Solid waste reutilization of FCC petroleum coke for solar evaporation as a photothermal conversion material

Abstract

Petroleum coke is a common industrial waste and is generally considered to be an amorphous carbonaceous or highly aromatized polymer carbide. In this study, petroleum coke was used as the main raw material and loaded on a nonwoven fabric to construct an interfacial solar evaporator with a micro-nano structure. The light absorption, evaporation rate and photothermal efficiency of CB@EM with different loading concentrations were investigated with different light intensities, coming in to evaluate the photothermal conversion performance of CB@EM. The results showed that the petroleum coke was resistant to acid and alkali. The simply prepared CB@EM has excellent photothermal conversion performance, and the evaporation rates of 50-CB@EM were 1.37, 2.34, and 5.61kgm-2 h-1 at 0.5 sun, 1 sun, and 1.5 sun, respectively; meanwhile, the average evaporation rate of 50-CB@EM after 60h of continuous evaporation at 1 sun, which realized efficient and continuous water evaporation was 2.39kgm-2 h-1, the evaporation efficiency was 93.29%, and the salt would preferentially accumulate from both ends of 50-CB@EM. In addition, CB@EM has flame retardancy, which can reduce the risk of fire during transportation. This study provides a method to treat petroleum coke industrial waste residue using clean energy and apply it in solar photo-thermal water evaporation, which has great potential for industrial application.