Plant transpiration inspired biomass-derived solar evaporator for highly efficient solar vapor generation

The interface solar evaporation is an energy-saving and environmentally friendly method for seawater desalination and sewage purification. In this work, a biomimetic solar evaporator (ppy@AZL) inspired by plant transpiration was designed to achieve high efficient vapor generation. The ppy@AZL evaporator was made of zizania latifolia as raw material, has a cellulose skeleton with high water transport after alkalization and was decorated with photothermal polypyrrole to form bionic branches and leaves, and has excellent photothermal conversion performance. The evaporation performance and potential application of ppy@AZL evaporator in seawater desalination and sewage treatment were studied. The results indicated that the average evaporation rate of the ppy@AZL in simulated seawater (3.5 wt%) under the irradiation of one sun (1 kW m- 2 ) was 2.239 kg m- 2 h- 1 , and the photothermal conversion efficiency was 93.4 % in this work. In addition, the ppy@AZL evaporator has excellent evaporation rate of 2.668 kg m- 2 h- 1 in 9 h outdoor continuous evaporation experiment of simulated seawater (3.5 wt%), and can continuously and stably generate vapor. Therefore, this study provided a new solar evaporator with low-cost, simple preparation, better salt resistance, and high evaporation performance for seawater desalination and sewage treatment.