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Spatial Patterned Interfacial Solar Evaporators toward Recovering

Heat Loss
Yingfei Hu, Simin Li, Wenbo Zhuang, Hongyu Tu, Yanfen Wan,* and Peng Yang*
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ABSTRACT: The novel freshwater production technology, such as

interface solar-steam conversion (ISSC) technology, has advanced so
rapidly recently, where its energy capture and conversion process was
localized at the air−water interface so as to achieve high efficiency of energy
Downloaded via SOUTHEAST UNIV on March 12, 2024 at 07:52:53 (UTC).

utilization and transformation. However, when enlarging the evaporation

surface and application scale, the inevitably increased heat loss and reduced
conversion efficiency put it in a dilemma: should we exploit innovative
steamer constructs for practical applications. In order to effectively mitigate
heat loss from the evaporator to the surrounding environment, a series of
spatial pattern evaporators (SPEs) are specifically designed in this article. By
recovering the energy of radiation and convection heat loss, SPEs achieved
low heat loss in an open evaporator through unequal height auxiliary heat
exchange platforms. In an open environment, it achieves a maximum
evaporation rate of 1.68 kg m−2 h−1, with approximately 52.41% of the heat loss being reabsorbed. This sophisticated pattern design
provides a promising guideline for optimizing thermal management strategies and promoting practically scalable applications.
KEYWORDS: spatial patterned evaporators, interfacial evaporator, heat convection, heat exchange, solar-to-steam conversion

■ INTRODUCTION
As the world’s population continues to grow, the shortage of
structures, such as porous, cross-linked, and overlapped
cavities.25−31 Gradually, researchers reorientated insights to
drinkable water resources has already caused a series of crises not only solar absorber materials but also the evaporator
affecting people’s activities and livelihoods. In addition, the architectures.32−39 The construction of a solar evaporator plays
geographical and climatic differences between regions have led a paramount role in the overall effectiveness of the ISSC
to an uneven distribution of freshwater resources, while the systems. Generally, research have undergone a process on
accelerated industrialization process has also exacerbated the optimizing thermal management through a series of develop-
scarcity of freshwater resources. Currently, these established ment of evaporation devices (Figure 1). In the beginning, the
indirect contact-type setup was usually prepared as a first-
large-scale water desalination technologies generally require
generation construction (see Figure 1 version I), where the
extra energy inputs, which will lead to a worsening energy
evaporator layer indirectly contacts with the water bulk
crisis. Consequently, in the realm of water treatment, the
through the absorbent cloth as a water carrier. In our work,
interfacial solar-to-steam conversion (ISSC) technology
for this type of evaporator, we further explored the influence of
captured enormous attention as a cutting-edge desalination
the evaporator surface on the final effect. Using the same
technology, where it could directly and sustainably utilize and
carbonized wood as absorber materials, when the whole
convert the renewable energy sources, which was applied in a
evaporation area is expanded from 9.6 to 20.3 cm2, the
variety of fields like seawater desalination, heat management,
evaporation efficiency will be reduced from 88.9 to 59.1% in
vapor generation, and power production.1−8
the version I system (see Figure S1a,b). It exhibits a
In the infancy of ISSC technology, researchers focused on
phenomenon that a smaller evaporation surface realizes higher
the design of absorber materials mainly including the material
evaporation efficiency in an ISSC system, in which the larger
selection that mainly involves plasmonic metallic,9−11 semi-
conductor,12−14 carbon-based materials,15−17 and the con-
struction of material microstructure/macrostructure that could Received: December 30, 2023
contribute to increase the light absorbability.18−24 Further- Revised: January 31, 2024
more, it advanced in the hope of achieving composite Accepted: February 2, 2024
absorbers to pursue the outstanding light capture and superb Published: February 20, 2024
solar-steam conversion rates through coordinate engineering
heterogeneous components and adjusting sophisticated

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Figure 1. Schematic illustration of three versions of evaporation devices advancing from indirect contact-type setup (version I) to noncontact-type
setup (version II) further to spatial patterned architecture (version III).
