Srikanth Singamaneni from Washington University in St. Louis has told that they hope that for countries where there is ample sunlight such as India, you’ll be able to take some dirty water, evaporate it using our material, and collect fresh water and the novel approach combines bacteria-produced cellulose and graphene oxide to form a bi-layered biofoam.
Singamaneni has said that the beauty is that the nanoscale cellulose fiber network produced by bacteria has excellent ability move the water from the bulk to the evaporative surface while minimizing the heat coming down and the entire thing is produced in one shot. When you suspend this entire thing on water, the water is actually able to reach the top surface where evaporation happens.
Singamaneni has also added that light radiates on top of it, and it converts into heat because of the graphene oxide but the heat dissipation to the bulk water underneath is minimized by the pristine nanocellulose layer and the cellulose at the bottom of the bi-layered biofoam acts as a sponge, drawing water up to the graphene oxide where rapid evaporation occurs and the resulting fresh water can easily be collected from the top of the sheet.
