Reviewing wood-based solar-driven interfacial evaporators for desalination.

Solar‒driven interfacial water evaporation is a convenient and efficient strategy for harvesting solar energy and desalinating seawater. However, the design and fabrication of solar evaporators still challenge reliable evaporation and practical applications. Wood-based solar-driven interfacial water evaporation emerge as a promising and environmentally friendly approach for water desalinating as it provides renewable and porous structures. In recent years, surface modifications and innovative structural designs to prepare high performance wood-based evaporators is widely explored. In this review, we firstly describe the superiority of wood for the fabrication of wood-based solar evaporators, including the pore structure, chemical structure and thermal insulation. Secondly, we summarize the recent developments in wood-based evaporators from surface carbonization, decoration with photothermal materials, bulk modification and structural design, and discuss from the aspects of water transportation capacity, thermal conductivity and photothermal efficiency. Finally, based on these previous results and analysis, we highlight the remaining challenges and potential future directions, including the selection of high-efficient photothermal materials, heat and mass transfer mechanism in wood-based evaporators including large-scale production at a low cost.

Dong Y ，Tan Y ，Wang K ，Cai Y ，Li J ，Sonne C ，Li C ... -  《-》

Bio-Derived Photothermal Materials and Evaporators for Sustainable Solar Energy-Driven Water Process.

Ge Y ，Su Z ，Ivan MNAS ，Wang C ，Tsang YH ，Xu S ，Bai G ... -  《-》

A Bilayered Wood-Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):Polystyrene Sulfonate Hydrogel Interfacial Evaporator for Sustainable Solar-Driven Sewage Purification and Desalination.

Xu X ，Zhao Q ，Liu Q ，Qiu J ，Yuan S ，Wu Z ，Yang R ，Cao J ，Wang L ，Xu J ，Lu B ... -  《Nanomaterials》

Latest development in salt removal from solar-driven interfacial saline water evaporators: Advanced strategies and challenges.

Solar-driven interfacial water evaporation, which gets rid of the limitation of saline waters, enables to supply potable water in the worldwide, especially in remote areas where only solar energy and water are available. This technique has also exhibited great potential applications in fields such as seawater desalination, steam sterilization, and fuel production. However, the evaporation efficiency decreases during continuous operation in saline water due to the blockage of the solar absorber resulting from crystalline salt deposition. Therefore, it is still a great challenge to design a stable and efficient solar-driven interfacial saline water evaporator. Herein, a variety of structural designs and engineering strategies for salt removal of evaporators in the latest years were reviewed. We classified these strategies as remaining unsaturated evaporation of saline water, preventing salt ions from contacting the solar absorber, dissolving and/or migrating back of crystalline salts, and keeping salt crystallization away from evaporation area. Finally, the current challenges and future research opportunities were discussed. The purpose of this review was: (1) to provide ideas to solve the problem of the reduced efficiency causing by salt deposition during saline water evaporation and (2) to promote the application of solar-driven interfacial saline water evaporation technology by providing the latest achievements in structural designs for salt removal.

Li H ，Yan Z ，Li Y ，Hong W ... -  《-》

A facile and versatile preparation method of sodium alginate-copper sulfide photothermal coating for efficient solar evaporation.

Shu D ，Fan L ，Gong W ，Ye D ，Bai Z ，Xu J ... -  《-》