{"id":239449,"date":"2026-06-22T22:10:29","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T03:10:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/3d-photothermal-design-unlocks-8-5-fold-higher-solar-evaporation-for-desalination-and-crop-irrigation"},"modified":"2026-06-22T22:10:29","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T03:10:29","slug":"3d-photothermal-design-unlocks-8-5-fold-higher-solar-evaporation-for-desalination-and-crop-irrigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/3d-photothermal-design-unlocks-8-5-fold-higher-solar-evaporation-for-desalination-and-crop-irrigation","title":{"rendered":"3D photothermal design unlocks 8.5-fold higher solar evaporation for desalination and crop irrigation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/3d-photothermal-design-unlocks-8-5-fold-higher-solar-evaporation-for-desalination-and-crop-irrigation2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The global shortage of freshwater has become a critical challenge. Conventional water treatment relies heavily on fossil fuels and associated infrastructure, which can make it unsuitable for remote and harsh regions. In contrast, solar thermal evaporation is a promising alternative, but its application is limited by material performance and production constraints.<\/p>\n<p>Now, researchers from the Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Shenzhen University have developed a new three-dimensional (3D) photothermal structure that greatly improves solar evaporation efficiency.<\/p>\n<p>The new structure tightly integrates polymer chains with hollow multishelled structures (HoMS), yielding a record evaporation rate of 38.14 kg m<sup>-2<\/sup> h<sup>-1 <\/sup>\u2014a figure 8.5 times higher than rates previously reported for two-dimensional membrane systems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The global shortage of freshwater has become a critical challenge. Conventional water treatment relies heavily on fossil fuels and associated infrastructure, which can make it unsuitable for remote and harsh regions. In contrast, solar thermal evaporation is a promising alternative, but its application is limited by material performance and production constraints. Now, researchers from the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-engineering","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239449","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\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239449\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}