Research Seminar of Prof.Xu HaolanfromUniversity of South Australia

Lecture Time: 09:30 on 26th September, 2019

Lecture Room: C501 of Science and Innovation Building

Lecture Title:Highly efficient interfacial solar steam generation for seawater desalination

Xu Haolan

University of South Australia

Abstract

Access to clean drinking water is essential for human health. Each person requires about 2.5-7.0 L clean water per day to maintain the body functions. However, worldwide about 10% of world population routinely suffer from clean water shortage due to drought, water pollution and also simply due to lack of cost-effective water purification system. Recently developed interfacial solar-steam generation technology offers a sustainable and cost-effective strategy to produce clean water by using renewable solar energy. Solar energy is recognized as one of most reliable clean and sustainable energy sources. Sunlight can be directly converted into heat with a very high efficiency of >95%. Nano- and micro-scale photothermal materials are the platforms for light-to-heat conversion and applications such as seawater evaporation. The generated steam can be collected as clean water. This present will introduce the synthesis of low-cost photothermal materials and design of highly efficient solar-steam generation system to treat seawater on different scales.