Evaporation Performance of Wood-Based Evaporator for Solar Interfacial Vapor Generation

Inspired by the natural transpiration of plants, an interfacial evaporator based on natural wood and a carbon black cellulose film (CB film) is designed. The existence of the CB film significantly improves the light absorptance of the woodblock from 21% to 96%. After the woodblock is modified with ammonia, the evaporation efficiency increases by 15%. The evaporation efficiency of the woodblock coated with a CB film is 30% higher than that without a CB film. The influence of evaporator size on evaporation performance is analyzed. As the woodblock has low thermal conductivity, the heat transfer to bulk water is inhibited as the thickness of the woodblock increases. In contrast, the increase of woodblock thickness is not conducive to the transport of water to the evaporator surface. Therefore, with the increase of woodblock thickness, the evaporation rate increases first and then decreases. For the evaporator with a diameter of 2 cm and a thickness of 2 cm, the evaporation rate under the illumination of 3.5 sun reaches 4.6727 kg m(-)(2) h(-1) and the evaporation efficiency is 93.35%. Considering its simplicity, low cost and high efficiency, the wood-based evaporator prepared in this article provides the possibility for the popularization and application of solar interfacial evaporation.