Fabrication of 3D-Printed Ceramic Structures for Portable Solar Desalination Devices

This paper proposes the fabrication process of the first fully 3D-printed ceramic core structures for portable solar desalination devices optimized to tackle water scarcity from an energy and sustainability perspective. Robocasting, a 3D printing technique, is utilized to fabricate a fully ceramic structure of an integrated solar absorber/thermal insulator/water transporter based on the two-layered structure of modified graphene on silica (MG@Silica) and the porous silica structure. Robocasting has demonstrated its flexibility in tailoring structural designs, combining nanopores and microchannels that exhibit uniform water transport delivery and thermal insulation. This portable device can be used immediately to collect fresh drinking water without an additional setup. It possesses a water evaporation rate of 2.4 kg m-2 h-1 with a drinking water production capacity of 0.5 L m-2 h-1. This novel device has shown excellent ion rejection ability, with the collected water meeting the World Health Organization (WHO) drinking water standards.