Comprehensive review of advanced desalination technologies for solar-powered all-day, all-weather freshwater harvesting systems

Solar-powered freshwater harvesting is one of the accelerating trends today. Thanks to those who have developed efficient light-absorbing materials, latent heat energy storage, floatable solar desalination devices, and solar collectors that facilitate high freshwater production. Based on recent advances, the specific motivation of this review is to investigate the ways to accelerate all-day, all-weather freshwater production powered by solar energy. The major classifications are, (i) photothermal absorbers for atmospheric water harvesting, (ii) photothermal absorbers coupled with phase change material, (iii) photo-electrothermal Joule heating, (iv) floatable solar stills, and (v) solar still -integrated with phase change materials. The adoptability of compositional materials with their specific integrations and unique structural modifications facilitate the all-day, all-weather evaporation under natural solar irradiation. Furthermore, the selection of materials, need for their integrations, the ways to improve the condensation, limitations and future prospective are discussed. The continuous condensation after sunset improves the nighttime water collection. Among various methods claiming all-day, all-weather freshwater production, the photo-electrothermal Joule heating-driven solar desalination achieves the record-high evaporation rate of 98.7 kg m−2 h−1. The overall results conclude that the combined material advances lead to accelerate the evaporation rate and producing adequate freshwater production even under low-cloudy/off-sunshine conditions.