Sponge creates steam using ambient sunlight

[turtleofdeath]

> A solution to this problem came from an unlikely source: Chen’s 16-year-old daughter, who at the time was working on a science fair project in which she constructed a makeshift greenhouse from simple materials, including bubble wrap. “She was able to heat it to 160 degrees Fahrenheit, in winter!” Chen says. “It was very effective.”

Love it when discoveries are made by accident.

[zellyn]

That doesn't sound like an accident: it sounds like she considered the problem, and thought of a solution, on purpose.

[DiabloD3]

I wish I knew how this worked. I'd love to build one myself.

[SiVal]

The sponge also converted 20 percent of the incoming sunlight to steam. ... The researchers’ current design builds on a solar-absorbing structure they developed in 2014 ... that was able to boil water to 100 C and convert 85 percent of the incoming sunlight to steam.

Even if they're a little confused about turning energy into matter, it does make me wonder if it's possible to manufacture something cheap, flexible, and durable enough that you could carry a "solar still" blanket for survival purposes. Just unroll it over some moist sand or vegetation, and it would distill and collect water that you could then drink out of a little tube.

[AceJohnny2]

> It seems MIT buried the lead. They've found a way to convert sunlight to steam. Should come in very handy in space.

Space has the opposite problem: Remember that vacuum is a perfect insulator. The problem is usually about being able to dump excess heat.

[option_greek]

Can covering coastal waters with these sheets create artificial/on-demand clouds ? That would be awesome for drought prone areas!

[tomahunt]

The paper is available on researchgate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Hadi_Ghasemi10/publicat...

Original link: www.nature.com/articles/ncomms5449

[smpetrey]

So, what will this breakthrough mean for desalination efforts?

[jrapdx3]

I assume the idea would be to condense the steam as distilled water, and feed the brine back into the brackish water source. Probably the engineering challenges would be getting the salt water into the evaporator, collecting and condensing the vapor, and removing the "used" brine from the evaporator, and making these components operate continuously.

From the article it sounded like this was an idea that was being considered.

[stcredzero]

the researchers found the structure heated water to its boiling temperature of 100 degrees Celsius, even on relatively cool, overcast days.

It's not surprising that one could get such a result from solar thermal. Heat pipe based solar collectors have been doing this in cloudy English environs for many years. The really impressive part of this solution is its potential extremely low cost.

[dharma1]

any instructions how to replicate?

[apple314159]

This really is vapor ware!

[Taek]

Please make sure all comments contribute to the article.

Humor is okay, but should at most be supplementing a more thoughtful comment, and not be the primary contribution of a comment.