Lei Sun,Yuezhu Jiang,Xinyu Wang,Wenyu Jia,Bo Xiong,Lijing Wang,Xinli Hao,Changyu Lu,Weilong Shi
Solar photothermal interfacial evaporation is an effective way to realize seawater desalination; however, conventional solar evaporators still suffer from weaknesses such as poor water transfer and surface salt deposition during freshwater acquisition. To address the above challenges, this work develops a solar evaporator based on a segmented water transport channel using polypyrone (PPy) and fabric to fabricate an interfacial evaporator with excellent photothermal conversion and water transport property. Significantly, the PPy/fabric evaporator reach as high as 1.67 kg m -2 h −1 evaporation rate under 1 sun intensity (3.5 wt% NaCl solution). Especially, at high brine concentrations (10 wt% NaCl solution), the evaporator maintains up to 1.63 kg m -2 h −1 evaporation rates and no significant salt crystallization on the evaporator surface. This work provides a novel design idea for constructing a fabric-based evaporator with multi-channel water supply for continuous solar desalination.
In this article, a novel route for the synthesis of graphene/TiO 2 continuous fibers (GTF) using force-spinning combined with water vapor annealing method is reported for the first time. The morphology, structure and optical properties of the composite were fully characterized. With a single step of heat treatment process using steam at ambient conditions, we were able to initiate a series of chemical reactions, such as reduction of graphene oxide (GO), crystallization of TiO 2 , formation of C-Ti bond, and introduction of oxygen vacancies into TiO 2 . The incorporation of graphene in TiO 2 fibers facilitated bandgap narrowing and improved photo-induced charge separation in the photocatalyst. As a result of synergistic effects, TiO 2 fibers-2 wt% graphene (2%GTF) showed the highest photocatalytic activities in the degradation of X-3B under UV irradiation, superior to the benchmark photocatalyst P25. Under visible light irradiation, the same catalyst was about 4 times more efficient compared to pure TiO 2 fibers (PTF). A detailed study of involved active species (in particular, · , h + and ·OH) unraveled the mechanism regarding photocatalysis.