water was first demonstrated and a multi-functional honeycomb ceramic plate was fabricated by coating a layer of CuFeMnO4 on the surface of a cordierite honeycomb ceramic substrate. The honeycomb structure was beneficial for light trapping and energy recycling and thus to improve the solar-to-water evaporation efficiency. The CuFeMnO4 coating layer acted as both the photothermal material for solar-driven water evaporation process and the catalyst for VOCs removal via heterogeneous photon-Fenton reaction. With the integration of photo-Fenton reaction into the solar distillation process, the clean distillate water was produced with efficient removal of the potential VOCs from the contaminated water sources.
Highlights
Water shortage is one of the most pressing global challenges in the following decades due to population growth, increasing steadily improving living standards, and climate change [1,2]
The average light absorption measured from the topside in visible light range of a honeycomb ceramic disk with a height of 0.5 cm is above 44% (Fig. 2)
The Chemical oxygen demand (COD) concentration in condensed distillate water evaporated directly without photothermal material was 378% of the original solution with concentration of 10 mg/L, 302% of the original solution with concentration of 20 mg/L, 225% of the original solution with concentration of 50 mg/L, and 152% of the original solution with concentration of 100 mg/L. All of these results showed that phenol was concentrated and collected in the condensed distillate water, which indicated directly that volatile organic compounds (VOCs) could be a potential concern in the condensed distillate water in a solar still system if the water source was contaminated by VOCs
Summary
Water shortage is one of the most pressing global challenges in the following decades due to population growth, increasing steadily improving living standards, and climate change [1,2]. We intended to integrate heterogeneous photo-Fenton reactions into a typical solar distillation system to remove the potential VOC pollutants in the distillate water. Phenol was chosen as a model of VOCs to investigate the VOCs removal efficiency in this system Without this multi-functional photothermal material, the collected condensate contained phenol with a concentration much higher than the original source water. After introducing the photo-Fenton reaction into the solar distillation, high phenol removal efficiency ∼98.2% was achieved for the water source of 20 mg/L phenol. This multi-functional photothermal material provided a promising solution for clean water production from contaminated source water that contains VOCs pollutants
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