Highly Efficient Solar Steam Generation Using Carbon Based Absorber

With the growing population and consequently increasing water pollution, the lack of clean water has become one of the main problems facing human society# reusing polluted water through various decontamination techniques has attended as one of the significant practical approaches to address the global shortage of clean water# the importance of the utilized technique increases considerably when the source of energy is renewable# solar steam generation by heat localization is a promising water treatment technique which efficiently harvests solar energy for water purification# in this work, a composite photoreceiver comprising natural coal as light absorber and polyurethane foam as matrix is used to generate steam by solar energy# actually, the rate of water rising through the system is controlled by natural coal as it is hydrophilic# remarkably, the system generates steam with a rate of 4#8 kg#m-2#h-1 that corresponds to 46% enhancement compared to the surface evaporation of water without any absorber system#