surface probably induces enlarged energy loss. Generally, for
this interfacial evaporation system, the thermal energy
converted from solar energy is mainly used for sensible and
latent heat required for water evaporation and is lost in the way
of thermal conduction, thermal radiation, and thermal
convection. Among them, the heat conduction loss is mainly
driven by the temperature gradient between the evaporation
layer and the bulk water, which is dissipated to the bulk water
in the form of contact. The heat radiation loss of the
evaporation device is mainly lost to the surrounding environ-
ment in the form of electromagnetic waves, and the energy of
the heat radiation is dependent on the thermodynamic
temperature and surface properties. The heat convection loss
of the evaporation system is mainly accompanied by
evaporation into the air. Although the direct dissipation of
heat to the bulk water has been effectively controlled in terms
of thermal conduction compared to the original direct contact
type installation, it is known from Fourier’s law that the
excessive temperature difference between the absorbing layer
and the bulk water during operation still promotes the
diffusion of dissipated heat, which is generally suppressed by
increasing the thickness of the insulation at the sacrifice of
water supply capacity, making it difficult to satisfy both water
supply and insulation. Therefore, how to compress so much
inevitable heat loss in the version I ISSC system for large-scale
applications is a big challenge. Considering the rapid thermal
conduction between the evaporation layer and bulk water, the
second version of the evaporator was designed and noted as
version II (noncontact type; see Figure 1), where air separating
the evaporation layer from bulk water, taking advantage of the
lower thermal conductivity of air. In addition, inspired by the
planar patterned surface design,40 the creation of lateral
temperature differences on the evaporating surfaces can
effectively reduce the heat loss, so cotton tubes were used
instead of two-dimensional (2D) water supply channels to
create a lateral temperature gradient on the filter paper by
uneven water supply between the layer center and periphery,
nearly 8.6% more efficient for the same evaporation area (20.3
cm2). However, the thermal loss aroused by thermal
convection and thermal radiation between air and evaporator
layer, which accompany water vapor escape, is still not being
considered in this device, and as the area increases from 9.6 to
20.3 cm2, the evaporation efficiency still decreases from 122.2
to 67.7% (see Figure S1c,d), which was consistent with the
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research result that the evaporation rate impossibly maintained
constant as evaporation surface area increased; in other words,
the vapor output does not linearly increase with the
evaporation surface. This phenomenon verified again that the
larger energy loss existed with the evaporation surface and
scale enlarged.
Based on the fact that thermal radiation and convective
energy loss to air severely limit energy efficiency,41,42 our work
innovatively developed a spatial design philosophy at macro-
scopic levels by employing a series of spatial patterned
evaporators (SPEs) for practical large-scale applications from
the concept of reducing convective and radiative heat energy
loss. The devices were designed with nine different spatial
patterns with unequal height auxiliary heat exchange platforms
(Figure S2) to facilitate recovery of convective and radiative
heat loss. These various evaporative architectures with the
same mass loading of absorber materials but with different
patterns exhibited diverse evaporation rates. Furthermore, the
temperature gradients between the steps were extended by
loading different masses of carbon materials on the steps at
different heights, so that the heat generated by the high-
temperature steps could be reabsorbed by the low-temperature
steps, further promoting thermal exchange. Thus, it could
effectively suppresses the heat loss corresponding to the above-
mentioned case when the increase of the evaporator surface
induces a dramatic increase in thermal loss. Overall, on the
basis of version II evaporators and simulation results, the
innovated evaporator was constructed to facilitate heat
exchange by creating a temperature gradient across the
platform of the evaporation units to effectively reduce the
thermal loss. Among these various patterned constructions, the
best efficiency increased up to 94.1% for the same evaporation
area (20.3 cm2), with a corresponding maximum evaporation
rate of 1.68 kg m−2 h−1, increasing the vapor conversion
efficiency nearly by 26% compared to a noncontact evaporator
(version II) with the same projected area (20.3 cm2). These
nine different designs of SPEs in this work not only offered an
innovative protocol to achieve minimum convective and
radiative thermal loss, greater energy utilization, and higher
desalination efficiency but also provided additional guidelines
in constructing scalable ISSC systems.
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Figure 2. Screening of biochar photothermal materials. (a) Diagram of heat loss in the second version evaporators (version II), as the evaporating
layer is separated from the bulk water by air, the heat loss of the device is mainly concentrated in convective and radiative heat loss. (b) Mass
change over time of water evaporation from various biochar. (c) Evaporation rate and photothermal conversion efficiency of various biochar. (d)
Schematic diagram of the multilevel reflection of light in charred wood fragments and the ease of nucleation of bubbles in the micronano cavities.
■ RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Design of Spatial Evaporator. In order to obtain higher
solar-steam conversion efficiency, the selection of biomass
carbon materials with excellent properties can effectively
improve the performance of the evaporation device at a very
low cost. Among them, micromorphology, the degree of
carbonization, as well as the hydrophilicity of carbon materials
play decisive roles on the solar-to-steam conversion perform-
ance of photothermal materials. In this work, we selected
coffee grounds, white gourd peel, corn straw, rose, black tea
filter residue, pine needles, lotus, sunflower, and wood blocks
through two-step carbonization methods to prepare carbon
materials. To reveal the relationship between evaporation
properties and material morphology, the scanning electron
microscopy (SEM) images of obtained biomass carbon (Figure
S3) showed that biochar materials retain some original
characteristics and may form microscopic porous structures.
For the purpose of reducing the interference of experimental
conditions, we chose the version II steamer for material
screening, which significantly restrains the diffusion of heat
conduction into the bulk water by isolating the absorber from
the bulk water (Figure 2a). On the other hand, inspired by the
patterned evaporative surface design, which highlights on the
lateral heat conduction between the adjacent patterns of
carbon black and blank counterpart,40 a lateral temperature
gradient created by the uneven water supply distribution could
be exerted by version II setup. Generally, the adjacent area
between the center region of direct contact with the water
channel and the peripheral region of indirect water transport
could generate some thermic difference up to ∼5.0 °C and
easily facilitate heat exchange in the horizontal direction of the
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identical evaporation layer (Figure S4). From Figure 2b,2c, the
biochar materials based on wood blocks demonstrated the
most outstanding evaporation rate up to 2.14 kg m−2 h−1 (see
Table S2), which is probably due to the following factors: (1)
The graphitization degree of the wood-based biomass carbon
material is superior to several other types of biomass carbon
materials. Raman analysis results in Table S1 indicate that the
ID/IG value of carbonized wood blocks is minimal, indicating
the highest degree of graphitization. A higher degree of
graphitization correlates with better light absorption perform-
ance, and the graphitization degree obtained from Raman
analysis aligns well with the results of the subsequent light-
absorbing performance test (Figure S8). Therefore, the wood-
based biomass carbon material exhibits higher light-absorption
performance. (2) The hydrophilicity of wood-based biomass
carbon is more outstanding. Fourier-transform infrared spec-
troscopy characterization shows a stretching vibration peak at
1031 cm−1, attributed to C−O bonds (Figure S5). The
intensity of this peak in carbonized wood blocks is significantly
higher than in other biomass carbons, indicating a higher
content of oxygen functional groups in the wood-based
biomass carbon material, imparting stronger hydrophilicity.
This not only facilitates water supply to the photothermal layer
but may also disrupt water molecule clusters,43 thereby
imparting excellent evaporation performance to the wood-
based biomass carbon material. (3) Biomass carbon materials
inherently possess excellent evaporation performance.44 As
shown in Figure 2d, first, due to the inherited intrinsic cellular
textures and cross-linked network, there is rapid and
omnidirectional transport for liquid water and vapor escape.
Second, the biomass carbon materials themselves possess a
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Figure 3. Performance and thermal management of SPEs. (a) Schematic illustration of thermal loss (involving thermal conduction, thermal
convection, and thermal radiation dissipated into the environment) and thermal exchange in SPE. (b) Evaporation rate and efficiency of three
generations of evaporators. (c) Evaporation rate and efficiency of different patterns and the effect of carbon loading differences on evaporator
performance (the remaining three patterns were not considered as they could not be arranged regularly in the loading mass gradient experiment).
(d) Equilibrium temperature for each pattern (SPE-0 represents the equilibrium temperature of SPE-7 for nine filter papers at the same load of 1, 3,
and 5 mg/cm2, respectively).

