City Research Online

Abstract

Nanocarbon materials have great potential for sustainable energy harvest and energy utilizations, such as solar thermal stream generation and interfacial evaporation. However, the evaporation rate is far too low for practical application. The technologies are not ready yet for industries requiring rapid, energy efficient and low cost evaporation processes such as distillation and sterilization. In this paper, flexible ultrathin graphene-carbon cloth (CC) based carbon-carbon composites have been prepared by in-situ electrochemical reduction of graphene oxide (rGO). The carbon-carbon composite materials demonstrated high performance in photothermal evaporation, more importantly, the all carbon-based devices can also be operated as low voltage Joule heating elements in wide temperature range up to 389 °C. Even with a very low voltage 3 V applied, the graphene-CC heater can reach a very high with very high heating speed up to 112 °C/sec, and a steady-state temperature up to 292 °C within 10 seconds only. The low voltage heater promises as the most effective solution for high-speed interfacial evaporations, its evaporation rate can reach upto 45.87 kg m−2 h−1, enhanced by one order of magnitude compared to the best solar power photothermal seawater desalination devices ever reported.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Liu, F., Wang, L., Bradley, R., Zhao, B. and Wu, W. Graphene–Carbon Composites for Solar and Low‐Voltage Powered Efficient Interfacial Evaporation. Advanced Sustainable Systems, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1002/adsu.201900122. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions
Publisher Keywords:	in situ reduction, interfacial evaporation, Joule heat, low voltage, porous graphene–carbon composites
Subjects:	T Technology > TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General) T Technology > TK Electrical engineering. Electronics Nuclear engineering
Departments:	School of Science & Technology > Engineering
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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