Orientational seawater transportation through Cu(TCNQ) nanorod arrays for efficient solar desalination and salt production

Abstract

Solar-driven interfacial desalination (SDID) has emerged as an efficient and eco-friendly technology to produce clean water. However, salt deposition on photothermal material severely restricts the operation stability and service life. Herein, this issue was addressed by regulating the oriented seawater transportation through flexible Cu(TCNQ) metal-organic frameworks (MOFs)-based nanorod arrays (MAS) and isolating the salt crystallization from the evaporating surface. The SDID device with the novel architecture is rationally designed, which not only shows good anti-salt deposition ability and superior clean water production performance, but also achieves simultaneous salt extraction. Under 1 sun irradiation, the MAS in SDID device displays an impressive water evaporation rate of 1.78 kg m−2 h−1 (projected area) and a high salt extraction rate of 47.0 g m−2 h−1. Even at night, the MAS can also extract salt at the rate of 12.6 g m−2 h−1. This work provides a new idea to design highly efficient multifunctional solar desalination device for seawater resource comprehensive utilization and zero-liquid discharge.