Desalination 488 (2020) 114533

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Desalination
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/desal

Solar-driven co-generation of electricity and water by evaporation cooling T

1 1
Lu Huang , Yipu Wang , Rongjie He, Xianghui Kong, Shuting Lei, Yang Liu, Bingzheng Wang,
⁎ ⁎
Haifeng Jiang, Huidong Liu , Kang Liu, Xuejiao Hu
MOE Key Laboratory of Hydraulic Machinery Transients, School of Power and Mechanical Engineering, Wuhan University, Wuhan, Hubei 430072, China

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Solar-driven evaporation has attracted increasing interest due to its broad applications, including desalination,
Electricity generation power generation, steam sterilization, and solar fuel production. Among them, electricity generation and water
Waste heat recovery production are urgently required, especially in remote regions lacking electricity and fresh water. In this work,
Membrane distillation we designed a novel hybrid system of a solar photovoltaic (PV) panel backside coupled with a multistage
Water production
membrane distiller (MD), for co-generation of electricity and fresh water. Within this hybrid PV-MD system, the
Evaporation cooling
generated heat in the PV panel is effectively removed by evaporation cooling to reduce the working temperature,
thus leading to higher solar-to-electricity efficiency. In addition, the discharged heat can be recovered to drive
the multistage MD for fresh water production. Under one sun, the hybrid system outputted electricity power of
66.6 W m−2 with a resistance of 10 Ω and produced fresh water with a rate of 1.11 kg m−2 h−1 with four stages.
Thus, this system can be readily implemented in current photovoltaic modules as a retrofit to improve the PV
efficiency and water production.

1. Introduction fluctuation during the evaporation transition for electricity generation

Clean water and electricity are two scarce sources for many devel-
oping countries and remote areas [1–3]. Thermal power plant and de-
salination are two traditional technologies for electricity generation
and water production [4,5]. Despite the maturity of these technologies,
they are still unfeasible in remote areas due to the complex pressure
control and expensive infrastructure. Making use of the freely available
sunlight as renewable source could be a promising strategy in these
regions [6].
Solar-driven evaporation has demonstrated great potential for fresh
water production in recent years [7–12]. In previous studies, the effi-
ciency of solar desalination has been promoted up to 90% with water
yield higher than 1 kg m−2 h−1 through the heat localization design
under one sun [13–18]. More recently, various strategies have also been
proposed to co-generate electricity and fresh water by solar energy
[19–23]. Zhou's group demonstrated the concept of using solar energy
for desalination and electricity generation by the evaporation induced
salinity gradient [23]. Zhu's group showed a novel device for produc-
tion of clean water and electricity simultaneously, through storing and
recycling the steam enthalpy from the interfacial solar evaporation
[22]. Ho’s group designed a carbon sponge evaporator for solar vapor
generation and further using the dynamic mechanical and temperature
[19]. They further showed an integral prototype design using a 3D
plasmonic solar absorber gel for evaporation and harnessed tribo-
electric energy generated from the flow of condensate on a polytetra-
fluoroethylene (PTFE) surface [21]. These hybrid strategies are very
interesting, but the low output power density (< 10 W m−2) cannot
meet the high-energy demand in remote areas. A significant improve-
ment in power generation with enough water yield is expected to open
up more opportunities.
Photovoltaic (PV) technology offers one of the most effective means
to convert solar energy into electricity [24]. The commercial crystalline
silicon solar cells have an efficiency around 15–22% corresponding to
output power density of 150–220 Wm−2 [25]. Intrinsically, the solar
cells can effectively absorb most incident solar irradiance with photon
energy above its semiconductor band gap. Moreover, a significant
portion of the absorbed solar energy is converted into heat [26]. The
heat is often dissipated into the environment as waste heat for keeping
cooling of the solar cells [27–29]. When further recovering the waste
heat, higher solar efficiency could be achieved. Hybrid photovoltaic
thermal desalination systems, which consist of solar cells and solar
stills, were designed to improve the overall solar efficiency for both
power and water production [30–33]. The hybrid systems with passive
solar stills had low water yield of 2–4 kg m−2 per day due to the bulk

