Development of performance model of CDI electrode for desalination

Abstract

Demand for clean water is increasing rapidly due to population growth, desertification, and pollution. Capacitive deionization, CDI, is a newly interested technology with its economic merits over existing ones like evaporation and reverse osmosis. The one of main issues on this technology lies on the electrode development. From the first success on a stable electrode development like carbon aerogel, various types of electrodes have been emerged. However, key mechanism and parameters of this technology are not yet provided. This research focuses on revealing how the CDI works and what parameter affects the performance most. For the current experimental techniques have limits in producing well-defined pore arrangement, a simulation tool based on the most sophisticated governing equations has been developed. The governing equations involve Nernst-Planck equation with a convection term to follow ion movement and Poisson equation to follow potential development. The above tool is verified by comparing with analytical solutions and other researcher’s results. The first simulation tool for CDI uses the decoupled implicit scheme; however, the scheme faces the numerical constraint of poor convergence. The maximum time step size is highly limited to 1.E-8s. Then an under-relaxation scheme is introduced with the limited success: we can increase its time step size by about 1,000 times higher than that of the decoupled scheme. Finally, the coupled implicit scheme, which solves the equations on concentration and potential simultaneously, is adopted. The newly developed scheme does not suffer from the convergence problem and is found to be optimal for CDI simulation. As the simulation domain, we select a region containing one pore and one electrode gap, to efficiently appreciate key parameters. Key performance indicator, KPI, and system parameters are determined. KPI is defined by the salt removal rate: salt removal amount per electrode volume divided by salt removal ...