Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
Solar desalination is expected to solve the problem of global water shortage. Yet its stability is plagued by salt accumulation. Here, a paper-based thermal radiation-enabled evaporation system (TREES) is demonstrated to achieve sustainable and highly efficient salt-collecting desalination, featuring a dynamic evaporation front based on the accumulated salt layer where water serves as its own absorber via energy down-conversion. When processing 7 wt % brine, it continuously evaporates water at a high rate─2.25 L m-2 h-1 under 1 sun illumination─which is well beyond the input solar energy limit for over 366 h. It is revealed that such enhanced evaporation arises from the unique vertical evaporation wall of the paper-TREES, which captures the thermal energy from the heated bottom efficiently and gains extra energy from the warmer environment. These findings provide novel insights into the design of next-generation salt-harvesting solar evaporators and take a step further to advance their applications in green desalination.
Bian et al. (Wed,) studied this question.