⁎
Corresponding authors.
E-mail addresses: liuhuidong30@whu.edu.cn (H. Liu), xjhu@whu.edu.cn (X. Hu).
1
These authors contributed equally to this work.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2020.114533
Received 10 December 2019; Received in revised form 8 May 2020; Accepted 12 May 2020
Available online 24 May 2020
0011-9164/ © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
L. Huang, et al.
heating design [34], while active designed hybrid systems could pro-
mote the water yield up to 6–12 kg m−2 per day [35]. However, the
active designed systems often used the generated electricity from the
solar cells for self-consumption to enhance the water production [35].
Therefore, passive hybrid systems with high power output and water
yield are still needed for meeting the demand of people living in remote
regions. Membrane distillation (MD) has been reported to show great
advantages in harvesting low-grade waste heat for high-salinity water
treatment [36–38]. In MD process, water evaporates at the warmer
feed-side and condenses at the cooler permeate-side, during which the
vapor will release a lot of latent heat at the cold side. Recovering the
latent heat for further vapor generation is a very effective way to im-
prove the thermal efficiency [39]. Furthermore, combining the inter-
facial heating design and multistage latent recovery have shown great
promise for enhancing the overall water yield of the passive MD sys-
tems [39,40]. Zhou's group proposed a compact and efficient solar-
thermal MD system, which obtained water productivity as high as
1.02 kg m−2 h−1 with a solar efficiency of 72% under 1 sun illumi-
nation by recycling the latent heat [40]. Chiavazzo et al. reported a new
concept of high-efficiency thermally-localized multistage solar MD
system, which combines the advantages of condensation heat recycling
and localized heating, and demonstrated a high distillate flow rate of
almost 3 kg m−2 h−1 [39]. By applying these designs into the hybrid
photovoltaic thermal desalination systems, it could be possible to ob-
tain higher water yield while maintaining high electricity output.
Here, we propose a novel strategy for passively cooling the solar
cells and simultaneously enhancing the fresh water production by
evaporation cooling. The idea is to couple a multistage MD device to the
backside of an encapsulated solar PV panel. Within the multistage MD
device, the seawater evaporation takes away the waste heat in the PV
panel and cools down the solar cells, thus enhancing the photovoltaic
efficiency. In addition, the latent heat can be recovered by the multi-
stage design for several times before released into the environment. To
reduce the heat loss to the bulk water, seawater is supplied to the
evaporation side by capillary force in the porous wick for each stage.
Therefore, this PV-MD device can simultaneously cool down the solar
panel and produce more fresh water. The originality of the device
consists of the following aspects: (1) Evaporation cooling method was
utilized to cool the solar cells to enhance the PV efficiency by the
multistage MD. (2) Latent heat recovery and interfacial heating
methods were adopted to improve the water yield in the multistage MD.
(3) The whole system is highly passive with no other mechanical work
input. This PV-MD system would provide an efficient strategy for si-
multaneous production of water and electricity from solar energy,
which is possibly suitable for application in the remote regions.
2. Experimental procedures
2.1. Design and construction of the PV-MD device
Fig. 1a shows the main elements of the PV-MD device, which con-
sists of a solar PV panel coupled with a multistage MD on the backside.
An evaporation cooler is added to the bottom side of the last-stage MD
to dissipate heat to the ambient environment. In this experiment, the
crystalline silicon solar cells with effective size of 80 × 83 mm2 are
selected as the sunlight absorber. The solar cells are encapsulated on an
aluminum plate with size of 100 × 100 mm2, which could effectively
conduct the heat to the multistage MD. The MD is composed of two
highly thermally conductive thin aluminum plates (Fig. 1b), each sup-
porting a hydrophilic cotton layer with thickness of 0.5 mm as eva-
porator and condenser, respectively. The two cotton layers, which are
glued to aluminum plates, have tails connecting to the seawater basin
for water supply and fresh water basin for water collection, respec-
tively. A PTFE membrane of 0.12 mm is used to separate the liquid
layers in the evaporator and condenser. A spacer of plastic net with
thickness of 1 mm is also added below the PTFE for enhancing vapor
2
Desalination 488 (2020) 114533
condensation. At the last stage, the hydrophilic cotton layer with a tail
connecting to the seawater is used as the evaporation cooler. Fig. 1c
shows a typical photograph of the PV-MD device with a 4-stage distiller,
where four screws are used to couple the distiller to the backside of the
PV panel.
2.2. Characterizations and measurement
Firstly, the optical properties of PV panel were tested. The near-
normal spectral reflectance (R) was measured in the wavelength range
of 0.3–2.5 μm by a Shimadzu UV3600 UV/VIS spectrophotometer,
while the near-normal spectral reflectance in 2.5–15 μm was measured
by a Bruker Tensor 27 Fourier Transform spectrometer. The absorption
spectrum can be calculated to be A = 1-R, as the transmittance is zero.
Then we measured the photovoltaic efficiency of the PV panel on
working temperature between 36 and 67 °C. The PV panel was fixed on
a heat sink with a water bath for temperature control. The solar si-
mulator (SS-100A, Class AAA) was used as the light source. A standard
PV cells was applied to calibrate the output flux of the solar simulator.
The surface temperature of the PV cell was recorded by a thermocouple.
The I-V curves of the PV cells were measured using the source meter
(Keithley 2400) along the forward scan direction from −0.2 V to 7 V.
During the experiments of water production, the weight change in the
water collector was recorded in real time using a precision analytical
balance after the steady state was reached (MS205DU, METTLER
TOLEDO). Each water production experiment was repeated for at least
three times. An infrared camera (FLUKE Tix640) was used to record the
temperature distribution of the PV panel, while the temperature of the
evaporation cooler was measured by a thermocouple (TT-K-30-SLE,
OMEGA). In order to verify the accuracy of the temperature distribution
of the infrared camera, the temperature at the center of PV panel sur-
face was calibrated by the thermocouple. The relative humidity in
ambient was about ~40%.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Working principle of the PV-MD device
As shown in Fig. 1a, the sunlight is absorbed by the PV panel and
converted into electric potential and waste heat. The electric potential
could be output as electric work, while the heat conducts through the
aluminum plate down to the multistage MD as heat source for vapor
generation. In the multistage MD, seawater rises to the upper eva-
porator by the capillary force in the hydrophilic cotton layer. A thermal
gradient can be generated from the top to the bottom in the multistage
MD by the heat from the PV panel. Thus, in each stage, the thermal
gradient can promote a net vapor flux from the upper evaporator to the
down condenser. And the remaining salt in the evaporator could be
discharged by diffusion and gravity. The condensate water will be
drained to the fresh water basin by capillary force and gravity, while
the released latent heat becomes available to drive additional eva-
poration in the next stage. The recovery of the latent heat is essential for
improving the overall water yield. At the bottom of the multistage MD,
the evaporation cooler can remove waste heat of the entire system by
evaporation cooling. Therefore, by coupling the multistage MD to the
solar PV panel, this hybrid system can not only cool down solar cells for
enhancing electricity power output, but also recover the waste heat for
fresh water production. Another advantage of the hybrid system is that
no more land is required for installation, as the multistage MD is simply
coupled to the backside of the PV panel. Besides, the hybrid device is
highly passive with no other mechanical work input, which makes it
simple to operation and easy to maintenance.
3.2. Performance characteristics of PV-MD
Fig. 2a shows the absorption spectrum of the solar PV panel made of
L. Huang, et al. Desalination 488 (2020) 114533

