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Evolution of Staircase Structures in Diffusive Convection
Published on: September 5, 2018
Hierarchical structure design of sea urchin Shell-Based evaporator for efficient omnidirectional Solar-Driven steam
Meng Xia1, Shuyang Hu1, Wenqi Luo1
1State Key Laboratory of Marine Resource Utilization in South China Sea, Key Laboratory of Biomedical Engineering of Hainan Province, School of Biomedical Engineering, Hainan University, Haikou, 570228, P. R. China.
Abstract:
Solar-driven steam generation (SSG) is regarded as a feasible solution to the problem of fresh water scarcity. Although several attempts have been devoted to increase the efficiency of solar-to-steam conversion, it remains difficult to fabricate cost-effective, steady, and multi-angle sunlight-absorbing evaporators from readily available biomass materials. Herein, a novel hierarchical structured SSG evaporator (PDA@Shell-NaClO) is developed through a simple, low-cost, and scalable etching treatment on discarded sea urchin (SU) shells. Attributing to the dedicatedly designed microneedles array structure and porous skeleton structure of the SU shell, this PDA@Shell-NaClO evaporator shows an outstanding average light absorption performance (>90%) in a broad range of angles from 0° to 60° and exceedingly high evaporation rate of 2.81 kg m-2 h-1 under one sun condition. Furthermore, the prepared evaporator also maintains an overall stable evaporation performance and exhibits an excellent durability for a long time of up to two weeks in actual seawater. This full-ocean biomass-based SSG evaporator with plentiful raw material availability offers innovative opportunities for large-scale fresh water production.
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