A novel carbon soot derived from camphor pollutant waste utilised for interfacial solar vapour generation
摘要
Camphor soot nanoparticles (CSNP), a fine black carbonaceous powder, are produced by the incomplete combustion of camphor via a single-step flame process. They are a low-cost, pollutant-derived material with high carbon content, making them a promising material for heat absorption and well suited for photothermal applications. In the present work, indirect-contact floating evaporators were fabricated using camphor soot nanoparticles and cellulose foam (CF) via a facile dip-coating method. The objective of this work is to investigate the evaporation rate and conversion efficiency for interfacial solar vapour generation using CF coated with CSNP. The parameters studied include interfacial surface temperature, reduction in water mass, evaporation rate, and conversion efficiency. Initially, characterisation studies were performed on CSNP, uncoated CF (U-CF), and coated CF (CSNP-CF) interfacial evaporators to confirm the materials’ structures and absorptivity. Then, indoor experimental studies were conducted under varying illumination conditions (0.5 sun, 0.75 sun, and 1 sun) to evaluate performance. Further, the CSNP-CF interfacial evaporator outperformed both the bulk water heating (BW) and the U-CF interfacial evaporator under all illumination conditions. Specifically, under 1 sun illumination, the 3-cm-thick CSNP-CF evaporator exhibited an evaporation rate of 1.31 kg m−2 h−1, which was 1.27 times that of U-CF and 1.52 times that of BW. Similarly, under 1 sun illumination, the conversion efficiency of the 3-cm-thick CSNP-CF evaporator was 90.02%, while those of U-CF and BW were 70.37% and 58.16%, respectively.