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Research subject: Solar energy is a renewable resource that is abundant and can solve many problems of energy shortage. In order to use solar energy to desalinate water and produce high quality steam, one of the cheap and commercially proposed structures is floating solar steam generation system. In this system, water is transferred to the surface of the system in a controlled manner and is converted to steam using the heat generated in the photothermal layer. There are generally four main challenges in solar steam generation systems. These challenges include managing and preventing heat loss, structural strength, managing and transferring water within the structure, absorbing light and converting light into heat.
Research approach: In this paper, floating multilayer solar steam generation systems were fabricated in which porous polyurethane foam was used as the substrate and thermal insulation layer. Moreover, felt was used as the water-transfer layer. Photothermal materials including graphite, gold, and mixtures of graphite and gold were used as the light-absorbing layers to produce high-quality steam. Also, in order to determine the water evaporation rate and the efficiency of the systems, the amount of changes in water mass and system temperature has been measured.
Main results: Among the different solar steam generation systems studied, the system made of graphite-gold mixture absorber is able to produce steam at a rate of 1.257 kg.m^-2.h^-1. This rate is equivalent to an efficiency of about 82%. To evaluate the performance of the systems in more real situation, they were tested using seawater. As resulted, the rate of evaporation of seawater by the graphite-gold mixture system is 1.201 Kg.m^-2.h^-1 and its efficiency is 78.4%.

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Research Subject: Because of the constant deterioration of environmental conditions, the world faces energy and clean water shortage. To address the water crisis issue, the solar steam generation system has been considered as a suitable technology for seawater desalination due to its competitive features, such as no carbon dioxide emission, low energy consumption, and high efficiency. In modern solar steam generation systems, solar energy is harvested by a photothermal absorber and then converted into thermal energy to heat a certain volume of water and produce steam. Then, the generated steam condenses on the inner surface of the cover, and clean water is collected. The five key features required for solar steam generation system are: high light absorption, low heat losses and heat localization, proper water transfer, and the ability to float on the water surface.
Research Methods: In this study, a solar steam generation system based on a graphite absorber layer is built, and its performance is improved using nickel plasmonic nanoparticles.
In order to investigate the dependency of the performance on the structure, two different layers including cotton and polyester felts are used to transfer water controllable. In this study, the water evaporation rate, surface temperature, and efficiency of the devices are evaluated.
Main Results: Thermal efficiency and evaporation rate for the system based on the pure graphite absorber is 68.17% and 0.97 kg/m².h, which increases to 93.57% and 1.37 kg/m².h, respectively by adding nickel nanoparticles. Using two cotton and PS water managers reveals the importance of the thermal energy and mass transfer balancing in the systems, which strongly affects the devices performance.

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In the present research, the steam generation performances of nanofluids containing titanium dioxide have experimentally been examined. For this purpose, a solar simulator with a xenon lamp as the radiation source, and a pyranometer as a light intensity measuring device are used. Then, the water based-nanofluids in five nanoparticle mass fractions of 0.001, 0.002, 0.004, 0.04, and 0.08% exposed to the light intensity of 3.5Suns (3.5 kW/m2) were investigated to compare their evaporation performances with water (H2O). Finally, the effects of the solar power intensity on the steam generation were examined. The results showed that the titanium dioxide nanostructures are more efficient to directly absorb the solar energy than the water so that the maximum total evaporation efficiency of 77.4% and 54% were obtained at 3.5 kW.m-2 for nanofluid and water, respectively. Furthermore, it was found that light absorption increases as the nanofluid mass fraction increases. Also, increasing the light intensity from 1.5 to 3.5 kW.m-2 enhances the thermal efficiency, while it reduces the evaporation efficiency.