Monolithic multistage solar-to-steam device for tandemly generating freshwater and electricity with superb efficiency

As an increasingly attractive global issue, water-power nexus is strongly interplayed and promoted with each other. To solve the mutual expenditure in a low energy-consumption way, hydropower cogeneration nanotechnology rose in an innovative style which strove to explore an integrated design on tandem production of fresh water and power synergistically. Herein, we firstly designed a bionic honeycomb multi-stage solar-thermal-electricity co-generation device (MSTE) with the highlights of its composability, detachability and scalability. A high freshwater production rate is achieved by constructing multi-stage solar evaporator device to recycle the latent heat of prior water vapor in each steamer stage, such as 7-stage MSTE could realize 2.79 kg·m−2·h−1. Simultaneously integrating moist-electric generators (MEG) on the 8–10 stages, a moist-electric generation electricity output of 55.3 mW·m−2 was achieved. This auspicious design of multi-stage hydropower cogeneration device can sufficiently utilize energy by sharing the identical framework system so exhibits a great potential to realize both clean water and electricity production with zero CO2 emission, optimal energy conversion pathway.