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 aluminum plate into a material with super-absorbent and super-energy-absorbent properties.
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 water evaporation is volumetric heating, in which a large amount of water is heated, but only the top layer can evaporate.
"The biggest advantage," he adds, "is that the angle of the panels can be constantly adjusted to face the sun directly as it rises, and then move across the sky before the sun sets" - to maximizing energy absorption.
