Storage And Recycling Of Interfacial Solar Steam Enthalpy

With the expansion of population and increasing level of water pollution in recent years,water resources shortage has become a severe problem in worldwide.Interfacial heating technique,which is considered as an effective way to deal with this situation as it can enable a high-efficiency steam generation,has attracted tremendous interest of researchers.However,during a typical steam generation and condensation course,the latent heat of vaporization is usually completely wasted and dissipate into the environment.As a result of this,researchers have been wondering that if the enthalpy of vapor can be reused for other purposes,for instance,electricity generation,which could meet not only the requirements of clean water but also the demand of electricity for remote areas if realized.In this work,we not only presented the advantages of interfacial solar steam generation technique in thermodynamics but also introduced a integrate system with industrial potential that can simultaneously produce water and electricity through the reusage of the enthalpy during the condensation.A Go based solar absorber plays a vital role in the entire system due to it’s capability of generating high-temperature steam(100 ℃)with a short time(less than 1.5 minutes)under a concentrated solar illumination.Furthermore,a condensation chamber which based on a thermoelectric module also takes a key position in the system as it is responsible for the conversion of latent heat.A proof-of-concept device was built and a energy transfer efficiency of 72.2%with extra electricity power(with 1.23%efficiency)was obtained.With the optimization of thermal management,the steam temperature can be further enhanced to achieve a better performance of simultaneous generation of clean water and electricity.This approach with scalable materials and processes,high energy-transfer efficiency and integrated thermal storage ability may offer a potential way to produce electricity an clean water in an industrial manner,particularly desirable in various of off-grid areas.