Delignified wood-based highly efficient solar steam generation device via promoting both water transportation and evaporation

Wood-based solar steam generation holds great promise in alleviating fresh water crises due to its advantages: light absorbability, thermal management, water transpiration, and water evaporation. Although tremendous efforts have been made to improve wood-based solar steam generation devices, they mainly have focused on the optimization of photothermal materials to optimize light absorbability and thermal management to enhance efficiency of steam generation. This research demonstrates that delignified wood (DL-wood) can further improve the efficiency of steam generation via increasing both the water transportation and water evaporation. The results show that after placing carbon nanotubes (CNTs) on DL-wood, the efficiency of steam production is higher than that of natural wood coated with CNTs by 20% under ambient sunlight conditions. DL-wood with CNTs has the following advantages: (1) it is stable, available, and easy to extend; (2) it does not pollute the environment and will not cause discoloration or dregs when used; and (3) it is a promising efficiency-enhancing solution for renewable and portable solar power generation.