broad size distribution, forming a three-dimensional porous
and rough surface, thereby exhibiting high light absorption
performance. In addition, the aggregates of biomass carbon
materials construct a three-dimensional porous microstructure
with micro/nanocavities. This unique structure not only
facilitates bubble nucleation and growth but also provides a
larger specific surface area. When bubbles form, the local
increase of the temperature (superheat) can reduce the latent
heat required for evaporation, thereby facilitating the transition
of liquid water to gaseous water.45−47
In detail, different carbonization temperatures were further
investigated to optimize the preparation process. As demon-
strated in Figure S6, as the carbonization temperature increases
from 500 to 600 °C, the evaporation rate of device charred
wood blocks increases from 1.90 to 2.14 kg m−2 h−1, which is
mainly related to the degree of graphitization. To demonstrate
the effect of temperature on the degree of graphitization,
samples obtained at different carbonization temperatures were
investigated by Raman spectroscopy. Figure S7 manifests that
the ratio of the D/G peak increases with increasing
carbonization temperature, which is well consistent with the
experimental results. In addition, the absorbance of the three
samples obtained by angular resolution confirms the effect of
the carbonization temperature on the light absorption
properties (Figure S8). The wood blocks with the best
evaporation performance were analyzed by UV−vis, X-ray
diffraction (XRD), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy
(XPS) for light absorption properties as well as compositional
analysis (Figures S9−S11).
In the previous research,20 the evaporation efficiency of the
system was described by latent heat alone when calculating the
total enthalpy of evaporation as the evaporator tends to
stabilize in temperature at equilibrium, thus neglecting the
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effect of sensible heat on evaporation performance. In fact, part
of the absorbed solar energy is used for sensible heat to
increase the temperature of water, and the other part is used
for phase transformation, which is reflected by the latent heat
of evaporation. The evaporation efficiency and the total
enthalpy of evaporation can be calculated as
Ht m
=
Q IA proj (1)
Ht = Cp × T+ Hl (2)
where η is the solar-steam conversion efficiency, Ht is the total
enthalpy of evaporation, Δm represents the mass change of
evaporated water during illumination time, Aproj is the
projection area, QI is the incident solar flux (1000 W/m2).
Cp is the specific heat capacity of water, ΔT is the change in
temperature of the water, ΔHl is the latent heat of evaporation,
in this manuscript, the latent heat corresponding to 2257 kJ
kg−1 is used to calculate the efficiency. In previous work, we
found that the loading mass of carbon material on the filter
paper can significantly affect the water supply and evaporation
speed of the evaporation layer, while the specific weight
between them can significantly affect the equilibrium temper-
ature of the absorbing layer. In this paper, the effect of loading
mass of carbon material on the evaporation performance of the
evaporation layer was investigated on a 9.6 cm2 filter paper.
Figure S12 manifests the performance related to the mass
change, temperature change, and evaporation rate; it peaks
when the loading density reaches 3 mg/cm2. Until then, if the
loading mass is less than 3 mg/cm2, the evaporation speed of
the absorber layer is slower than the water supply capacity of
the device because the biochar cannot completely cover
uniformly over the filter paper, at which point the photo-
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thermal conversion capacity of the evaporation layer is the
limited condition for solar-vapor conversion. It can be assumed
that the sensible and latent heat, which are expressed as surface
temperature and evaporation, respectively, are in competition
during evaporation. When the water supply speed is quicker
than the evaporation speed, the heat generated by the
absorption layer accounts more for the sensible part yet still
shows a lower interfacial temperature due to the sustained
increase in water volume. In addition, the lower interfacial
temperature would result in a higher latent heat, which further
increases the evaporation difficulty.47 Once the loading exceeds
3 mg/cm2, the overly dense biochar may lead to an obstacle in
water supply capacity, and the evaporation speed may exceed
the water supply speed of the unit. In this case, an inadequate
water supply will lead to an excess of heat generated by the
absorber layer, resulting in a dramatic increase in interface
temperature, while high surface temperatures will also lead to
increased heat loss and reduced energy efficiency. Since the
loading of biochar affects both the photothermal conversion
performance of the evaporation layer and the water supply
capacity, in order to illustrate the synergistic effect of
vaporization and water supply on evaporation performance
precisely, this manuscript adjusted the evaporation rate of the
evaporation layer by varying the light intensity. Figure S13
shows the evaporation performance of the version II
evaporation device under 0.5−1.0 Sun illumination. The
energy utilization of the device is highest at 0.8 Sun, which
means that the evaporating rate reaches equilibrium with a
water supply rate at this point. Since the water supply capacity
of the evaporation device does not change, it can be assumed
that the water supply capacity of the device reaches the
maximum. If the water supply capacity of the unit can be
further enhanced, the unit will achieve a higher evaporation
efficiency at 1 Sun. Therefore, the version-III evaporation
device divides the plane into 9 pieces on average and uses 9
cotton tubes for water supply to enhance the water supply
capacity of the device. From the test results (Figure S14), it
can be seen that after strengthening the water supply capacity
of the device, the evaporation efficiency of the device is
increased by about 12.8%.
