Abstract In recent times, solar steam generation has proven to be an efficient method for seawater desalination. Herein, we report a novel solar evaporator designed with plant-derived carbon nanospheres obtained from Cinnamomum camphora incorporated in a polyvinyl alcohol sponge (C@CPVA). The fabricated evaporation device produced steam at a rate of 1.53 kg m−2 h−1 under 1 sun illumination which was 3.25 times the bare water system. The device further exhibited an outstanding photothermal efficiency of 92.38%, owing to its indirect capillary water pathway design. Furthermore, the C@CPVA array, when integrated in a facile laboratory solar still, generated clean water with an excellent salt removal efficiency of 99.99%. The C@CPVA solar still had exceptional performance even at low, non-concentrated solar intensities, thus enabling its application in practical solar desalination. Finally, the distinct merits of C@CPVA solar still such as excellent low solar intensity performance, facile fabrication and low cost advocate its rapid scaling up to large scale desalination systems. This work should inspire further development of photothermal membrane-incorporated solar stills for non-concentrated, low-intensity solar desalination.

中文翻译：

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植物来源的碳纳米球用于高效太阳能驱动蒸汽产生和低太阳强度下的海水淡化

摘要 近年来，太阳能蒸汽发电已被证明是一种有效的海水淡化方法。在此，我们报告了一种新型太阳能蒸发器，其设计有从樟脑获得的植物衍生碳纳米球，并结合在聚乙烯醇海绵 (C@CPVA) 中。制造的蒸发装置在 1 次阳光照射下以 1.53 kg m-2 h-1 的速率产生蒸汽，是裸水系统的 3.25 倍。由于其间接毛细管水通道设计，该装置进一步表现出 92.38% 的出色光热效率。此外，将 C@CPVA 阵列集成到简便的实验室太阳能蒸馏器中时，可产生具有 99.99% 优异除盐效率的清洁水。即使在低、非集中的太阳能强度下，C@CPVA 太阳能仍然具有卓越的性能，从而使其能够应用于实际的太阳能海水淡化。最后，C@CPVA 太阳能蒸馏器的独特优点，如优异的低太阳能强度性能、易于制造和低成本，支持其快速扩展到大规模海水淡化系统。这项工作应该会激发光热膜结合太阳能蒸馏器的进一步发展，用于非浓缩、低强度的太阳能海水淡化。