Seawater desalination with light energy incorporating artificial transpiration stream using gas injection tube

Transpiration is a function of plants to evaporate water from their stomata of leaves, which enables plants to take up ground water from their roots to leaves through xylem. This water flux function is called as transpiration stream. This paper shows the application of the concept of transpiration stream to seawater desalination using sunlight as a single energy source. This approach uses a simple mimic of plants using a glass gas injection tube, where its inside channel, porous glass part and small pore of the porous part are paralleled with xylem, a leaf and stomata of plants, respectively. Aqueous solutions of a dye (methylene blue) absorbing visible light were evaporated from the porous part under visible light irradiation and the pumping-up of the dye-dissolving solution was observed in the channel. When the porous part of the glass gas injection tube was modified with solvent black 5 as non-water-soluble dye, the vaporization and the pumping-up of water in the tube were observed. Recovered vaporized...