Fig. 1. Basic layout of a PV-MD device. (a) Schematic of the PV-MD device with arrows showing the energy and mass transport processes; (b) the detailed structure of
the MD; (c) photograph of the device, including a solar panel, multistage distiller, a seawater baker and a fresh water collector.

the monocrystalline silicon solar cells, which represents solar cells with
the highest market penetration [41]. The PV panel exhibited an ab-
sorption higher than 80% at wavelength lower than 1100 nm corre-
sponding to the band gap of 1.1 eV for silicon. Below the band gap, the
absorption was still higher than 60%, which could be possibly due to
the presence of the metal contacts and the heavily doped regions in the
encapsulated cells. As weight by the AM 1.5 solar spectrum, the PV
panel had a solar absorptance of 0.85. As the highest solar PV efficiency
of the silicon cells was 17.3%, the remaining 67.7% of the absorbed
solar energy would be converted into waste heat, which heated the PV
panel up to 63.5 °C as shown in Fig. 2c. We further measured the
maximum power output of the PV panel at different working tem-
peratures in Fig. 2b. When the temperature increased from 36 to 67 °C,
the solar PV efficiency reduced from 17.3% to 14.2% under 1 sun. Thus,
higher working temperature could induce lower solar PV efficiency.
Though the emittance of PV panel was as high as 0.9 (Fig. S1), radiation
heat transfer at 63.5 °C could only reject a portion of water heat (25.2%
of the solar irradiance) into the environment.
By coupling the multistage MD to the backside of the PV panel, the
working temperature of the PV panel can be effectively reduced due to
the cooling effect of evaporation. As shown in Fig. 2c, the temperature
of the PV panel with 1-stage distiller was only 47.1 °C under one sun,

Fig. 2. Performance characteristics of the PV-MD device. (a) The absorption spectrum of the PV panel and the solar radiation spectrum; (b) the dependence of PV
efficiency on working temperature; (c) effects of the number of stages on the temperatures at the panel surface and the evaporation cooler; (d) water yield and PV
efficiency of the PV-MD device under different stages. Room temperature of ~30 °C.

