Water desalination using solar steam generation systems based on graphite photothermal material

Maleki, Mahmoud; Arabpour Roghabadi, Farzaneh; Sadrameli, Seyed Mojtaba

Water desalination using solar steam generation systems based on graphite photothermal material

Document Type : Original Research

Authors

M. maleki ¹

F. Arabpour Roghabadi ²

S. M. Sadrameli ¹

¹ Process Engineering Department, Faculty of Chemical Engineering, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran

² 1-Process Engineering Department, Faculty of Chemical Engineering, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran2- Optoelectronics and Nanophotonics Research Group, Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Research subject: Solar energy is a renewable resource that is abundant and can solve many problems of energy shortage. In order to use solar energy to desalinate water and produce high quality steam, one of the cheap and commercially proposed structures is floating solar steam generation system. In this system, water is transferred to the surface of the system in a controlled manner and is converted to steam using the heat generated in the photothermal layer. There are generally four main challenges in solar steam generation systems. These challenges include managing and preventing heat loss, structural strength, managing and transferring water within the structure, absorbing light and converting light into heat.

Research approach: In this paper, floating multilayer solar steam generation systems were fabricated in which porous polyurethane foam was used as the substrate and thermal insulation layer. Moreover, felt was used as the water-transfer layer. Photothermal materials including graphite, gold, and mixtures of graphite and gold were used as the light-absorbing layers to produce high-quality steam. Also, in order to determine the water evaporation rate and the efficiency of the systems, the amount of changes in water mass and system temperature has been measured.

Main results: Among the different solar steam generation systems studied, the system made of graphite-gold mixture absorber is able to produce steam at a rate of 1.257 kg.m^-2.h^-1. This rate is equivalent to an efficiency of about 82%. To evaluate the performance of the systems in more real situation, they were tested using seawater. As resulted, the rate of evaporation of seawater by the graphite-gold mixture system is 1.201 Kg.m^-2.h^-1 and its efficiency is 78.4%.

Keywords

Solar Steam Generation

Thermal Water Desalination

Interfacial Solar Evaporation

Gold Absorber

Photothermal Materials

Subjects

Energy Storage

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