| Title: | Super Water-Extracting Gels for Solar-Powered Volatile Organic Compounds Management in the Hydrological Cycle |
| Author(s): | Zhang P; Zhao F; Shi W; Lu H; Zhou X; Guo Y; Yu G; |
| Address: | "Materials Science and Engineering Program and Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, 78712, USA" |
| ISSN/ISBN: | 1521-4095 (Electronic) 0935-9648 (Linking) |
| Abstract: | "Water-soluble volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are widely spread in the natural hydrological cycle, contaminating potential water sources, and leading to unexpected ecological hazards. However, water-purification technologies toward VOCs are energy-intensive and present unsatisfactory purity of the obtained water. The fundamental challenge is to differentiate the motion of water and VOC molecules by separators. Here, the concept of a super water-extracting gel (SWEG) for VOC-management and water purification via direct solar distillation is proposed. The strong hydrogen bonding effect in the hypercrosslinked hydrophilic polymeric networks enables the SWEG to extract water from VOC-containing water, which rejects the VOC solutes while allowing water through for interfacial evaporation. The obtained SWEG achieves a VOCs removal ratio up to 99.99% by solar distillation under 1 sun. A solar water-purification system is also demonstrated to produce clean water, which surpasses other competitive technologies based on electricity" |
| Keywords: | hydrogels hypercrosslinked polymers solar vapor generation volatile organic compound removal water purification; |
| Notes: | "PubMed-not-MEDLINEZhang, Panpan Zhao, Fei Shi, Wen Lu, Hengyi Zhou, Xingyi Guo, Youhong Yu, Guihua eng UT Energy Institute/ Camille-Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award/ Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation/ Germany 2022/01/17 Adv Mater. 2022 Mar; 34(12):e2110548. doi: 10.1002/adma.202110548. Epub 2022 Feb 10" |
