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Currently, interfacial solar steam generation (ISSG) in desalinating water has become very popular for obtaining purified water from polluted water. However, finding an efficient evaporator with low cost is a challenging task for researchers. In this work, we introduce natural bamboo wood (BW) that acts as an interfacial evaporator for obtaining purified water. Four different wood evaporators namely, flat wood (BW-FW), two-cut grooved wood (BW-2G), four-cut grooved wood (BW-4G), and four-cut grooved with Co3O4-coated wood (BW-4G/Co3O4) are used to study the mass loss (ML), evaporation rate (ER), and evaporation efficiency (EY). From the observations, BW-4G/Co3O4 gives an admirable ML, ER, and EY of 4.4 g, 3.366 kg m−2 h−1, and 91.34% under 1 sun illumination for 60 min. Also, the BW-4G/Co3O4 evaporator is kept under natural sun illumination. It achieves 17.8 g of ML, 1.92 kg m−2 h−1 of ER, and 76% of EY respectively under 604.762 W/m2 solar illumination for 8 h. The reasons for the observed results are as follows: (i) the presence of grooves increases the exposing area for solar illuminations, (ii) super hydrophilicity nature of wood gives continuous replenishment of water from the bottom to the evaporative surface, (iii) the excellent salt rejection property of wood aids in continuous water transportation without salt accumulations. As a result of the condensed seawater samples, the ion concentrations (zinc, magnesium, cadmium, lead, copper, and sodium) come under WHO standards. Consequently, it gives better dye water separation from polluted water. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses a sonication method to fabricate a light-harvesting structure on an anatase phase TiO2/1D g-C3N4 nanocomposite electron transport material. In addition, two different metal–organic framework (MOF)-derived porous CuO (CuO-I and CuO-II) are used to modify the carbon electrode. The open atmospheric fabricated TiO2/1D g-C3N4 layer exhibits a maximum power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 6.95% than anatase phase TiO2 (5.40%). Furthermore, the PCE of organometallic perovskite solar cells exhibits 10.03 and 8.43% for CuO-I and CuO-II-modified carbon electrodes. Results reveal that CuO/carbon composite exhibits superior characteristics to commercial carbon electrodes due to increased specific surface area, porosity, and device stability. This dual modification device shows excellent device stability under ambient, thermal, and photostability analysis under AM 1.5 solar irradiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current research on boiling in heat transfer applications has been increased due to the effective heat dissipation rate in solar applications, cooling of new generation electronic chips with the goal of improving performance by controlling physical factors. Thermosyphons are one among the phase change medium which has the higher critical heat flux to accelerate the heat transfer. Current work in Thermosyphon focuses on the design, fabrication, and performance analysis of dimpled thermosyphon with certain variables like surface area of heat exchange, composition of working fluid and setup angle. Due to the impact of nanotechnology, the investigation is carried out by using Al2O3 nanofluid as working fluid. The experiments are conducted initially with plain thermosyphons, later with surface modifications (dimple) by changing the orientation of the thermosyphons. The performance results of the plain thermosyphon filled with water, plain thermosyphon filled with nanofluid is compared with dimpled thermosyphon with nanofluid at different angles such as 0°, 45°, and 90°. Evaporator side dimple and condenser side dimple also designed and investigated. It is observed that thermal resistance for dimple thermosyphon-nanofluid is very low in the range of 0.06-0.20 °C/W when compared with plain thermosyphon-water varies from 0.1-0.45 °C/W, for plain thermosyphon-nanofluid is 0.1-0.31 °C/W. It is also observed that the efficiency of dimpled tube Thermosyphon with Nanofluid is estimated as 50.66%, 69.7%, and 74.23% at 0°, 45°, and 90°, respectively, which is the maximum value when compared with plain thermosyphon with water and nanofluid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nucleate pool boiling of hydrazine-reduced graphene oxide (H-rGO) with rough surface is experimentally investigated. Using the created nucleate boiling setup, heat transfer coefficient (HTC) of nanofluids is investigated with rough surface. As compared with base fluid, HTC of nanofluids increases with concentrations. At maximum heat flux, HTC of higher concentration with rough surface is found as ~29.44 kW/m2 K. A detailed study on surface roughness, contact angle, and microscopic image of boiled surface is conducted. Surface roughness of nanofluid boiled heat surface decreases with increasing concentrations. Contact angle on boiled surfaces exhibits hydrophobic nature and increases with concentrations. Hence, it is difficult to interpret the HTC of nanofluids with a single parameter. It is suggested that HTC of nanofluids depends on modification of heating surface due to nanodeposits (formation of pores), which aid for the enhancement. In addition, a semi-analytical model is employed to determine the nucleation sites on the surface and it matches well with experimental results of HTC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Carbon‐based perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have exhibited unprecedented progress in the past decades, however, the deficit of open‐circuit voltage and non‐radiative recombination losses are the dominating limiting factors in scaling up the devices in view of commercialization. The researchers and scientists recognize the dominating factors and propose different themes to overcome the limiting factors. Among the different solutions, interfacial engineering of PSCs between the interfaces of transporting layer (electron or hole) and perovskite influences the reduction of non‐radiative recombination losses with improvement in device efficiency. In this work, one‐dimensional (1D) graphitic carbon nitride (g‐C3N4) is synthesized through simple pyrolysis using two different mediums (ethanol and ethylene glycol). 1D g‐C3N4 is interfaced between electron transport layer and perovskite absorber influences effectively in fine‐tuning the work function by aligning the energy level of the fabricated mixed halide PSCs. Nanoscale engineered 1D g‐C3N4 interfacial layer supports boosting the power conversion efficiency of the PSCs to 5.20% and 7.14% for tube and layered tube structures at ambient conditions. Further, the interfacial layer aids in improving thermal (tube: ~59.80%; layered tube: ~74.50%) and photostability (tube: ~78.65%; layered tube: ~87.25%) characteristics of the fabricated devices for 100 h duration at ambient conditions. Highlights: One‐dimensional tubular and layered nanotubes shaped graphitic carbon nitride (1D g‐C3N4) were successfully synthesized.The synthesized 1D g‐C3N4 has been efficiently used as an interfacial layer for the first time.The 1D growth of the tube and layer nanostructured interface modified PSC devices were found to be of excellent charge transfer and charge injection at the (c‐TiO2/perovskite) interface.A maximum PCE of ~7.14% (VOC = 0.532 V, Jsc = 18.23 mA/cm2, and FF = 0.736) was achieved by the introduced 1D g‐C3N4 interlayer resulting in the reduced surface traps on the perovskite layer.A drop in the PCE of just ~20% decrease in its initial PCE value when measured after the period of 100 hours evidencing the thermal stability of the interface modified PSC device compared to that of the bare device. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]