3
L. Huang, et al.
which was largely lower than 63.5 °C without evaporation cooling.
With the adding of the stage, the temperature increased gradually to
54.3 °C at five stages, still 9.2 °C lower than the value without eva-
poration cooling. This cooling effect can effectively help to improve the
solar PV efficiency, as shown in Fig. 2d. In addition, the extracted heat
from the PV panel generated a thermal gradient from the top to the
bottom in the multistage MD, which acted as the driven force for vapor
diffusion and water production. As shown in Fig. 2c, the thermal gra-
dient enlarged as the stage increased, which enhanced the water pro-
duction in the multistage MD (Fig. 2d). For example, the hybrid PV-MD
system with 4-stage distiller could produce water yield at a rate of
1.42 kg m−2 h−1, while a temperature reduction of 10.6 °C was ob-
tained in the PV panel. The temperature reduction could induce an
enhanced PV efficiency of 1% (Fig. S2) as compared with the situation
without evaporation cooling.
3.3. Performance under varying ambient conditions
We further evaluated the cooling performance and water yield
ability of the PV-MD device under varying solar intensities and en-
vironment temperatures. The hybrid system with 4-stage distiller was
selected as a typical example. As shown in Fig. 3a, the temperature
differences between the situation with and without evaporation cooling
increased gradually from 6.1 to 10.6 °C as the solar intensity increased
from 400 to 1000 W m−2. The reduced temperature enhanced the
maximum power output from 0.47% to 1% accordingly as shown in
Fig. 3b. Furthermore, the temperature gradient from the top to the
bottom in the multistage MD also enlarged with the increase in solar
intensities, as shown in Fig. 3a. Thus, the water yield increased corre-
spondingly due to the larger temperature gradient induced from higher
solar energy input.
Fig. 3. Performances under varying ambient conditions. (a) Temperatures at the solar panel with and without evaporation cooling, as well as at the evaporation
cooler (wet cloth temperature at the last stage); (b) PV efficiency with and without evaporation cooling, and the corresponding water yield; (c) and (d) performances
of the device under different ambient temperatures: (c) I-V curves and power density; (d) water yield.
4
Desalination 488 (2020) 114533
We also tested the performances of the hybrid device under different
ambient temperatures with a fixed solar intensity of 1000 W m−2.
Higher ambient temperatures induced higher working temperatures of
the PV panel (Fig. S3), thus leading to lower output voltage and solar
PV efficiency, as shown in Fig. 3c. However, the multistage MD pro-
duced more freshwater water with higher temperature, as shown in
Fig. 3d. For example, the four-stage MD device at 30 °C ambient pos-
sessed maximum water yield of 1.42 kg m−2 h−1, far > 0.79
kg m−2 h−1 at 20 °C. The higher ambient temperature could reduce the
heat loss to the ambient [33], thus inducing higher thermal efficiency in
each stage and higher water yield of the device.
3.4. A demonstration
To assess the performances of the hybrid system for practical ap-
plication, the device with 4-stage distiller was also tested with an ex-
ternal circuit resistance of 10 Ω under solar intensity of 1000 W m−2.
As shown in Fig. 4a, the power output of PV panel was 66.6 W m−2 and
the water yield of multistage MD was 1.11 kg m−2 h−1. The power
output surpasses the previous reported values [19–23], while the water
yield is among the best reported values with heat localization design
[13–15]. In this condition, the working temperature of PV panel was
only 50.2 °C in Fig. 4b. As compared with the temperature of 52.9 °C
without electricity power output, this temperature was 2.7 °C lower. As
a result, the water collection rate reduced as shown in Fig. 4c.
To evaluate the desalination performance of the hybrid system, the
desalination capability was investigated by measuring the salinity of
the collected fresh water after desalination. As could be seen from
Fig. 4d, the salinities of the collected water after 2 h of desalination
sharply decreased to 26.7 mg L−1, far below the World Health Orga-
nization guideline. For the issue of salt scaling and biofouling,
L. Huang, et al.
Fig. 4. Demonstration of simultaneous output of electric work and fresh water. (a) Mass change of collected water and power output as functions of time; (b)
temperature distribution of the device with and without electric work output; (c) mass changes as functions of time with load and without load; (d) the measured
salinity of the water before and after distillation. Room temperature of ~30 °C.
temperature is the most dominant factors related to salt scaling and
fouling of MD membranes. Lower temperatures produce slower fouling
buildup, and usually deposits that are easily removable. Salt fouling and
biofouling occurs very slowly at evaporation temperatures below 60 °C
[42]. Biofouling relevant to MD system includes bacteria and micro-
organisms are pervasive in most water. In order to eliminate biofouling,
the operating temperature should be controlled as low as possible, and
the wick cloth and PTFE membrane should be cleaned or replaced
regularly.
3.5. Theoretical prediction for performance improvement
A steady-state model of heat and mass transfer processes in the
hybrid PV-MD system is built to gain insights into current experiments
and for future performance improvement. Fig. 5a shows the detailed
heat transfer processes in a single (i) stage, where the input solar energy
(Qin) was taken away by latent heat by water evaporation (Qeva) and
conduction (Qcon) through the porous wick, PTFE membrane and plastic
net. Here, the electric work is assumed to be zero for simplicity. A small
part of the input energy was loss by conduction through water supply
wick (Qloss) to the bulk water. The sensible heat in the condense water
(Qs) also took away some input energy. The energy balance equations in
a single stage can be described as:
Qin (i) = Qcon (i) + Qeva (i) + Qs (i) + Qloss (i) (1)
Then the energy balance diagram of the hybrid PV-MD device can
be built based on the single stage model as shown in Fig. 5b.
More detailed information about the model is summarized in
Section SI-4 in the Supporting information. All mathematical equations
were solved using the MATLAB software. Then, the temperatures and
water yield of each stage were predicted and the total water yield of the
5
Desalination 488 (2020) 114533
hybrid PV-MD device could be obtained. Here, we mainly consider the
effects of the number of stages, solar absorptance and membrane por-
osity on the performances of the hybrid device. As shown in Fig. 5c and
d, the predicted surface temperatures of PV panel and the water yield
agreed well with the experiment results, indicating the reasonability of
our model for performance prediction. It should be noted that in-
creasing the stage higher than 5 only induced slight increase of the
temperature and water yield. Fig. 5e shows the PV efficiency and water
yield as functions of solar absorptance of PV panel. While higher ab-
sorptance would produce more fresh water, it also induced low PV ef-
ficiency due to the higher working temperature. Both of the PV effi-
ciency and water yield increased with the higher porosity of PTFE
membrane as shown in Fig. 5f. Larger membrane porosity could reduce
heat conduction of membrane at each stage and enhance the vapor flux,
thus leading to lower working temperature of PV panel and higher
water yield. As the porosity of the present membrane is 0.85, further
increasing porosity could be a possible choice for both the enhancement
of the PV efficiency and the water yield [36].
4. Conclusions
In summary, a novel hybrid system of a solar PV panel backside
coupled with a multistage MD was successfully designed and built for
co-generation of electricity and fresh water. We systematically in-
vestigated the cooling effect and water yield performance of the hybrid
system under different stages, varying solar intensities and ambient
temperatures. The results showed that the hybrid system could effec-
tively reduce the working temperature of PV panel by evaporation
cooling, thus leading to higher solar PV efficiency. In addition, the
discharged heat can be used to drive the multistage MD to produce
fresh water, enhancing the overall solar efficiency. Under one sun, the
L. Huang, et al. Desalination 488 (2020) 114533

