The future of large-scale solar interfacial desalination
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Solar-driven interfacial evaporation technologies for food, energy and water
Solar-driven interfacial evaporation technologies use solar energy to heat materials that drive water evaporation. These technologies are versatile and do not require electricity, which enables their potential application across the food, energy and water nexus. In this Review, we assess the potential of solar-driven interfacial evaporation technologies in food, energy and clean-water production, in wastewater treatment, and in resource recovery. Interfacial evaporation technologies can produce up to 5.3 l m–2 h−1 of drinking water using sunlight as the energy source. Systems designed for food production in coastal regions desalinate water to irrigate crops or wash contaminated soils. Technologies are being developed to simultaneously produce both clean energy and water through interfacial evaporation and have reached up to 204 W m–2 for electricity and 2.5 l m–2 h–1 for water in separate systems. Other solar evaporation approaches or combinations of approaches could potentially use the full solar spectrum to generate multiple products (such as water, food, electricity, heating or cooling, and/or fuels). In the future, solar evaporation technologies could aid in food, energy and water provision in low-resource or rural settings that lack reliable access to these essentials, but the systems must first undergo rigorous, scaled-up field testing to understand their performance, stability and competitiveness.
Advancing robust all-weather desalination: a critical review of emerging photothermal evaporators and hybrid systems
All-weather solar-driven desalination systems, integrating photothermal evaporators with hybrid technologies, present a sustainable, cost-effective, and high-efficiency strategy for freshwater production. Despite significant advancements, previous reviews have predominantly focused on daytime evaporation, neglecting the broader scope of all-weather seawater evaporation. This review provides a comprehensive examination of the current status of all-weather seawater evaporators and their hybrid systems. Initially, the review details the system’s composition and operating principles, as well as the design criteria for high-performance evaporators. It then goes over various common photothermal conversion materials for seawater desalination, with a particular emphasis on those materials tailored for all-weather applications. It also offers an in-depth overview to the developed photothermal hybrid systems for all-weather seawater evaporation, including their working principles, the efficiency of evaporation across the day-night cycle, and their practical applications. Lastly, the existing challenges and potential research opportunities are thoroughly discussed.
On-chip solar power source for self-powered smart microsensors in bulk CMOS process
Enhancing the photoelectric conversion efficiency of on-chip solar cells is crucial for advancing solar energy harvesting in self-powered smart microsensors for Internet of Things applications. Here we show that adopting a center electrode (CE) layout instead of a ring electrode (RE) effectively reduces the shadowing effect of surface electrodes. Using a standard 0.18 μm CMOS process, we fabricated a 0.01 mm² segmented triple-well on-chip solar cell with CEs and highly doped interconnections. Measurements demonstrate a photoelectric conversion efficiency of 25.79% under solar simulator illumination, a 17.49% improvement over conventional designs. This on-chip solar cell is used for on-chip energy harvesting, achieving a maximum end-to-end conversion efficiency of 10.20%, referring to the overall efficiency from incident light power to load power output. The proposed energy harvesting system reliably provides a stable 1 V output to the load, even under varying illumination and load conditions.
Video communication, blue marble awe, and attitudes toward climate change and renewable energy
We conducted a survey experiment to examine how respondents’ attitudes toward climate change and renewable energy are affected by six communication approaches using online videos. Three interventions used single message approaches, which focused on facts about climate change science, facts about solar PV technology, or the emotion of blue marble awe (the feeling of awe for the Earth arising from the realization that we live on a fragile planet). Two interventions used dual message approaches, which combined blue marble awe with either climate change science or solar PV technology facts. One intervention used a dual reinforced message approach, which combined blue marble awe, solar PV technology facts, and a message from an astronaut who is an ambassador for renewable energy. Results show that the dual reinforced message approach has the strongest effects on energy and environmental attitudes. Our findings offer important lessons for scientists and educators interested in energy communication.
Full recovery of brines at normal temperature with process-heat-supplied coupled air-carried evaporating separation (ACES) cycle
Conventional air-carried evaporating separation (ACES) technology, to achieve complete separation and recovery of water and salt in brine, tends to necessitate heating air above a critical temperature (typically>90 °C). In this paper, a novel concept of process-heat-supplied and an ACES cycle with this technique is proposed. A comprehensive thermodynamic analytical investigation is conducted. The results indicate that at heat source supply temperature Tsupply of only 45.17 °C, this novel unit is capable of achieving complete separation of water and salt from 5 wt% concentration brine. Meanwhile, thermodynamic mechanism analysis reveals that sufficient process-heat-supplied affords the fluid self-adaptive regulation on the driving potential of heat and mass transfer, thus circumventing traditional heat and mass transfer limitation. Additionally, a solar ACES system with process-heat-supplied incorporating heat pump is further proposed. For this system, theoretical evaporation rate for unit area of solar irradiation me-solar = 2.23 kg/(m2·h), integrated solar utilization efficiency ηi = 188%; while considering overall losses me-solar = 1.41 kg/(m2·h), ηi = 95.2%.
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