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Coupling of Hierarchical Al2O3/TiO2 Nanofibers into 3D Photothermal Aerogels Toward Simultaneous Water Evaporation and Purification

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Abstract

Serious freshwater shortage and environmental pollution boost the rapid development of solar-driven water production. Although improved evaporation rate has achieved in recent years, undesirable impurity (e.g., pollutant components) can also be inevitably evaporated and collected as impurity in produced freshwater. This work reports new ultra-light three-dimensional (3D) aerogels assembled by hierarchical Al2O3/TiO2 nanofibers and reduced graphene oxide (RGO) for exciting synchronized solar-driven evaporation and water purification. Hydrophilic Al2O3/TiO2 fibrous channels linked up the graphene hot-spots and water body for sufficient water supply and bulk water insulation. Meanwhile, featured with thermal insulation effect, the Al2O3/TiO2 nanofibers effectively locked the converted heat with less energy loss from sunlight. The introducing of Al2O3/TiO2 nanofibers into RGO aerogel led to the effective interfacial evaporation for a more rapid water evaporation rate (2.19 kg · m−2 · h−1, normalized to evaporation area including both top and side surface), which was 36% higher than that of pristine RGO aerogel. Moreover, simultaneous with the strong steam generation, Al2O3/TiO2 nanofibers in situ removed the pollutants within steam by photodegradation, achieving polluted wastewater purification with high contaminant removal ratio of 91.3%. Our work on coupling Al2O3/TiO2 nanofibers into photothermal aerogel provides attractive solutions for the challenges of clean water scarcity and serious environmental pollution.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21975042), Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20171153), the Project of Six Talents Climax Foundation of Jiangsu (XCL-082), the Equipment Pre-research Fund of National Defence Science and Technology Key Laboratory (614220504030817), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, and the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, 211189, People’s Republic of China

    Xiangyu Meng, Wanlin Xu, Zhihui Li, Jianhui Yang, Jingwu Zhao, Xixi Zou, Yueming Sun & Yunqian Dai

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  1. Xiangyu Meng
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  2. Wanlin Xu
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  3. Zhihui Li
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Correspondence to Yunqian Dai.

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Meng, X., Xu, W., Li, Z. et al. Coupling of Hierarchical Al2O3/TiO2 Nanofibers into 3D Photothermal Aerogels Toward Simultaneous Water Evaporation and Purification. Adv. Fiber Mater. 2, 93–104 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42765-020-00029-9

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