3D‐Printed, All‐in‐One Evaporator for High‐Efficiency Solar Steam Generation under 1 Sun Illumination

TLDR

Solar steam generation offers a clean water‑supply solution, but scalable, high‑efficiency devices that work at 1‑sun illumination remain difficult to produce. The study introduces a 3D‑printed, concave, all‑in‑one evaporator designed to achieve high‑efficiency solar steam generation at 1‑sun illumination. The evaporator is fabricated by 3D printing a concave, highly porous structure with low thermal conductivity, localizing heat and reducing dissipation to the bulk water. The device achieves 97.3 % porosity, >97 % broadband absorption, and an 85.6 % solar‑steam efficiency under 1‑sun illumination, ranking among the best reported evaporators.

Abstract

Using solar energy to generate steam is a clean and sustainable approach to addressing the issue of water shortage. The current challenge for solar steam generation is to develop easy‐to‐manufacture and scalable methods which can convert solar irradiation into exploitable thermal energy with high efficiency. Although various material and structure designs have been reported, high efficiency in solar steam generation usually can be achieved only at concentrated solar illumination. For the first time, 3D printing to construct an all‐in‐one evaporator with a concave structure for high‐efficiency solar steam generation under 1 sun illumination is used. The solar‐steam‐generation device has a high porosity (97.3%) and efficient broadband solar absorption (>97%). The 3D‐printed porous evaporator with intrinsic low thermal conductivity enables heat localization and effectively alleviates thermal dissipation to the bulk water. As a result, the 3D‐printed evaporator has a high solar steam efficiency of 85.6% under 1 sun illumination (1 kW m −2 ), which is among the best compared with other reported evaporators. The all‐in‐one structure design using the advanced 3D printing fabrication technique offers a new approach to solar energy harvesting for high‐efficiency steam generation.