Abstract
Solar-driven interfacial evaporation has broad application prospects for seawater desalination. There is an urgent need in developing new photothermal conversion materials yielding high water evaporation efficiency while featuring simple preparation, low cost and biodegradability. In this study, a porous cellulose based composite for photothermal conversion was manufactured using directional ice templating. The composite, made by one-pot molding, combined the light absorption and water transmission layers. The pore structure of the composite material was shown to be adjustable by controlling the hardwood/nanocellulose fiber ratio, thereby achieving an effective coupling of photothermal conversion efficiency and water evaporation rate. As a result, the material pore structure was significantly improved compared to the pure components, featuring low density/high buoyancy, high and anisotropic water transport rate combined with significant mechanical strength and low heat loss. The material showing the best performance contained 50% of each cellulose component, with the cellulose/carbon black/epoxy resin/polyamide resin weight ratio 3:1:2:1. Its solar energy absorption was up to 90.1% while the thermal conductivity was only 0.051 W m−1 K−1. The water evaporation rate was 1.26 kg m−2 h−1, 3.7 times faster than its natural evaporation, and the photothermal conversion efficiency was 81.3%. This study provides a simple yet efficient strategy for development of solar-driven photothermal conversion materials.
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Acknowledgments
This research project was financially supported by the State Key Laboratory of Biobased Material and Green Papermaking of China (KF201903) and was also financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (52075309).
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JL: Conceptualization, Writing-Review & Editing, Project Administration; YC: Conceptualization, Writing the Original Draft, Investigation; HX: Conceptualization, Project administration, Supervision; WW: Writing, Review & Editing, Project Administration; MD: Formal analysis, Validation; XY: Methodology, Validation; QX: Data Curation; Evguenii Kozliak: Writing, Review & Editing; YJ: Writing-Review & Editing, Conceptualization, Project Administration, Supervision.
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Li, J., Cui, Y., Xiu, H. et al. An integrative cellulose-based composite material with controllable structure and properties for solar-driven water evaporation. Cellulose 29, 2461–2477 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-022-04442-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-022-04442-8