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Solar steam generation by heat localization
Open accessAbstract
Currently, steam generation using solar energy is based on heating bulk liquid to high temperatures. This approach requires either costly high optical concentrations leading to heat loss by the hot bulk liquid and heated surfaces or vacuum. New solar receiver concepts such as porous volumetric receivers or nanofluids have been proposed to decrease these losses. Here we report development of an approach and corresponding material structure for solar steam generation while maintaining low optical concentration and keeping the bulk liquid at low temperature with no vacuum. We achieve solar thermal efficiency up to 85% at only 10 kW m(-2). This high performance results from four structure characteristics: absorbing in the solar spectrum, thermally insulating, hydrophilic and interconnected pores. The structure concentrates thermal energy and fluid flow where needed for phase change and minimizes dissipated energy. This new structure provides a novel approach to harvesting solar energy for a broad range of phase-change applications.
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“This enhanced transport performance is attributed to the reduced hydraulic resistance of the larger channels, which facilitates bulk water flow governed by Darcy's law rather than capillary-driven transport. 51”
From Gradient-structured directional porous floatable aerogels for effective solar-driven hydrogen production and steam generation (2025) · cites this paper as [51]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Ghasemi, H., Ni, G., Marconnet, A. M., Loomis, J., Yerci, S., Miljkovic, N., & Chen, G.
- Affiliations
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
- Purdue University West Lafayette (US)
- Corresponding author
- Chen, Gang
- Venue
- Nature Communications
- Published
- 2014-07-21
- Volume
- 5
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 4449-4449
- ISSN
- 2041-1723 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2084629494
- Semantic Scholar
- 63a8560dfd8adac86d0b3084d08b7c4eab9815d8
- Cited by
- 2,333
- References
- 28
- Citations by year
- 2026: 220 · 2025: 256 · 2024: 256 · 2023: 255 · 2022: 266 · 2021: 266 · 2020: 277 · 2019: 219 · 2018: 157 · 2017: 99 · 2016: 44 · 2015: 14 · 2014: 2
- FWCI
- 17.46
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Nature Communications (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- DSpace@MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion)
- OpenMETU (Middle East Technical University) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Funders
- U.S. Department of Energy (DE‐FG02‐, DESC0001299, #DE-FG02-09ER46577)
- Office of Science (DE-FG02-09ER46577, DESC0001299, DE-SC0001299/DE-FG02-09ER46577)
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
- Basic Energy Sciences (DE-SC0001299/DE-FG02-09ER46577, SC0001299/DE-FG02-09ER46577, DE‐SC0001299, DE-FG02, DE-FG02- 09ER46577)
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research (FA9550-, DE-SC0001299/DE-FG02-09ER46577, FA9550-11-1-0174, FA9550-11)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Energy › Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment › Solar-Powered Water Purification Methods
- Physical Sciences › Energy › Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment › Solar Thermal and Photovoltaic Systems
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Mechanical Engineering › Adsorption and Cooling Systems
- Keywords
- solar steam generation, heat localization, solar thermal energy, carbon materials, double-layer structure, porous media, phase transitions, solar receiver, solar thermal efficiency, hydrophilic surfaces, thermal insulation
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