Mengjie Xu, Huiyue Wang, Xueying Wen, Huajian Liu, Guixin Hu, Qianyu Wei, Ran Niu*, Ruikun Pan*, Hui Zhang*, Jiang Gong*

Upcycling waste polypropylene separator into carbon nanotube for efficient interfacial solar-driven evaporation and hydroelectric power generation

Journal of Materials Chemistry A (2025) Accept.

The solar interfacial steam and power co-generation technology is a promising way of dealing with freshwater shortage and energy crisis. Nevertheless, there is a still significant struggle to build efficient evaporators for concurrent freshwater and power generation. In this contribution, we design Ni-Mo-Al hybrid catalysts for the controlled carbonization of waste polypropylene (PP) separator to prepare carbon nanotube (CNT) and subsequently construct CNT-based evaporators for interfacial evaporation and energy harvesting. The Ni-Mo-Al catalyst with the optimized molar ratio of 5-0.1-1 shows the best catalytic effect. The resultant CNT possesses high yield and purity, favorable crystallinity and graphitization. The CNT-based evaporator possesses good water absorption and low heat conductivity, and achieves a high evaporation rate (2.79 kg m^-2 h^-1) with high efficiency (98.3%). Furthermore, the evaporation system attains the output voltage of 350 mV, as well as a good sustainable output capacity. The result of density functional theory (DFT) explains that H⁺ diffuses faster than OH^- and then accumulates at the top, thus leading to the potential difference between the top and bottom of the material, which in turn creates voltage. This work not only realizes the green upcycling of waste separators, but also builds low-cost, high-performance freshwater and power generation integrated devices.