High-Efficiency Superheated Steam Generation for Portable Sterilization under Ambient Pressure and Low Solar Flux

Superheated solar steam generation above 100 °C is critical for many important applications such as sterilization but is challenging to achieve under natural fluctuating low-flux solar illumination and often requires pressurization and the usage of expensive optical concentrators. Herein, we demonstrate generation of superheated steam under ambient pressure and low-flux solar illumination by integrating a recently emerged interfacial evaporation design into a solar vacuum tube. Within the tube, the water vapor, which is generated by a high-efficiency localized heating-based evaporator, is further heated by a heat exchanger into superheated steam without pressurization. The steam generator has shown tunable steam temperature from 102 to 165 °C and solar-to-steam conversion efficiency from 26 to 49% under 1 sun illumination. Owing to the minimized heat loss from the solar vacuum tube and the interfacial evaporation design, it enables stable generation of steam above 121 °C under ambient fluctuating solar illumination with an averaged solar flux of ∼600 W/m2. Effective sterilization is verified using both the Geobacillus stearothermophilus biological indicator and Escherichia coli bacteria, making portable solar steam sterilization and other steam-related applications feasible under ambient solar illumination.