A New Era of Passive Continuous Freshwater Production: When Interfacial Solar Evaporation Marries Moisture Harvest

Interfacial solar evaporation (ISE)-based seawater desalination has emerged as a promising approach to address the growing issue of freshwater scarcity. However, achieving passive and continuous seawater desalination remains challenging due to the persistent issues of salt- and biofouling. Sorption-based atmospheric water harvesting (SAWH) combined with ISE offers a potential solution to completely solve these challenges. By rapidly absorbing moisture from the seawater surfaces, a constant and sufficient vapor supply could be ensured for SAWH processes, which subsequently allows the sorbent to continuously release vapor through ISE under sunlight irradiation. This combined SAWH-ISE system is expected to be able to operate without direct contact with seawater, eliminating issues related to salt scaling, biofouling, and corrosions. This review introduces the knowledge of ISE and SAWH, and the emerging concept of integrated SAWH-ISE systems and their potential applications in contactless seawater desalination, presenting a new viable strategy for sustainable freshwater production.