3D Electric Field Coupling with Cu Foam Hydrogel: Achieving Efficient and High-Speed Solar Interfacial Evaporation

Solar interfacial evaporation is a clean and sustainable steam production method. Existing studies coupled electric field with 2D evaporator have acquired significant enhancement but the evaporation rate is relatively low. To obtain higher evaporation rates, this work has designed a novel Cu foam hydrogel interface evaporator, which could construct 3D electric field to improve the performance of 3D evaporator. The effects of electric field conditions and evaporator structure types on evaporation have been studied experimentally. Results reveal that the 3D electric field with low energy consumption has obvious improvement effect on the evaporation performance of the 3D evaporator and could reduce its surface temperature. Under electric field, the Cu foam hydrogel evaporator has achieved 159 % enhancement of evaporation performance and higher evaporation rate up to 3.053 kg·m−2·h−1 at the solar radiation intensity of only 1 sun. The enhancement mechanism is that the electric field can enhance the transport and evaporation of water in hydrogel. Besides, the evaporation of Cu foam hydrogel evaporators involves a larger surface area. Meanwhile, the 3D electric field has a stronger influence on the evaporator surface, and the above factors work together to improve the evaporator performance.