Abstract Solar steam generation has been regarded as an environment-friendly strategy to mitigate the worldwide freshwater shortage. Challenges remain in terms of high-cost of raw materials, complicated fabrications and inability to scale up. Here, an all biomass loofah-derived evaporator composed of a porous supporter (alkalized loofah sponge) and light absorber (carbonized loofah sponge) for highly efficient solar steam generation is proposed, which employs synergistic concepts of solar evaporation and surface biosorption for simultaneous generating freshwater and recycling heavy-metal ions. This multifunctional photothermal evaporator shows an excellent evaporation rate of 1.36 kg m−2 h−1 and corresponding light-to-vapor energy conversion efficiency of 83.7% under 1.0 Sun, and simultaneously delivers excellent self-desalting performance. The developed photothermal evaporator derived from biomass loofah is promising for low-cost and large-scale freshwater production for the water-stressed regions.

中文翻译：

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生物质衍生的 janus 太阳能蒸发器，用于协同水蒸发和净化

摘要 太阳能蒸汽发电被认为是缓解全球淡水短缺的一种环境友好型战略。挑战仍然存在于原材料成本高、制造复杂和无法扩大规模方面。在这里，提出了一种由多孔载体（碱化丝瓜络海绵）和吸光剂（碳化丝瓜络海绵）组成的全生物质丝瓜衍生蒸发器，用于高效太阳能蒸汽产生，利用太阳能蒸发和表面生物吸附的协同概念同时产生淡水和回收重金属离子。这种多功能光热蒸发器在 1.0 太阳光下具有 1.36 kg m-2 h-1 的优异蒸发率和 83.7% 的相应光气能量转换效率，同时具有出色的自脱盐性能。