Thermal Management Optimization. Due to the
existence of heat loss, with the expansion of the device scale,
most of the evaporators will have the drawback of a sharp
decline in evaporation performance, which limits the practical
application of solar-driven evaporators.48 In order to optimize
the evaporation performance of the scalable ISSC system, it is
necessary to upgrade the thermal management capability of the
evaporation device. Previous studies have shown that the high
energy loss is caused by thermal convection and thermal
radiation.49 The attempt to reduce convective and radiative
heat loss in this paper is achieved by designing a spatial
patterned evaporator inspired by the second version of the
ISSC system, which regulates the evaporation surface temper-
ature by varying the evaporating layer height and biochar mass
loading, creating a temperature gradient on the evaporation
steps at various heights to drive the heat exchange and achieve
a systematic reduction of convective and radiative heat loss
(Figure 3a). In this paper, we have designed planar-type, cross-
type, central-type, step-type, and spiral-type SPEs, respectively,
to investigate the energy exchange of various constructions.
The performance of the third version ISSC device has
significantly improved energy utilization ability compared to
the previous indirect contact type and noncontact type
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evaporation devices, with an evaporation rate up to 1.68 kg
m−2 h−1 and solar-to-vapor conversion efficiency of 94.1% in
the case of SPE-7 type patterned architecture at a projection
area of 20.3 cm2 under 1 Sun illumination (Figure 3b).
To mitigate the increased heat loss from the enlarged
evaporation layer, we initially envisaged creating a temperature
gradient by varying the distance between each module and the
solar simulator light source. The performance of the device has
improved moderately compared with the previous two
generations of evaporators. The temperature change curve
shows small differences in temperature between each step
(Figure S15), indicating a certain level of heat exchange
between the steps. While these experimental results offer
excellent guidance at the laboratory level, practical outdoor
applications present a challenge due to the uniformity of
sunlight. The artificially created height differences become
negligible in relation to the distance between the sun and the
device. Therefore, we further explored the extra strategy to
attain a larger temperature gradient, such as varying the loading
mass on different layer rows.
In the previous study of the loading mass, we learned that
the loading is positively related to the interface temperature, so
we aimed to enhance the temperature gradient between the
steps by adjusting the loading of the biochar on the different
height steps to reduce the convection and radiation loss. In this
section, nine pieces of evaporator layers were divided equally
into three groups according to their positions from low
location to high location, and the respective loadings per
square centimeter of each corresponding group were 5, 3, and
1 mg/cm2 in order. From Figure 3c, it is evident that the
performance obtained by setting different loadings in the same
structure far exceeds that obtained by loading the same mass,
indicating that it is feasible to enhance the convective and
radiative thermal exchange between platforms by varying the
loading of each platform. Furthermore, the patterned structure
represented by SPE-7 exhibited the best solar-to-vapor
conversion capability, followed by the patterns represented
by SPE-8 and SPE-9. Distinct from the other six patterns, these
three types have the tendency for the high-temperature section
to exchange heat to the low-temperature section step by step,
which is the best structure that allows thermal convection and
thermal radiation exchange to be fully utilized by the individual
steps. Unlike the original concept, the steam conversion
efficiency of the SPE-7 is about 1−3% higher than that of SPE-
8 and SPE-9. The intention of designing both SPE-8 and SPE-
9 spiral structures was to enhance thermal exchange by further
subdividing the height differences between the platforms while
having the same total height difference as SPE-7, and it was
hoped that the internal spiral structure of SPE-9 would “lock”
the heat inside the spiral, but the actual test results showed that
it did not perform as well as SPE-7, probably because the size
of each filter paper was 1.6 cm × 1.6 cm for thermal exchange
and the total evaporation projection area was 4.5 cm × 4.5 cm,
resulting in a partial overlap between each filter paper sheet,
which in combination with the spiral structure makes it more
arduous for water vapor to escape into the environment.
