Recently, the Innovative Team for Energy, Water & Air (ITEWA), led by Professor Wang Ruzhu and Associate Professor Li Tingxian from SJTU RCI (Refrigeration and Cryogenics Institute) published a research paper on Angewandte Chemie International Edition, which was titled "Efficient Solar-Driven Water Harvesting from Arid Air with Metal-organic Frameworks Modified by Hygroscopic Salt". Post-doctoral student Xu Jiaxing and Associate Professor Li Tingxian are the first authors, and Associate Professor Li Yanxian and Professor Wang Ruzhu are the corresponding authors.
This research was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51876117), National Key R&D Program of China (2018YFE0100300), and Science Fund for Creative Research Groups of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51521004). ITEWA, led by Professor Wang Ruzhu, has published many research papers on international top journals, including Joule and Advance Materials. It is a team committed to solving cutting-edge fundamental scientific problems and key technologies in the field of energy, water, and air. It also aims to obtain an overall solution at the material-device-system level with cross-disciplinary research and to promote breakthroughs in related fields.
Abstract
Freshwater scarcity is a global challenge threatening human survival, especially for people living in arid regions. Sorption【based atmospheric water harvesting (AWH) is an appealing way to solve this problem. However, the state【of【the【art AWH technologies have poor water harvesting performance in arid climates owing to the low water sorption capacity of common sorbents under low humidity conditions. We report a high【performance composite sorbent for efficient water harvesting from arid air by confining hygroscopic salt in a metal-organic framework matrix (LiCl@MIL【101(Cr)). The composite sorbent shows 0.77【…g g-1 water sorption capacity at 1.2【…kPa vapor pressure (30 % relative humidity at 30 °C) by integrating the multi【step sorption processes of salt chemisorption, deliquescence, and solution absorption. A highly efficient AWH prototype is demonstrated with LiCl@MIL【101(Cr) that can enable the harvesting of 0.45-0.7【…kg water per kilogram of material under laboratory and outdoor ambient conditions powered by natural sunlight without optical concentration and additional energy input.
Paper Link:：https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/anie.201915170
Translated by Han Yueyue Reviewed by Wang Bingyu