To achieve sustainable desalination and water purification, solar interface evaporation technology is an effective means due to its high energy efficiency. Reasonable photothermal conversion materials and surface design are crucial for the interfacial solar evaporation process. How to design water transport routes and thermal insulating layers simultaneously is one of the major challenges to solar interface evaporation technology today. Herein, this work reports an arch-shaped wood evaporator (pine@carbon black (CB)-metal-organic framework-801 (MOF-801)-36%) for efficient, fast and continuous interfacial solar evaporation, which is composed of an arch-shaped wood substrate, MOF-801, and CB as a light absorption layer. The arch-shaped structure has a double-sided evaporation effect, which has a synergistic effect on augmenting solar evaporation efficiency. In addition, the in-situ growth of MOF-801 in pretreated wood microchannels renders the wood evaporator a significant function of reducing the equivalent enthalpy of evaporation due to the reduction of the hydrogen bonding density of water molecules as they pass through the wood channels. The best evaporation rate of the arch-shaped wood evaporator can reach 2.535 kg·m⁻²·h⁻¹, and the efficiency reaches 93.7% under the irradiation of 1 sun illumination. Notably, it could be used for desalination and wastewater treatment to collect fresh water that meets drinking requirements set by the World Health Organization (WHO). This integrated evaporator provides an efficient way for commercial portable photothermal conversion and new ideas for advanced solar-driven water treatment technology.

The clearwater obtained from stabilized oily wastewater has become a worldwide challenge. Nowdays, the area of oil/water emulsion separation materials have accomplished great progress, but still faces the enormous problems of low flux, poor stability, and pollution resistance. Nanocelluloses (cellulose nanocrystals (CNC)) with the advantages of hydrophilicity, eco-friendliness, and regeneration are ideal materials for the construction of separation membranes. In this paper, a flexible, anti-fouling, and durable nanocellulose-based membrane functionalized by block copolymer (poly(N-isopropylacrylamide)-b-poly(N,N-dimethylaminoethyl methacrylate)) is prepared via chemical modification and self-assembly, showing high separation efficiency (above 99.6%) for stabilized oil-in-water emulsions, excellent anti-fouling and cycling stability, high-temperature resistance, and acid and alkali resistance. More importantly, the composite membrane has ultra-high flux in separating oil-in-water emulsions (29,003 L·m⁻²·h⁻¹·bar⁻¹) and oil/water mixture (51,444 L·m⁻²·h⁻¹·bar⁻¹), which ensures high separation efficiency. With its durability, easy scale-up, and green regeneration, we envision this biomass-derived membrane will be an alternative to the existing commercial filter membrane in environmental remediation.