Tailorable Lignocellulose-Based Aerogel to Achieve the Balance between Evaporation Enthalpy and Water Transport Rate for Efficient Solar Evaporation

Solar-driven interfacial evaporation technology has become an effective approach to alleviate freshwater shortage. To improve its evaporation efficiency, the pore-size dependence of the water transport rate and evaporation enthalpy in the evaporator should be further investigated. Based on the transportation of water and nutrients in natural wood, we facilely designed a lignocellulose aerogel-based evaporator using carboxymethyl nanocellulose (CMNC) cross-linking, bidirectional freezing, acetylation, and MXene-coating. The pore size of the aerogel was adjusted by controlling its CMNC content. When the channel diameter of the aerogel-based evaporator increased from 21.6 to 91.9 mu m, the water transport rate of the proposed evaporator increased from 31.94 to 75.84 g min-1, while its enthalpy increased from 1146.53 to 1791.60 kJ kg-1. At a pore size of 73.4 mu m, the evaporation enthalpy and water transport rate of the aerogel-based evaporator achieved a balance, leading to the best solar evaporation rate (2.86 kg m-2 h-1). The evaporator exhibited excellent photothermal conversion efficiency (93.36%) and salt resistance (no salt deposition after three cycles of 8 h). This study could guide the development of efficient solar-driven evaporators for seawater desalination.

Automated summary

By investigating the pore-size dependence of water transport rate and evaporation enthalpy, we designed a lignocellulose aerogel-based evaporator with improved evaporation efficiency. The evaporator achieved the best solar evaporation rate by achieving a balance between water transport rate and enthalpy. This study is significant for developing efficient solar-driven evaporators for alleviating freshwater shortage.