Fig. 5. Directions for improvement. (a) The detailed heat energy flow process in a single stage; (b) the energy balance diagram of the hybrid PV-MD device with N
stages; (c)-(d) prediction of the temperatures and water yield of the device under different stages; (e) the effect of absorptance of solar cells on water yield; (f) the
effect of membrane porosity on water yield.

hybrid system outputted an electricity power of 66.6 W m−2 with a
resistance of 10 Ω and produce fresh water with a rate of
1.11 kg m−2 h−1 with four stages. With the advantages of simple
structure, large-scale ability and high efficiency, this integrated PV-MD
system is suitable for isolated communities facing electrical energy
trouble and a scarcity of good quality water.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influ-
ence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements
CRediT authorship contribution statement
This work was supported by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (No. 11175133 and No. 51706157), the National
Lu Huang: Conceptualization, Writing - original draft. Yipu
Defense Foundation of China (No. NA-J201902-JN1-HF002), the
Wang: Conceptualization. Rongjie He: Investigation. Xianghui
Postdoctoral Innovation Talent Support Program (BX20190254), and
Kong: Investigation. Shuting Lei: Investigation. Yang Liu:
the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2019M652704).
Investigation. Bingzheng Wang: Investigation. Haifeng Jiang:
Investigation. Huidong Liu: Writing - original draft, Supervision.
Kang Liu: Investigation. Xuejiao Hu: Supervision. Appendix A. Supplementary data

Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://

doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2020.114533.

6
L. Huang, et al.
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