A high performance all-polymer symmetric faradaic deionization cell

Abstract

Faradaic deionization (FDI) is an emerging and promising electrochemical technology for stable and efficient water desalination. Battery-type energy storage materials applied in FDI have demonstrated to achieve higher salt removal capacities than carbon-based conventional capacitive deionization (CDI) systems. However, most of the reported FDI systems are based on inorganic intercalation compounds that lack cost, safety and sustainability benefits, thereby curtailing the development of a feasible FDI cell. In this work, we introduce an all-polymer rocking chair practical FDI cell, with a symmetric system composed by a redox-active naphthalene-polyimide (named as PNDIE) buckypaper organic electrodes. First, electrochemical performance of PNDIE in 0.05 M NaCl under open-air conditions is evaluated in both three-electrode half- and symmetric FDI full-cell using typical lab-scale electrode dimensions (1.6 mgPNDIE; 0.78 cm2), revealing promising specific capacity (115 mAh g−1) and excellent cycle stability for full-cell experiments (77 % capacity retention over 1000 cycles). Then, all-polymer rocking chair FDI flow cell was constructed with practical PNDIE electrodes (92.2 mgPNDIE; 9.6 cm2) that delivered large desalination capacity (155.4 mg g−1 at 0.01 A g−1) and high salt-removal rate and productivity (3.42 mg g−1 min−1 at 0.04 A g−1 and 62 L h−1 m−2, respectively). In addition, long-term stability (23 days) experiments revealed salt adsorption capacity (SAC) retention values over 95% after 100 cycles. The overall electrochemical and deionization performances of the reported technology is far superior than the state-of-the-art CDI and FDI techniques, making it a competitive choice for robust and sustainable “water-energy” electrochemical applications.