Potential limits of capacitive deionization and membrane capacitive deionization for water electrolysis

ABSTRACT

Water electrolysis can hinder the operation of capacitive deionization (CDI) and membrane CDI (MCDI). This study is aimed at investigating the overpotential limits of CDI and MCDI (OP-MCDI) for water electrolysis and desalination performance. For sodium chloride concentrations of ~28,460 ppm, MCDI with mesoporous carbon electrodes could be operated at up to 2.4 V without water electrolysis, and the salt-adsorption capacity of the OP-MCDI system at 2.4 V was about two times greater than that of the MCDI at 1.2 V. This study offers an opportunity to extend the applicability of conventional CDI and MCDI systems for desalination of low-salinity solutions.

KEYWORDS:

• Electrosorption
• Capacitive deionization
• Membrane capacitive deionization
• Desalination
• Overpotential membrane capacitive deionization

Acknowledgments

This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. The Department of Energy will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan).

Conflicts of interest

There are no conflicts of interest to declare.

Additional information

Funding

K. Tang acknowledges financial support from the China Scholarship Council (No. 201606250079).