Abstract
Fresh water production through sustainable approaches such as solar thermal sources is attracting widespread attention. One of the recently developed approaches aims at utilizing black particles to enhance evaporation and steam generation through efficient photo-thermal conversion process in direct solar thermal desalination systems. Activated carbon serves as one such material for meeting the objectives of freshwater production with negligible increments in cost of the overall system. A series of chemical and physical characterizations were performed to explore the possibility of using activated carbon as a stable carbon source. Optical characterization showed granular activated carbon to have 96.35% solar absorptance and its dispersion in water to have less than 1.5% transmittance (absorbance of 1.85) at 100 mg/L concentration. Outdoor experiments were performed at the University of California-Merced in the month of September (2019), with peak irradiation of 0.8 suns. The comparative measurements showed that the total evaporation enhancement was 38% and 100% for granular activated carbon and activated carbon dispersions, respectively, when compared to pure DI water.
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Acknowledgments
Significant portion of the work was supported by funding from California Energy Commission contract #GFO-16-503 and USDA NIFA contract #2-15-67021- 24117. Several characterizations were made possible from support of various faculties and staff: Dr. Edhberto Leal Quiros, Dr. Sankha Banerjee, Dr. David Rice, Dr. Anne Kelley, Dr. Yue (Jessica) Wang, Dr. Robert Jordan and Dr. Sarah Kurtz. The authors thank Nathalia Prieto and Riaz Ahamd from Anton-Paar, Kennedy Nguyen (IMF Facility, UC Merced), Jaun Magana from Zalco Labs, Bakersfield and David Garcia and Jon Flores from Nanocomposix.
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Hota, S.K., Diaz, G. Enhancing solar water evaporation with activated carbon. MRS Advances 5, 2565–2574 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1557/adv.2020.267
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/adv.2020.267