A salt-rejecting floating solar still for low-cost desalination
Name
EES2018_FloatingStill.pdf
Description
Accepted version
Size
1.38 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
e6cf68cd45a6a57cf48327b2fc1d6f74
Author(s)
Ni, George Wei
Zandavi, Seyed Hadi
Javid, Seyyed Morteza
Boriskina, Svetlana V
Cooper, Thomas A
Chen, Gang
Date Issued
January 2018
Journal
Energy & Environmental Science
Publisher
Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)
Citation
Ni, George, et al. "A salt-rejecting floating solar still for low-cost desalination." Energy & Environmental Science, 11 (2018): 1510-1519.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Although desalination technologies have been widely adopted as a means to produce freshwater, many of them require large installations and access to advanced infrastructure. Recently, floating structures for solar evaporation have been proposed, employing the concept of interfacial solar heat localization as a high-efficiency approach to desalination. However, the challenge remains to prevent salt accumulation while simultaneously maintaining heat localization. This paper presents an experimental demonstration of a salt-rejecting evaporation structure that can operate continuously under sunlight to generate clean vapor while floating in a saline body of water such as an ocean. The evaporation structure is coupled with a low-cost polymer film condensation cover to produce freshwater at a rate of 2.5 L m[superscript -2] day[superscript -1], enough to satisfy individual drinking needs. The entire system's material cost is $3 m[superscript -2] -over an order of magnitude lower than conventional solar stills, does not require energy infrastructure, and can provide cheap drinking water to water-stressed and disaster-stricken communities.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1039/c8ee00220g
