Worldwide, governments have programs of renewable energy strategies to deal with the possible future exhaustion of fossil fuels. The ocean provides a vast source of clean and renewable energy resources, and contains sufficient amount of seawater for extracting freshwater to address the human demand. Solar-driven interfacial water evaporation has attracted increasing interests in pursuing highly efficient solar desalination. Here we present a new concept hybrid energy utilization technology, using solar energy for desalination and extracting electricity from the evaporation induced salinity gradient. By employing a hybrid system based on a piece of carbon nanotube modified cellulose paper and a commercial Nafion membrane, we achieved a maximum solar thermal efficiency up to 75% and derived extra electricity power of ~ 1 W m-2 under one sun illumination. In addition, a large-scaled hybrid prototype was built to demonstrate the practicability of this design under natural sunlight. The performance can be further promoted by improving the solar absorber, ion selective membrane and system structure. These results provide a novel avenue for blue energy utilization, demonstrating the potential for solar desalination and electricity generation under natural sunlight simultaneously.<br/> <br/> <br/>

Solar-driven simultaneous steam production and electricity generation from seawater

255th National Meeting (2018)

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