Capillary-driven Solar-thermal Water Desalination using a Porous Selective Absorber

The desalination of seawater has the potential to address the increasing demand for potable water. Specifically, solar-thermal water desalination can generate clean water without relying significantly on fossil energy. However, the inefficient use of solar energy often limits the overall performance, which affects the rate, efficiency, and feasibility of large-scale implementation. This study shows the use of a spectrally-selective nanomaterial as an absorber to improve the performance of solar-thermal desalination. This material is designed to maximize the absorption of sunlight and minimize the loss of energy by thermal emission, which allows higher throughput and efficiencies compared to broadband absorbers. In this study, we show a 10 % enhancement in the evaporation rate of water by using a selective absorber compared to a graphite absorber. We demonstrate a scalable approach involving the use of wicking materials interfaced with the spectrally-selective absorber for the desalination of saline water to get 73 % of overall efficiency using a solar flux of one sun. This demonstration of an inexpensive strategy for producing clean water can potentially transform the field of solar-thermal desalination to address the rising demand for water. The data included in this database are the results obtained from experiments. The data is provided as an excel sheet, where each tab represents a single data set. These results are also discussed in a related journal publication (with the same title), which can be found in the journal Materials Today Energy (after its publication). The tabs in the excel file are named based on the Figure numbers in the manuscript.海水淡化技术有望解决日益增长的饮用水需求。其中，太阳能热法海水淡化（solar-thermal water desalination）可在无需大量依赖化石能源的前提下产出洁净水源。然而，太阳能利用效率低下往往制约其整体性能，进而影响大规模应用的速率、效率与可行性。本研究采用光谱选择性纳米材料（spectrally-selective nanomaterial）作为吸收体（absorber），以提升太阳能热淡化系统的性能。该材料可最大化吸收太阳光，并通过热辐射（thermal emission）最小化能量损耗，相较宽带吸收体（broadband absorbers），能实现更高的水产出速率与系统效率。实验结果表明，相较于石墨吸收体（graphite absorber），选择性吸收体可将水蒸发速率（evaporation rate）提升10%。本研究还展示了一种可规模化方案：将芯吸材料（wicking materials）与光谱选择性吸收体耦合，用于含盐海水（saline water）的淡化处理，在1倍太阳辐照度（solar flux of one sun）下可实现73%的整体效率（overall efficiency）。这种低成本的净水制备策略，有望推动太阳能热淡化领域的变革，以应对日益增长的水资源需求。 本数据库收录的内容均为实验所得结果，以Excel表格形式提供，每个工作表对应一个独立数据集。相关实验结果已在一篇同标题的期刊论文中进行讨论，该论文正式出版后可于《Materials Today Energy》期刊中查阅。Excel文件中的工作表以稿件中的图号命名。