Testing equilibrium temperature confirms the version-III
reabsorption of thermal convection and thermal radiation
energy from the perspective of temperature variations. For nine
pieces of filter paper in SPE-7, the three sets of uniform mass
loading were determined as 1, 3, and 5 mg/cm2, respectively,
and noted it as SPE-0. As shown in Figure 3d, they were 27.2,
31.3, and 35.3 °C, respectively, with the difference between the
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Figure 4. Simulation of thermal flux. (a−f) Simulation diagram of interface temperature and heat flow direction of SPE-1, SPE-5, SPE-6, SPE-7,
SPE-8, and SPE-9.
maximum and minimum temperatures reaching up to 8.1 °C,
while the average temperature was only 31.3 °C. This
temperature difference indicates that thermal exchange hardly
takes place between the high- and low-temperature areas. The
direction of temperature drop does not coincide with the
direction of convection. Subsequently, the equilibrium temper-
atures of other patterned structures were tested for different
loads. It can be observed that when three sets of filter papers
with different mass loads are placed in the same device, the
temperature difference between them was significantly
reduced, with a difference of approximately 1−2 °C between
the highest and lowest values. The average temperature is
around 32.5 °C. The reduction in temperature difference
indicates that convective and radiative thermal exchange takes
place between the high and low-temperature areas, bringing
the temperature of the whole system closer to the average. The
increase in average temperature is beneficial for improving
evaporation performance. Compared to other patterned
structures, the evaporation performance of SPE-1 is slightly
lower, reflecting an average temperature of about 32.4 °C. This
is because there is no height difference and the individual filter
papers are in contact with each other, with only in-plane
conduction exchange taking place to reduce the temperature
difference. A comparison of the temperature variations for
SPE-5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 shows that SPE-7, 8, and 9 have the best
solar-vapor conversion performance with average temperatures
of 32.9, 32.8, and 32.7 °C, respectively, and interestingly, for
SPE-8 and SPE-9, the three loads of biochar exhibit similar
interface temperatures, indicating that they have favorable
thermal exchange capabilities, which is consistent with the
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original design intent, but with a reduced evaporation
efficiency, probably due to the hindered escape of water
vapor. In general, this can be attributed to the design of the
pattern structure: (1) the direction of steam flow needs to be
met in the same direction as the temperature drop; (2)
reducing the distance between each step while keeping the
total height difference constant can effectively strengthen the
heat exchange between the steps and minimize thermal loss;
and (3) the effect of the patterned structure on water vapor
escape needs to be considered.
Heat Exchange of Patterned Structure. For verifying
the heat exchange processes carried out by the patterned
structures more intuitively, simulations and theoretical analyses
of the heat exchange conducted between the platforms are
presented in this paper. The simulation results (Figure 4) show
that the heat generated from the high-temperature steps can
primarily be reabsorbed by the low-temperature steps driven
by the temperature gradient, although there exists the
reciprocal heat exchange between nonuniform depth steps.
As the density of the wet air is negatively correlated with the
temperature, placing the steps with high mass loadings at a
lower position will facilitate heat exchange in the structure.
Figure 4e,f shows that a large height difference will be a barrier
to heat exchange between the steps, which confirms the
previous assumption. In addition, we calculated the heat loss
and the heat exchange proportion of SPE-7 at equilibrium by
using Newton’s law of cooling (S2) and Stefan−Boltzmann’s
law (S13).
The results (Notes S1 and S2) show that the convective
thermal transfer coefficient h is 7.2 W/ (m2·K) and the
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Figure 5. (a) Heat exchange and average temperature of different evaporators. (b) Comparison of solar-to-steam conversion efficiency with
previous reports.

Figure 6. Water purification performance and stability. (a) Ion concentrations in brine before and after desalination. (b) Ion concentrations in
industrial wastewater before and after purification (the red dotted line represents the World Health Organization drinking water standards). (c)
Schematic and optical images of ions redissolving back into the bulk water due to concentration gradients. (d) Cycle test to verify the stability of
the SPE (tested with SPE-7).

