Oil-polluted water purification via the carbon-nanotubes-doped organohydrogel platform

Solar-driven evaporators are promising for tackling freshwater scarcity but still challenged in simultaneously realizing comprehensive performances at one platform for sustainable and efficient application in real-world environments, such as stable-floating, scalability, salt-resistance, efficient vaporization, and anti-oil-fouling property. Herein, we design a hybrid organohydrogel evaporator to achieve the enduring oil contamination repulsion with maintaining accelerated evaporation process, and integrate capacities of ultra-stable floating, hindered salt-crystallization, large-scale fabrication for practical purification of seawater and polluted solutions. The raised water surface surrounding evaporators, induced by low density of organogel-phase, results in oil contamination resistance through the lateral capillary repulsion effect. Meanwhile, the organogel-phase containing photo-thermal carbon-nanotubes with low thermal capacity and conduction can form locally confined hot dots under solar irradiation and reduce heat dissipation on heating excessive water. Therefore, based on this approach, accelerated long-term practical purification of oil-contaminated solutions without any extra disposal is realized. Considering other properties of ultra-stable floating, large-scale fabrication, and anti-salt crystallization, these innovative organohydrogel evaporators open pathways for purifying oil-slick-polluted water via interfacial evaporation and are anticipated accelerating industrialization of efficient and sustainable solar-driven water purification.