Self-Cleaning Integrative Aerogel for Stable Solar-Assisted Desalination

The solar-assisted desalination generator (SADG) shows great potential for solving water scarcity problems. However, salt precipitation and accumulation is still a challenge for SADG, which slows down solar steam generation performance of evaporator during operation. Here, a facile integrative evaporator featuring stable and high evaporation performance breaks this bottleneck. By using a rational design in which amorphous carbon particles are evenly composited within the porous chitosan aerogel, the evaporator not only integrates excellent light absorption, heat management, and water transportation abilities but also endows a large vapor escape space. Upon desalination, salt concentration ingredients between carbon particles and chitosan membranes can be quickly balanced by water transport in interconnected chitosan chains, and thus salt precipiation on the evaporator surface would be avoided. Compared to other salt-rejection evaporators, the integrative evaporator can operate in 3.5 wt% brine for 60 days without salt precipiation and exhibits a stable evaporation rate (1.70 kg m^-2 h^-1), indicating its potential for practical applications in seawater desalination and the harvest of clean drinking water.