4.7 Article

Phase Inversion-Based foam hydrogels for highly efficient Solar-Powered interfacial desalination

Journal

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING JOURNAL
Volume 464, Issue -, Pages -

Publisher

ELSEVIER SCIENCE SA
DOI: 10.1016/j.cej.2023.142409

Keywords

Phase inversion; Foam hydrogel; Pore-in-pore structure; Evaporation enthalpy; Solar desalination

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In order to address global freshwater scarcities, innovative materials are needed for the development of solar-powered interfacial desalination and purification technologies. This study utilizes polymeric phase inversion to develop PVA-based foam hydrogels with high porosity, compressibility, and rapid water transport. These materials also exhibit low water evaporation enthalpies and achieve high evaporation rates and energy efficiency under 1 sun irradiation.
Innovative materials are required to promote the development of solar-powered interfacial desalination and purification technologies to address global freshwater scarcities. To this end, evaporators using polymeric hydrogels have been widely studied. However, these systems are slow, energy-intensive, complex, and difficult to operate. New strategies are in urgent need. The present work employs polymeric phase inversion to develop poly (vinyl alcohol) (PVA)-based foam hydrogels, wherein the air bubble phase served as the matrix and cross-linked PVA hydrogel acted as the dispersed phase. In addition, we utilize Ti(3)C(2)Tx nanosheets-based MXene as the photothermal agent to facilitate the fabrication of hierarchical pore-in-pore structures. The prepared PVA/MXene foam hydrogels exhibit > 95% porosity, as well as high compressibility (> 7000 cycles) and very rapid water transport. Importantly, these materials also exhibit remarkably low water evaporation enthalpies. Combined with a new heat supply model, those foam hydrogels achieve an evaporation rate of 4.1 +/- 0.1 kg m(-2)h(-1) with energy efficiency up to 128.8% +/- 2.0% under 1 sun irradiation, which is the highest value for MXene-based nanocomposites reported so far. This study demonstrates a significant advancement in solar desalination sys-tem by combining phase inversion to make innovative foam materials with optimal external heat management.

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