Surface patterned polyvinyl alcohol/CNT hydrogels for sustained solar powered high concentration brine desalination and salt harvesting

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Solar-driven interfacial evaporation is an attractive way to achieve water purification. However, high water evaporation rates often result in the precipitation of salt crystals on the surface of the evaporator leading to decay of the evaporation efficiency over time, which makes it difficult to balance high water evaporation rates with salt resistance. Herein, an anisotropic polyvinyl alcohol/CNT hydrogel is constructed by directional freezing and surface patterning. The polymer backbone formed by the polyvinyl alcohol chains interacts with the water clusters to reduce the evaporation enthalpy of water and the absorbed water can be released by squeezing the hydrogels due to the micron-sized vertically aligned pores. More importantly, by designing the structure of the hydrogels surface, the gas–liquid interface of the evaporators can be increased while the growth direction of the salt crystals can be controlled. As a result, the water evaporation rate can be increased from 3.26 kg m-2h−1 to 3.69 kg m-2h−1 under one sun irradiation through surface patterning. After 50 h of continuous operation in 10 wt% NaCl solution under one sun irradiation, the water evaporation rate gradually increases and a large amount of salt collection is collected, which proves its satisfactory salt resistance.