Nanofluidic reverse electrodialysis enhanced by photovoltaic waste heat recovery

In the current work, we present a solar photovoltaic coupled nanofluidic reverse electrodialysis system in order to achieve synergistic utilization of solar energy and salinity-gradient energy. A liquid water cold plate is employed for thermal management of solar photovoltaic, while transferring the low-grade waste heat to heat seawater and freshwater in nanofluidic reverse electrodialysis. Under these circumstances, the power generation performance of solar photovoltaic and nanofluidic reverse electrodialysis are synergistically enhanced. Based on experimental measurement, the maximum temperature of solar photovoltaic is decreased from 72.4 ℃ to 48.7 ℃ under one sun solar irradiation using liquid water cold plate, and its corresponding output power is raised up from 914.44 mW to 1060.15 mW by 15.93 %. Besides, the power density of nanofluidic reverse electrodialysis is improved from 2.750 W·m⁻² to 3.156 W·m⁻² by 14.76 % through utilizing waste heat generated from solar photovoltaic. The proposed hybrid system offers a novel and practical approach to synergistically improve power generation performance of solar photovoltaic and nanofluidic reverse electrodialysis device by integrating thermal management and waste heat recovery.