Over 85% of accessible freshwater is hard water, which contains calcium and magnesium ions, inducing scaling of boiler. Capacitive deionization, as a novel water treatment technology, has aroused great concern due to unique and high ion selectivity compared with traditional methods (reverse osmosis, adsorption, etc.). The results was published on ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces .
Recently, researchers at the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) developed a pseudo-capacitive electrode with high absorption capacity, selectivity and stability for electro-sorption of hardness ions (Ca 2+ and Mg 2+ ).
They prepared manganese spinel ferrite (MFO) nanospheres as pseudocapacitive cathode to assemble hybrid capacitive deionization system with commercial activated carbon for water softening.
Then, superb electro-affinity and corresponding high hardness selectivity of hardness ions in multi-cation solution (Na + , Ca 2+ and Mg 2+ ) were found, in which cyclic voltammetry tests in multi-ion electrolyte and molecular dynamics simulations also support this experimental result.
This research work is of great significance for exploring capacitive deionization pseudo-capacitive electrode materials with high efficiency and selective electrosorption of target ions and hard water softening.
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ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces
Experimental study
Intrinsic Pseudocapacitive Affinity in Manganese Spinel Ferrite Nanospheres for High-Performance Selective Capacitive Removal of Ca2+ and Mg2+
9-Aug-2021