Desalination

The shortage of freshwater resources has become a serious global problem, affecting human production and life. The pure drinking water resources across the world are depleting progressively due to rapid industrialization and growth in population. To solve this problem, seawater desalination is believed to be the most promising method.

Desalination is one of the water treatment processes to obtain high-purity drinking water, domestic water, and industrial water by removing dissolved substances including salt from seawater that is difficult to use directly for domestic or industrial water.

Most of the seawater desalination systems currently in operation worldwide depend entirely on fossil energy for heat and electric energy required for the seawater desalination system using fossil energy. The situation is repeating the vicious cycle of worsening water shortage due to climate change caused by emissions.

To address the abovementioned problems, we develop smart photothermal materials with low-cost and high evaporation performances.