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WDRC congratulates Peng Wang (Associate Professor) for being the first scientist featured in the Emerging Investigator Series by 'Environmental Science: Nano',  in 2018. This growing web collection showcases the work being conducted by Emerging Investigators in environmental nanotechnology. It highlights up-and-coming scientists in the early stages of their independent careers, who have been identified as having the potential to influence future directions in the field. 

Prof Peng Wang has been recognized for his recent work on photothermal materials which highlights its great potential for clean and more energy-efficient water production and emerging applications in treatment technologies.

Solar-driven water evaporation and distillation is an ancient technology but has been rejuvenated in the past four years thanks to the contribution from nanotechnology.  Prof. Wang's group has been working on photothermal nanomaterial selection and optimization along with photothermal structural design and the first paper which came out in July 2015 entitled "Hydrophobic Light‐to‐Heat Conversion Membranes with Self‐Healing Ability for Interfacial Solar Heating" has reported a solar-to-water-evaporation efficiency of 56%. According to Prof. Wang, their latest workcould achieve nearly 100% energy efficiency. His group has recently extended their research on photothermal materials into new applications, including atmospheric water harvesting, highly viscous oil spill cleanup, smart windows, etc.

He explained that scaling up of the technologies has been very challenging,as cost considerations along with other unexpected issues slowed down their progress. Nevertheless, the environmental significance of this research inspired the group to push forward."…the 'CO₂emission free'is the biggest advantage of solar-driven nano-enabled clean water production. It also offers hope towards green and zero-liquid discharge desalination processes", said Prof. Wang.

Read more about Prof. Peng Wang in the  Emerging Investigator Series article The rise of nano-enabled photothermal materials for water evaporation and clean water production by sunlight 

Website:  http://enl.kaust.edu.sa