{"id":235675,"date":"2026-04-21T22:20:24","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T03:20:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/liquid-droplet-mops-clean-solar-panels-with-99-9-efficiency-cutting-water-use-by-80"},"modified":"2026-04-21T22:20:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T03:20:24","slug":"liquid-droplet-mops-clean-solar-panels-with-99-9-efficiency-cutting-water-use-by-80","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/liquid-droplet-mops-clean-solar-panels-with-99-9-efficiency-cutting-water-use-by-80","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Liquid droplet mops\u2019 clean solar panels with 99.9% efficiency, cutting water use by 80%"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/liquid-droplet-mops-clean-solar-panels-with-99-9-efficiency-cutting-water-use-by-802.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>With the rapid expansion of the global solar energy industry, the number of solar panels has surged in recent years. However, pollutants accumulating on panel surfaces can significantly reduce energy conversion efficiency while traditional cleaning methods are highly water-intensive.<\/p>\n<p>In response to this challenge, an international research team led by the Department of Mechanical Engineering at City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK) has successfully developed a breakthrough technology, called \u201cliquid droplet mops,\u201d that uses only a minimal amount of water to effectively remove dust and pollutants from solar panel surfaces, significantly enhancing cleaning efficiency while conserving water.<\/p>\n<p>The study was led by Professor Steven Wang, Associate Vice President (Resources Planning) and Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Energy and Environment. The project was conducted in collaboration with Professor Omar Matar from the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Imperial College London. The findings are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41893-026-01804-z\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in Nature Sustainability.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With the rapid expansion of the global solar energy industry, the number of solar panels has surged in recent years. However, pollutants accumulating on panel surfaces can significantly reduce energy conversion efficiency while traditional cleaning methods are highly water-intensive. In response to this challenge, an international research team led by the Department of Mechanical Engineering [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,38,1633,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-235675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-engineering","category-solar-power","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235675\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}