S.S. Hussain, O. Omelianovych, L.L. Larina, E-H. Park, H-S. Choi
Chungnam National University, ., South Korea
Keywords: Solar-to-steam, black titania nanoparticles, high sun water desalination, glass fiber, acidic and alkaline water filtration
Interfacial solar-to-steam generation is one of the promising solutions in the field of water filtration, desalination, and solvent recovery. The development of highly durable, thermally stable, and inert light absorbers is needed for the industrial applications of the technology. This work addresses this issue by synthesizing black titania (B-TiO2) via vacuum annealing and depositing it on glass fiber (GF) via vacuum filtration with an ethyl cellulose binder. XPS, XRD, and TEM analyses reveal the change of color is due to the occurrence of oxygen vacancies in the surface layers of TiO2 nanoparticles during vacuum annealing. The deposition parameters were optimized for achieving a maximum solar-weighted light absorptance of 95.7%. The optimized B-TiO2 GF was applied for the steam generation experiments and achieved the evaporation rate of 1.53 kg-m-2.h-1 with solar-steam conversion efficiency 96.0 % under 1 sun illumination at 20 o C and relative humidity of 40%. Thanks to the high durability and chemical inertness of B-TiO2 GF it was applied for water filtration in extreme conditions of acidic/alkaline water and high-sun illumination (up to 35-suns). Worth noting that for high-sun experimentation there is a need to use a binder to improve particle attachment to the glass fibers.