convection heat loss of SPE-7 is about 57.25 W/m2, while the
convection heat exchange reaches 27.62 W/m2. The emissivity
of the carbonized wood can be calculated from S14 and S15 at
about 0.903, as taken into S13 resulting in a radiation heat loss
of about 44.79 W/m2, while the radiation heat exchange
reaches 25.86 W/m2 just at equilibrium state; however, it
would be larger before reaching equilibrium with the presence
of a larger temperature gradient (see the Supporting
Information for the calculation details). It can therefore be
assumed that at equilibrium state, SPE-7 has approximately
52.41% of the heat loss that can be reused through
interplatform heat exchange and is no longer lost directly to
the environment, thus significantly reducing the thermal loss.
In order to further verify the heat reuse effect of different space
pattern evaporators, the heat reuse effect of other evaporators
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was calculated as shown in Figure 5a. It can be seen that SPE-7
has the highest heat reuse efficiency, which is basically
consistent with the results of the previous temperature
verification. Due to the existence of heat loss, with the
expansion of the evaporation area, most of the evaporators will
have the drawback of a sharp decline in evaporation
performance. Therefore, in this paper, we design a spatial
pattern evaporator from the perspective of heat radiation and
heat convection reabsorption, which effectively minimizes heat
loss and promotes higher evaporation performance. The
evaporation performance under different evaporation area
sizes was studied in comparison. The findings from Figure 5b
indicate that the design proposed in this study exhibits
remarkable evaporation efficiency even at larger surface areas.
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Stability and Practical Performance of Patterned
Construction. The patterned array architectures of the water
evaporator allowed the efficient treatment of various ions in
bulk water with excessive levels. Simulated seawater and
industrial wastewater were used to test the water purification
capacity of the device. After purification by the SPE-7 type
evaporator, the retention rate of various ions reached more
than 95%, which met the World Health Organization drinking
water standards (Figure 6a,b). In addition, during 6 h of solar
illumination, abundant white crystals appeared on the surface
of the evaporation layer, and further, the above-deposited salt
crystals have been redissolved back into water bulk by keeping
the setup naturally for 2 h without solar illumination (Figure
6c). Under illumination conditions, due to the ultrafast
evaporation rate, the brine concentration on the evaporating
surface gradually reaches saturation resulting in the deposition
of salt crystals. Once turning off the solar simulator, due to the
slow natural evaporation rate, there is a concentration
difference between the high concentration of brine on the
surface of the evaporation layer and the bulk water; according
to Fick’s law, this concentration difference can be used as the
driving force for the diffusion of ions from the evaporation
layer to the bulk water; as the volume of brine evaporated can
be neglected relative to the bulk water, it can be assumed that
the concentration of the brine is essentially similar to before
evaporation, which is far from the saturation level at which the
salt can be extracted, so that the salt crystals on the surface of
the evaporating layer will eventually dissolve back into the bulk
water. In order to demonstrate the durability of the device,
cyclic evaporation and dissolution experiments were carried
out; it can be seen that the evaporation performance of the
device did not decrease significantly after 10 cycles of
evaporation and dissolution experiments (Figure 6d).
The central issue in all of these studies is to scale up for
meeting the daily drinking water needs of households; we
chose the SPE-7 and expanded it to 25 cotton tubes for
supporting 25 pieces of filter papers (2.6 cm × 2.6 cm per
piece), overlapping to form a 12.5 cm x 12.5 cm evaporation
projection area, and built an outdoor device with acrylic panels
for household use, whose evaporation experiment is shown in
Figure S17. The evaporation rate for the 7 h outdoor
experiment was approximately 1.17 kg m−2 h−1. If the device
can be enlarged to 1 m2, the device can basically meet the daily
drinking water needs of the family; even considering the
increased heat loss due to the increased surface area, the unit is
able to meet the daily drinking water needs of a family based
on an adult needing 2500 mL of water per day.
■ CONCLUSIONS
In summary, this paper develops a spatial patterned evaporator
based on a noncontact solar-driven evaporator, which uses the
temperature difference between non-equal-height steps to
drive heat exchange, reducing effectively the heat loss of
conventional evaporation devices, achieving a maximum
evaporation rate up to 1.68 kg m−2 h−1 and increasing the
vapor conversion efficiency by about 26% compared to a
noncontact evaporator with the same projected area. In
addition, this SPE device demonstrates that approximately
52.41% of the heat loss can be reabsorbed by adjacent steps,
providing a promising guiding strategy for the design and
optimization of the thermal management of interfacial solar
evaporation systems.
