Porous Hydrogel Photothermal Conversion Membrane to Facilitate Water Purification

Hongping Zhang; Pengfei Tang; Youhong Tang; Chenghua Sun; Kun Yang; Wei Feng; Qingyuan Wang

doi:10.1021/acs.langmuir.3c00427

Porous Hydrogel Photothermal Conversion Membrane to Facilitate Water Purification

Langmuir. 2023 May 30;39(21):7345-7352. doi: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.3c00427. Epub 2023 May 19.

Authors

Hongping Zhang¹, Pengfei Tang², Youhong Tang³, Chenghua Sun⁴, Kun Yang¹, Wei Feng¹, Qingyuan Wang^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ School of Mechanical Engineering, Institute for Advanced Study, Chengdu University, Chengdu 610106, China.
² Failure Mechanics and Engineering Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, College of Architecture and Environment, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China.
³ Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology, College of Science and Engineering, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia 5042, Australia.
⁴ Department of Chemistry and Biotechnology, and Center for Translational Atomaterials, Faculty of Science Engineering & Technology, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, Victoria 3122 Australia.

PMID: 37203145
DOI: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.3c00427

Abstract

Solar water purification technology is one of the most potent methods to obtain freshwater due to its low cost and non-polluting characteristics. However, the purification efficiency is limited by the high ion concentration, organic pollution, and biological pollution during the actual water purification process. Here, we report a porous hydrogel membrane (Fe/TA-TPAM) for the purification of high ion concentration and contaminated water. The hydrogel membrane exhibits good light absorption and photothermal conversion ability, which shows high evaporation rates (1.4 kg m^-2 h^-1) and high solar efficiency for seawater. Furthermore, with the introduction of tannic acid (TA) and Ti₃C₂ MXenes, the Fe/TA-TPAM hydrogel membrane exhibits satisfied purification properties for organic-contaminated and biologically contaminated water. The excellent purification effect of Fe/TA-TPAM under light not only confirms the rationality of the hydrogel porous design and in situ generation of photosensitizer in improving the photothermal performance but also provides a novel strategy for designing advanced photothermal conversion membranes for water purification.