Во время a new coronavirus pandemic, people in развитые страны иметь доступ к an ample supply of clean water and wash their hands as often as need to protect себя from disease.
Однако, nearly a third of the world's population is not even guaranteed clean drinking water.
Researchers at the University of Rochester have found a way to solve this problem by using sunlight, which is available to everyone, to evaporate and purify contaminated water with more than 100 percent efficiency.
In a paper published in the journal Nature Sustainability, researchers in the lab of Chunlei Guo, professor of optics, demonstrated how a beam of femtosecond laser pulses etched the surface of a plain aluminium plate into a material with super-absorbent and super-energy-absorbent properties.
Experiments in the lab showed that the method reduction the presence of all common contaminants such as detergents, dyes, urine, heavy metals and glycerin to safe levels for drinking.
Это технология может также будет используется в развитых странах к смягчить вода дефицит в засушливые регионы и для опреснение проекты.
В дополнение, хотя кипячение has long been recognized as a method of eliminating микробный патогены и снижение смертность от диарея инфекции. Но кипячение вода делает не элиминировать тяжелый металлы и другие загрязняющие вещества.
Solar-based water purification, however, can greatly reduce these contaminants because when evaporated water becomes gaseous and then condenses and collects, nearly all impurities remain.
The most common method of solar-based вода испарение is объемный нагрев, in which a large количество of вода is heated, но только the top layer can evaporate.
Это есть ясно неэффективно, Guo говорит, потому что только a small fraction of the heating energy is used.
The solar panels develop in Guo's lab avoid the ineffities of traditional solar methods of evaporating water by drawing a thin layer of water from a reservoir and placing it direct onto the surface of a solar absorber for heating and evaporation.
"In addition, because we use a slotted surface, it's easy to clean with a spray," says Guo.
"The biggest advantage," he adds, "is that the angle of the panels can be constantly adjusted to face the sun direct as it rises, and then move across the sky before the sun sets" - to maximizing energy ababsorb.
The project was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Army Research Office.
