TY - JOUR
T1 - Plasmonic Titanium Nitride Nano-enabled Membranes with High Structural Stability for Efficient Photothermal Desalination
AU - Farid, Muhammad Usman
AU - Kharraz, Jehad A.
AU - An, Alicia Kyoungjin
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by grants from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (project nos. 11207717, 11213819, and T21-604/19-R).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 American Chemical Society. All rights reserved.
PY - 2021/1/27
Y1 - 2021/1/27
N2 - Herein, we demonstrate the desalination performance of a solar-driven membrane distillation (MD) process, where upon light illumination, a highly localized heating of plasmonic titanium nitride nanoparticles (TiN NPs) immobilized on a hydrophobic membrane provides the thermal driving force for the MD operation. The engineered TiN photothermal membrane induces vapor generation directly at the feed-membrane interface upon solar irradiation, thereby eliminating the need to heat the entire bulk feed water. The results indicate that the average vapor flux through the TiN photothermal membrane without any auxiliary feed heating was recorded as 1.01 L m-2 h-1, which corresponds to the solar-thermal efficiency of 66.7% under 1 sun solar irradiance. The superior performance of the photothermal MD process is attributed to the broadband optical absorption and excellent light-to-heat conversion properties of the plasmonic TiN NP layer, which enabled efficient interfacial water heating at the membrane surface and increased the net driving force for vapor transport. Results also reveal the high mechanical stability of the TiN photothermal coating layer during long-term photothermal MD operations. We believe that the TiN photothermal membranes fabricated using a relatively inexpensive and nontoxic material via the simple technique with high stability and photothermal conversion efficiency will provide a path forward for developing the solar-driven MD applications.
AB - Herein, we demonstrate the desalination performance of a solar-driven membrane distillation (MD) process, where upon light illumination, a highly localized heating of plasmonic titanium nitride nanoparticles (TiN NPs) immobilized on a hydrophobic membrane provides the thermal driving force for the MD operation. The engineered TiN photothermal membrane induces vapor generation directly at the feed-membrane interface upon solar irradiation, thereby eliminating the need to heat the entire bulk feed water. The results indicate that the average vapor flux through the TiN photothermal membrane without any auxiliary feed heating was recorded as 1.01 L m-2 h-1, which corresponds to the solar-thermal efficiency of 66.7% under 1 sun solar irradiance. The superior performance of the photothermal MD process is attributed to the broadband optical absorption and excellent light-to-heat conversion properties of the plasmonic TiN NP layer, which enabled efficient interfacial water heating at the membrane surface and increased the net driving force for vapor transport. Results also reveal the high mechanical stability of the TiN photothermal coating layer during long-term photothermal MD operations. We believe that the TiN photothermal membranes fabricated using a relatively inexpensive and nontoxic material via the simple technique with high stability and photothermal conversion efficiency will provide a path forward for developing the solar-driven MD applications.
KW - desalination
KW - localized heating
KW - membrane distillation
KW - photothermal membranes
KW - titanium nitride nanoparticles
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85099920122&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1021/acsami.0c17154
DO - 10.1021/acsami.0c17154
M3 - Article
C2 - 33444505
AN - SCOPUS:85099920122
SN - 1944-8244
VL - 13
SP - 3805
EP - 3815
JO - ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces
JF - ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces
IS - 3
ER -