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www.acsami.org Research Article
■ EXPERIMENTAL METHOD
Fabrication of the Biomass Carbon. The agricultural waste
biomass was subjected to a two-step carbonization treatment under
the protection of nitrogen. First, it was pyrolyzed at 350 °C for 1 h to
remove the volatile components and then heated to 500/550/600 °C
for 2 h.
Fabrication of Evaporators. The first version of the evaporator
consists of an evaporation layer, an insulation layer, and a water
supply layer. The insulation layer and the water supply layer were
made by wrapping foam in absorbent cloth, and a certain amount of
carbon powder was extracted, filtered onto 4.5 cm × 4.5 cm filter
paper, and placed above the water supply layer as the evaporation
layer. The second version of the evaporator has the same evaporation
layer as the first version except that the water supply layer is replaced
by a cotton tube, and it is used to separate the evaporation layer from
the water body. In the third version, the filter paper loading with the
biochar is cut into 1.6 cm × 1.6 cm and placed according to the
designed patterned structure, ensuring that the projected area is the
same as the first two.
Characterizations of the ISWP. The biochar was characterized
by a scanning electron microscope (Phenom Pro X) and an X-ray
diffractometer (TTR18Kw, Figure S10). The functional groups were
characterized by XPS (Thermo K-α+, Figure S11). The graphitization
of the samples was investigated by a Raman spectrometer (XperRam
compact from NANOBASE). Various ions in seawater and
desalinated water were determined by an inductively coupled plasma
spectrometer (PerkinElmer Nexion 300).
■
*
ASSOCIATED CONTENT
sı Supporting Information
The Supporting Information is available free of charge at
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsami.3c19577.
Material characteristics and evaporate performances of
samples; comparison of the performances for the SPE
with other reported solar purification systems, and
theoretical calculations (PDF)
■ AUTHOR INFORMATION
Corresponding Authors
Yanfen Wan − National Center for International Research on
Photoelectric and Energy Materials, Yunnan Key Laboratory
for Micro/Nano Materials & Technology, Yunnan Key
Laboratory of Electromagnetic Materials and Devices, School
of Materials and Energy, Yunnan University, Kunming
650091, China; orcid.org/0000-0003-3810-2849;
Email: yfwan@ynu.edu.cn
Peng Yang − National Center for International Research on
Photoelectric and Energy Materials, Yunnan Key Laboratory
for Micro/Nano Materials & Technology, Yunnan Key
Laboratory of Electromagnetic Materials and Devices, School
of Materials and Energy, Yunnan University, Kunming
650091, China; orcid.org/0000-0002-5473-5454;
Email: pyang@ynu.edu.cn
Authors
Yingfei Hu − National Center for International Research on
Photoelectric and Energy Materials, Yunnan Key Laboratory
for Micro/Nano Materials & Technology, Yunnan Key
Laboratory of Electromagnetic Materials and Devices, School
of Materials and Energy, Yunnan University, Kunming
650091, China
Simin Li − National Center for International Research on
Photoelectric and Energy Materials, Yunnan Key Laboratory
for Micro/Nano Materials & Technology, Yunnan Key
Laboratory of Electromagnetic Materials and Devices, School
https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.3c19577
ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2024, 16, 10285−10294
ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces
of Materials and Energy, Yunnan University, Kunming
650091, China
Wenbo Zhuang − National Center for International Research
on Photoelectric and Energy Materials, Yunnan Key
Laboratory for Micro/Nano Materials & Technology,
Yunnan Key Laboratory of Electromagnetic Materials and
Devices, School of Materials and Energy, Yunnan University,
Kunming 650091, China
Hongyu Tu − National Center for International Research on
Photoelectric and Energy Materials, Yunnan Key Laboratory
for Micro/Nano Materials & Technology, Yunnan Key
Laboratory of Electromagnetic Materials and Devices, School
of Materials and Energy, Yunnan University, Kunming
650091, China
Complete contact information is available at:
https://pubs.acs.org/10.1021/acsami.3c19577
Notes
The authors declare no competing financial interest.
■ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was financially supported by the National Natural
Science Foundation of China (No. 52071282) and Yunnan
University Professional Degree Graduate Practice Innovation
Fund Project (No. ZC-23234166). The authors thank Electron
Microscopy Center of Yunnan University and Advanced
Analysis & Measurement Center of Yunnan University for
the sample testing service. They thank the software support
from Prof. Hai Yang from Kunming University.
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