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Rhus Chinensis ‐ Inspired Vertical Hierarchical Structure for Solar ‐ Driven All ‐ Weather Co ‐ Harvesting of Fresh Water, Clean Salts, and Authigenic Electricity
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Researchers developed a plant-inspired device that uses solar energy to simultaneously produce fresh water, recover clean salt, and generate electricity from seawater. The system includes a built-in pollutant capture trap that removes contaminants including microplastics and persistent organic pollutants from the recovered salt. This innovative approach to resource recovery from seawater could help address water scarcity while preventing microplastic contamination in salt products.
The escalating challenges in water, energy, and environmental sustainability necessitate the efficient utilization of diverse water sources, such as seawater and wastewater. Herein, a Rhus chinensis -inspired vertical hierarchical structure (RVHS) is developed to achieve all - weather extraction of fresh water, clean salt, and authigenic electricity. The RVHS achieves high water production rates of 5.07 kg m- 2 during the day and 2.04 kg m- 2 at night, approximately 1.2 times and 1.8 times those of conventional ones, respectively, by strategically manipulating phase change material (PCM) and heat storage. Simultaneously, it enables an enhanced salt recovery of 2.24 kg m- 2, yielding purified salt free from detectable contaminants (such as microplastics and persistent organic pollutants), facilitated by a pollutant capture trap integrated into the RVHS, a feature rarely explored in prior research. Furthermore, during salt recovery, the optimized salt concentration gradient can be further utilized for energy harvesting with high power output through thermodynamic optimization, which is approximately 60% greater than traditional devices. Further performance improvements can be realized by optimizing thermodynamic structures or integrating higher - performance materials. In conclusion, this work offers a universal routine for solar - driven resource recovery from seawater.
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