Multi-functional 3D honeycomb ceramic plate for clean water production by heterogeneous photo-Fenton reaction and solar-driven water evaporation

The application of solar-driven water evaporation process in clean water production via solar distillation is recently intensively investigated. The phase change and mass transfer processes during the solar-driven water evaporation process can directly leave behind the salts, heavy metals, organic dyes, etc and simultaneously produce the clean water vapor. However, if the water source is contaminated by volatile organic compounds (VOCs), solar-driven water evaporation may accelerate VOCs volatile and enrich them in the condensate. In this work, the enrichment of VOCs in distillate water was first demonstrated and a multi-functional honeycomb ceramic plate was fabricated by coating a layer of CuFeMnO4 on the surface of a cordierite honeycomb ceramic substrate. The honeycomb structure was beneficial for light trapping and energy recycling and thus to improve the solar-to-water evaporation efficiency. The CuFeMnO4 coating layer acted as both the photothermal material for solar-driven water evaporation process and the catalyst for VOCs removal via heterogeneous photon-Fenton reaction. With the integration of photo-Fenton reaction into the solar distillation process, the clean distillate water was produced with efficient removal of the potential VOCs from the contaminated water sources.