Biomass-Derived Hydrogel-Based Sunlight-Driven Interfacial Evaporator for Seawater Desalination: State-Of-The-Art Technique for Water-Sunlight-Energy Nexus

Abstract

Sunlight-driven interfacial photothermal evaporation (SDIE) has been emerged as a promising strategy for addressing global water crisis. Sunlight-assisted desalination is implemented to overcome the consumption of high energy in the recent desalination techniques, since it uses sustainable and abundant sunlight as the only energy input. SDIE has attracted significant research interest due to its simple implementation, cost-effectiveness, and high energy conversion efficiency. Among the various photothermal materials for solar evaporators, carbon-based photothermal materials stand out because of its better solar absorption capacity, easy preparation method, low-cost, tunable structure, and high abundancy on earth.