Abstract
Clean water is one of the primary UN sustainable development goals for 2,030 and sustainable water deionization and disinfection is the backbone of that goal. Capacitive deionization (CDI) is an upcoming technique for water deionization and has shown substantial promise for large scale commercialization. In this study, activated carbon cloth (ACC) electrode based CDI devices are used to study the removal of ionic contaminants in water and the effect of ion concentrations on the electrosorption and disinfection functions of the CDI device for mixed microbial communities in groundwater and a model bacterial strain Escherichia coli. Up to 75 % of microbial cells could be removed in a single pass through the CDI unit for both synthetic and groundwater, while maintaining the salt removal activity. Mortality of the microbial cells were also observed during the CDI cell regeneration and correlated with the chloride ion concentrations. The power consumption and salt removal capacity in the presence and absence of salt were mapped and shown to be as low as 0.1 kWh m−3 and 9.5 mg g−1, respectively. The results indicate that CDI could be a viable option for single step deionization and microbial disinfection of brackish water.
Highlights
Desalination and disinfection are the two most important aspects related to the production of clean water in several regions of the world
nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) surface area measurements indicated that the activated carbon cloth (ACC) electrode used for the experiments has an active surface area of 980 m2 g−1
Activated carbon cloth (ACC) was used as an electrode material in capacitive deionization (CDI) process and the technique was found to be effective for the simultaneous deionization and elimination of microbes from water
Summary
Desalination and disinfection are the two most important aspects related to the production of clean water in several regions of the world. Desalination refers to the reduction of salt content in water, while disinfection relates to neutralization of microbial species in water (World Health Organization, 2011). Membrane based processes like reverse osmosis (RO), nanofiltration, and ultrafiltration are widely accepted in the drinking water market and it is not uncommon for these systems to de-couple the desalination and disinfection functions RO membranes are used to reduce the ionic content of water and work in conjunction with other techniques which reduce the organics and microbial content (disinfection) of the water prior to it being passed through the RO membrane.
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