Freestanding Activated Carbon Nanocomposite Electrodes for Capacitive Deionization of Water

Abstract

Freshwater reserves are being polluted every day due to the industrial revolution. Man-made activities have adverse effects upon the ecosystem. It is thus the hour of need to explore newer technologies to save and purify water for the growing human population. Capacitive deionization (CDI) is being considered as an emerging technique for removal of excess ions to produce potable water including desalination. Herein, cost-effective activated carbon incorporated with carbon nanotubes (CNT) was used as a freestanding electrode. Further, the desalination efficiency of the designed electrodes was tuned by varying binder concentration, i.e., polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF) in the activated carbon powder and CNT mixture. PVDF concentration of 5, 7.5, 10, and 12.5 wt% was selected to optimize the freestanding electrode formation and further applied for desalination of water. PVDF content affected the surface morphology, specific surface area, and functional groups of the freestanding electrodes. Moreover, the electrical conductivity and specific surface area changed with PVDF concentration, which ultimately affected the desalination capacity using the freestanding electrodes. This study paves the way to produce cost effective carbon-based freestanding electrodes for capacitive deionization and other applications including battery electrodes.

Carbon dioxide‐activated mesoporous date palm fronds carbon integrated with MnO2/polyaniline for highly efficient capacitive deionization of water

“…Carbon‐based material has the potential to address all these requirements needed for the fabrication of efficient CDI electrodes (Samejo, Abro, Memon, Upoma, & Habib, 2023). Currently, activated carbon, carbon aerogel, carbon nano tubes, carbon fibers, and graphene‐based materials are commonly used for the fabrication of CDI electrodes (Hussain et al, 2022, 2023, Liu, Nie, et al, 2015). However, the desalination performance of such carbon‐based CDI systems is often plagued with low salt adsorption capacity and limited stability (Lee et al, 2014).…”