Activated Carbon Cloth for Desalination of Brackish Water Using Capacitive Deionization

Capacitive deionization (CDI) is an emerging technology that is currently being widely explored for brackish water desalination. The theory behind the CDI technology depends on ion electrosorption at the surface of a pair of electrically charged porous carbon electrodes. Salt ions are removed upon applying an electrical low voltage of 1.2 V between two electrodes. Activated carbon cloth (ACC) electrodes have a significant potential for energy-efficient CDI water desalination due to the high surface area and salt storage capacity in which salt ions will be temporarily immobilized. The current state of the art of CDI technology is critically reviewed and evaluated to understand and summarize CDI background, phenomenon, advantages, operating conditions, performance metrics and equations, carbon electrode materials, cell architectures and CDI designs. We also provide a review study to evaluate the performance and feasibility of utilizing ACC-CDI systems for brackish water desalination.