High efficient solar evaporation by airing multifunctional textile.

By airing wick materials, i.e. airing evaporation setup (AES), the solar evaporation rate is much higher than that of the current nanofluidic evaporation setup (NES) and floating evaporation setup (FES). • A simple but efficient airing evaporation setup (AES) was proposed. • No insulation material is required in AES. • The total evaporation rate of AES is about 20% higher than floating evaporation setup. • AES is mechanical flexible, hence very suitable for portable systems. • AES inspires the design of multifunctional textile for solar energy harvesting. Solar evaporation is important for many applications such as desalination, power generation and industrial drying. Recently, some studies on evaporation reported obtaining high energy efficiency and evaporation rate, which are based on floating evaporation setup (FES) with nanomaterials. Here, a new cheap and simple setup is proposed, named as airing evaporation setup (AES). Compared to FES, there are four advantages of AES: a better thermal design, a higher energy efficiency, a higher material utilization ratio, and multi-function. It shows that the energy efficiency of AES reaches up to 87% under 1 kW/m2 of solar irradiation, which is 14% higher than that of FES. Meanwhile, the total evaporation rate of AES is about 20% higher than that of FES. The theoretical analysis reveals that the main reason for a better performance of AES is the increasing evaporation area. More interestingly, AES could be used for designing portable systems due to its simplicity and flexibility. Furthermore, it is shown that AES and the corresponding wick material can be used in solar desalination, textile quick-drying and warm-keeping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]