Pathways and challenges for efficient solar-thermal desalination

Solar-thermal desalination (STD) is a potentially low-cost, sustainable approach for providing high-quality fresh water in the absence of water and energy infrastructures. Despite recent efforts to advance STD by improving heat-absorbing materials and system designs, the best strategies for maximizing STD performance remain uncertain. To address this problem, we identify three major steps in distillation-based STD: (i) light-to-heat energy conversion, (ii) thermal vapor generation, and (iii) conversion of vapor to water via condensation. Using specific water productivity as a quantitative metric for energy efficiency, we show that efficient recovery of the latent heat of condensation is critical for STD…

• NS
  National Science Foundation

  Awards: CBET 1705048, 1705048
• UD
  U.S. Department of Energy

  Award: DE-EE0008397
• DO
  Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems

  Awards: CBET 1705048, 1705048