Solar Desalination System With 80% Efficiency Achieved?

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Solar Desalination System With 80% Efficiency Achieved?

Nanjing University, in the capital of China’s eastern Jiangsu province, has reported a solar desalination device that has an efficiency of 80%. This new process is supposedly made possible by a confined, two-dimensional water path.​

The last major milestone was made by Australia’s solar researchers who converted over 40% of the sunlight hitting a solar system into electricity, that was the highest efficiency ever reported. This came from the institution where Martin Green, dubbed ‘the father of Photovoltaics’ resides as Scientia Professor.

This new process is supposedly made possible by a confined, two-dimensional water path. Also, due to minimised heat loss, the high efficiency of solar desalination is independent of the water quantity and can be maintained without thermal insulation of the container.

A foldable graphene oxide film, fabricated by a scalable process, serves as efficient solar absorber, vapour channel and thermal insulator.

The graphene oxide film is not in direct contact with bulk water, but is physically separated by a thermal insulator (polystyrene foam) to suppress parasitic heat loss. A 2-D water path is enabled by a thin layer of cellulose wrapped over the surface of the thermal insulator.

Graphene Oxide Film

The entire structure can float on the water surface, with only the bottom side of the cellulose in direct contact with bulk water, so an efficient water supply to the absorber on the top surface is enabled by a 2-D surface water path within the cellulose pumped by capillary force.

Whilst the report sounds impressive, are the claims scientifically valid given the energetics of solar? Please comment with your thoughts!

Source: Future Desalination

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