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Preparation of rGO @SA/CNF-doped copper composite aerogels and their solar-driven interfacial evaporation properties in water purification

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Abstract

Solar-driven interfacial evaporation is a sustainable and green desalination method with great prospects for development in today’s severe water shortage problem. In this paper, a novel composite aerogel was prepared by hydrothermal method with sodium alginate (SA) and Cu2+ in the preparation process using reduced graphene oxide as photothermal material and cellulose nanofibers as substrate. The good hydrophilicity of nanocellulose makes the composite aerogel have strong capillary action and continuous water transport. The gel formed by ion exchange between SA and Cu2+ greatly improves dry and wet mechanical strength of the composite aerogel and ensures the stability of the evaporator for multiple recycling. Copper is doped by reduction of copper ion complexes and reduced graphene oxide have a synergistic effect to increase the photothermal response rate of the composite aerogel of 1.446 kg m−2 h−1 with evaporation efficiency of 84.87% under one standard solar irradiation. In addition, the purification of heavy metal ions, dye wastewater as well as acid and alkali solutions also has excellent results. It is expected that this study will provide some new ideas for the fields of seawater desalination and wastewater treatment.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The present work was supported by “the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities” (No.2232022G-03).

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Author notes

  1. Wei Wang and Dan Yu have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Engineering Research Center for Dyeing and Finishing of Textiles, Key Laboratory of Science and Technology of Eco-Textile, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Ministry of Education, Donghua University, 2999 North Renmin Road, Songjiang District, Shanghai, 201620, China

    Jiajia Gui, Yixiang Chen, Wei Wang & Dan Yu

  2. wangv@dhu.edu.cn, Shanghai, China

    Wei Wang

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  1. Jiajia Gui
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  2. Yixiang Chen
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  3. Wei Wang
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  4. Dan Yu
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Contributions

Jiajia Gui was involved in conceptualization, methodology, investigation, formal analysis, and writing—original draft; Yixiang Chen helped with visualization and investigation; Wei Wang was resposible for resources and supervision; Dan Yu took part in visualization and writing—review and editing.

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Correspondence to Wei Wang or Dan Yu.

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Gui, J., Chen, Y., Wang, W. et al. Preparation of rGO @SA/CNF-doped copper composite aerogels and their solar-driven interfacial evaporation properties in water purification. J Mater Sci 59, 5359–5370 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-024-09484-w

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