Biomass-derived Carbon Without Alkali Activation: an Efficient Functional Capacitive Desalination Material for Various Metal Ions

As a new and green technology, capacitance desalination has the advantage of low cost and energy consumption. Thereinto, the selection of electrode material is key to this technology. In this work, a low-cost biomass-derived carbon (NC), as the electrode material with excellent desalination efficiency, can construct high permeability mesoporous structure without conventional alkali or molten salt activator usage. All the chemical reagents used in preparation process can be recycled and reused, which is in line with the current theme of green development. Meanwhile, the abundant heteroatomic defects and surface functional groups in biomass-derived carbon afford good hydrophilic and pseudocapacitive properties. A capacitive desalting device, assembled by NC as electrode material, can effectively remove NaCl in brine (Under the voltage of 1.2 V, the adsorption capacity of NaCl could reach 49.3 mg•g -1), and metal salts as well, such as Cr3+, Co2+ (78.8% salt ions can be desalted in 20 minutes). © 2022 Cailiao Daobaoshe/ Materials Review. All rights reserved.