Scalable, Green, and Cost-Effective Carbonized Sand for Efficient Solar Desalination

Nowadays, sweet and drinkable water shortage is a globalissuewhich has attracted widespread attention. Desalination of seawateras the greatest source of water on our planet using solar energy asthe most abundant and green energy source for producing fresh watercan help us address this issue. Interfacial solar desalination isa state-of-the-art, sustainable, green, and energy-efficient methodthat has been studied lately. One of the key parameters for researchingthis method with reasonable efficiency is a photothermal material.Herein, carbon-coated sand was synthesized using abundant, green,and low-cost materials (sand and sugar), and its performance as aphotothermal material is investigated and reported. In this work,a three-dimensional (3D) system is introduced to develop the performanceand efficiency of the system under real sun irradiation and naturalcircumstances. The salt rejection ability of the system is anotherimportant thing we should notice due to the high salinity of seawaterthat we want to desalinate. The superhydrophilic carbonized sand demonstrateda good evaporation rate of 1.53 kg/m(2)h and 82% efficiencyunder 1 sun irradiation and upright salt rejection ability, whichexhibited its capability to be used in green solar-driven water vaporizationtechnology for sweet water production. The effects of important parameters,including light intensity, wind speed, and environment temperature,on the evaporation rate using carbonized sand as a solar collectorin a solar desalination system were studied in both laboratory andreal systems.