3D-Printed river-type thick carbon electrodes for docking possible practical application-level capacitive deionization

Mingxing Shi; Keren Lu; Huijuan Jia; Xianyong Hong; Yanghao Yan; Hua Qiang; Fengyun Wang; Mingzhu Xia

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.167339

3D-Printed river-type thick carbon electrodes for docking possible practical application-level capacitive deionization

Sci Total Environ. 2023 Dec 15:904:167339. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.167339. Epub 2023 Sep 23.

Authors

Mingxing Shi¹, Keren Lu¹, Huijuan Jia¹, Xianyong Hong², Yanghao Yan¹, Hua Qiang¹, Fengyun Wang³, Mingzhu Xia⁴

Affiliations

¹ School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China.
² School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China; Division of Physics and Applied Physics, School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 637371, Singapore.
³ School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China. Electronic address: wangfy@njust.edu.cn.
⁴ School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China. Electronic address: xiamzh196808@njust.edu.cn.

PMID: 37748601
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.167339

Abstract

The low carbon mass loading along with serious imbalance between the carbon mass loading and the electrode performance greatly hinders practical applications of capacitive deionization (CDI). Traditional thick bulk-type (BT) carbon electrodes often suffer from extremely limited active sites, thereby being vital to explore a basic strategy to unlock the performance. Herein, 3D-printed thick carbon electrodes were utilized for CDI desalination for the first time. The experimental outcomes revealed that BT electrodes existed a serious salt adsorption capacity (SAC) drop under variable mass loading of 3-30 mg/cm². In contrary, 3D-printed river-type (RT) electrodes acquired a superior SAC of 10.67 mg/g and achieved 54.1 % SAC rise compared with that of BT electrodes (500 mg/L; 1.0 V; 30 mg/cm²). Meanwhile, RT electrodes took only 12 min to reach the equilibrium SAC of BT electrodes, being 44 min faster. Further, RT electrodes with diverse mass loading of 30-45 mg/cm² were investigated, and it still kept 7.13 mg/g SAC under ultrahigh mass loading of 45 mg/cm². This strategy has been successfully extended and carbons with proper micro-meso pore distribution, high specific capacitances and low resistance may be a better selection. Besides, the impact of electrode channel structure on the desalting performance was investigated, and the influence mechanism was revealed via COMSOL simulation. Overall, this work demonstrates the splendid feasibility of utilizing 3D-printed thick carbon electrodes for possible practical application-level CDI desalination.

Keywords: 3D-Printing; Capacitive deionization; Electrode channel; Porous carbon; Thick electrodes.