A research group led by Prof. CHEN Tao at the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering (NIMTE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), has developed a multifunctional black sand aggregate for solar-driven purified water collection, which can adapt to diverse environments. The study was published in Nano Energy.

The shortage of clean water has severely influenced the economic development and human living quality. As a renewable and sustainable resource, solar energy has become a predominant and promising alternative for water purification.

In recent years, solar-driven interfacial evaporation that directly converts solar to thermal energy has attracted great attention by virtue of its high efficiency and easy accessibility. However, the realization of environmental-adaptive water collection within one material system in a simple, low-cost and scalable way still remains a challenge.

Inspired by natural sand with highly significant role in purifying water during the natural recycling, the research group designed an all-round black sand aggregate with cost-effective natural sand particles to collect purified water under sunlight illumination.

Researchers have improved the solar-to-thermal conversion efficiency with the modification of polydopamine (PDA) and Cl^--doped polypyyrole onto the sand surface for a stable structure. In addition, thanks to the specific aggregative structure of the black sands, a self-channelled device combined adjustable 2D/3D solar-driven evaporation was achieved, yielding a high evaporation performance.

The developed black sand aggregate could be utilized to deal with polluted sea water and to harvest clean water from atmospheric moisture in some droughty areas or deserts with great efficiency.

The collective multifunctional black sand aggregate has remarkably improved solar-to-thermal clean water collecting ability, and shed some light on the relvant research on purified water harvesting in mutiple environments.

Fig. Black sand aggregate for purified water collection in diverse environments (Image by NIMTE)

Contact
HUANG Ye
Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering
E-mail: huangye@nimte.ac.cn