All-Weather Freshwater and Electricity Simultaneous Generation by Coupled Solar Energy and Convection

Integrating solar evaporation-driven desalination and electricity production has emerged as a promising approach to alleviate energy crisis and freshwater scarcity. However, there remain huge challenges to achieve high water productivity and steady power generation efficiency. Herein, a compact evaporation-induced water–electricity co-generation device was proposed using a bio-waste squid ink sphere-based cellulose fabric as an evaporator and a silicon nanowires array-based evaporation-driven moist-electric generator. The efficient localized solar thermal heating of the photothermal component leads to significant enhancement in freshwater yield, and the latent heat of vapor condensation is recycled to promote the electricity generation. More notably, the device is capable of harvesting wind energy toward all-weather water and power generation. The fabricated device demonstrated a high evaporation rate of 2.17 kg m–2 h–1 with a collection rate of 66.7% and a maximum output voltage of 1.48 V under one sun illumination with a wind speed of 4 m s–1. The outdoor experiments display a maximum water evaporation rate of 1.84 kg m–2 h–1 with a maximum output voltage of 1.35 V even on cloudy days. Such superior performance of a comprehensive device has great potential for sustainable and practical application in freshwater and electricity generation.