Solar-powered flow-through catalytic evaporator for high-performance water desalination and synergistic pollutant degradation

Abstract

Solar interfacial evaporation has been considered one of the most promising strategies to address freshwater scarcity. It is of great interest to explore means of expanding the utilization of solar interfacial evaporation for organic wastewater treatment to capture freshwater. To this end, it is proposed herein that a unidirectional flow-type solar-powered catalytic evaporator is fabricated as a unique integrated device with efficient vapor generation and organics degradation capability, giving rise to simultaneously achieving collection of freshwater and treatment of organics. Benefitting from the flow-through interfacial evaporation and the rational design of the high-performance array-type catalytic evaporative material composed of polydopamine (PDA)-coated CdS photocatalysts on carbon cloth (CC) substrate, the as-built solar-powered catalytic evaporator demonstrates excellent evaporation rate and organic treatment efficiency of 1.93 kg m−2 h−1 and 90.7 %, respectively, well exceeding those of the initial, un-designed evaporator (1.63 kg m−2 h−1 and 60.3 %). This work may provide a new strategy for the treatment of organic wastewater with versatility based on solar interfacial catalytic evaporation technology.