TITLE:
Effective Modified Carbon Nanofibers as Electrodes for Capacitive Deionization Process
AUTHORS:
Nasser A. M. Barakat, Ahmed G. El-Deen, Khalil Abdelrazek Khalil
KEYWORDS:
Capacitive Deionization; Carbon Nanofibers; Electrospinning; Multi-Channels CNFs; Desalination
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Materials Science and Chemical Engineering,
Vol.2 No.1,
January
15,
2014
ABSTRACT: Carbon materials
have the advantages of good electrical conductivity and excellent chemical
stability, so many carbon materials have been introduced as electrodes for the
capacitive deionization (CDI) process. Due to the low surface area compared to
the other nanocarbonaceous materials, CNFs performance as electrode in the CDI
units is comparatively low. This problem has been overcome by preparing high
surface area carbon nanofibers and by creating numerous long pores on the
nanofibers surface. The modified CNFs have been synthesized using low cost,
high yield and facile method; electrospinning technique. Stabilization and
graphitization of electrospun nanofiber mats composed of polyacrylonitrile (PAN) and poly (methyl
methacrylate) (PMMA) leads form longitudinal pores CNFs. The utilized
characterizations indicated that the CNFs obtained from electrospun solution
having 50% PMMA have surface area of 181
m2/g which are more than the conventional CNFs.
Accordingly, these nanofibers revealed salt removal efficiency of ~90% and
specific capacitance of 237 F/g.