Researchers report enhanced seawater evaporation using modified clay-hydrogel system

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Researchers from the University of South Australia, in collaboration with Chinese colleagues, have documented an 18.8% increase in seawater evaporation rates compared to pure water through the integration of mineral materials into photothermal hydrogel evaporators. The study, published in Advanced Materials, demonstrates a new approach to interfacial solar-powered desalination that addresses both surface salt accumulation and molecular binding constraints.

Interfacial solar evaporation-based seawater desalination is regarded as one of the most promising strategies to alleviate freshwater scarcity. However, the solar evaporation rate of real seawater is significantly constricted by the ubiquitous salts present in seawater. In addition to the common issue of salt accumulation on the evaporation surface during solar evaporation, strong hydration between salt ions and water molecules leads to a lower evaporation rate for real seawater compared to pure water. Here a facile and general strategy is developed to reverse this occurrence, that is, making real seawater evaporation faster than pure water. By simply introducing specific mineral materials into the floating photothermal evaporator, ion exchange at air–water interfaces directly results in a decrease in seawater evaporation enthalpy, and consequently achieves much higher seawater evaporation rates compared to pure water. This process is spontaneously realized during seawater solar evaporation. Considering the current enormous clean water production from evaporation-based desalination plants, such an evaporation performance improvement can remarkably increase annual clean water production, benefiting millions of people worldwide.

The research demonstrates a method for addressing two persistent challenges in seawater desalination: surface salt accumulation and reduced evaporation rates owing to salt-water molecular binding. Laboratory results show an 18.8% improvement in evaporation rates compared to pure water. The research contrasts with traditional approaches that typically showed 8% lower rates with seawater.