Perspective for removing volatile organic compounds during solar-driven water evaporation toward water production

Solar evaporation has attracted considerable interest to alleviate the shortage of water resources in the past few years. Lots of works have been done focusing on evaporation materials, rate, and efficiency, however, little attempts have been made to remove the harmful volatile organic compounds (VOCs), a kind of contamination that inevitably evaporate and condense alongside with water, which seriously affect the distilled water quality. This perspective puts forward some technical ideas utilizing chemical or physicochemical methods, aiming at the development of multifunctional composite materials, and forming an integrated evaporation system, which manage to remove VOCs in situ at the interface of photothermal evaporation.

Automated summary

Solar evaporation technology has gained attention in recent years, but the focus has primarily been on evaporation materials, rate, and efficiency, with little research on removing VOCs contamination. This technology can utilize chemical or physicochemical methods to develop multifunctional composite materials and form an integrated evaporation system to remove VOCs in situ during the evaporation process.