High Salt Removal Capacity of Metal-Organic Gel Derived Porous Carbon for Capacitive Deionization

Fresh water shortage poses serious threats to humanity. Capacitive deionization (CDI) holds promise for water desalination. Here, porous carbon derived from Al-based metal-organic gels (MOGs) upon calcination has been originally developed as electrodes for capacitive deionization. The obtained material with a large specific surface area, a large percentage of micropore, and a suitable pore size distribution favors slat ion accessibility. Its desalination performance is investigated under various operation conditions. Excitingly, this material displays a remarkable salt removal capacity of 25.16 mg g(-1) in a 500 mg L-1 aqueous sodium chloride solution at 1.4 V, superior to those of the recently reported carbon materials. Moreover, the obtained electrode material also exhibits a high salt removal rate and an excellent recycling stability. The results demonstrate that MOG-derived carbon is an appealing candidate as an efficient electrode material in the CDI process for brackish and seawater desalination.