Session: 17-15-01: Society-Wide Micro/Nano Poster Forum

Paper Number: 99851

99851 - Wood Converted Carbon and Its Application on Water Desalination and Supercapacitor 

The design and synthesis of high-performance and economical carbon electrodes play a critical role in developing energy-efficient devices. Taking advantage of the abundant, economical, and environmentally-friendly features, biomass converted carbon is gaining exaggerated attention and being applied in many energy devices in recent years. Due to the natural porous structure, wood is chosen as the biomass carbon precursor to prepare porous carbon materials: the binder-free porous carbon sheets have been successfully prepared using natural balsa, pine, and bass wood by thermal carbonization and treated by chemical activation. Meanwhile, chemical vapor deposition was utilized to grow the carbon nanotubes on the interior and exterior surfaces of the wood carbon channels. The carbon electrode materials converted from wood are being applied in water desalination by capacitive deionization and supercapacitor areas due to the excellent material properties.

In recent years, the clean water crisis has become a significant environmental challenge. Thus, water desalination has intensified over the past decades. As an energy-efficient, environmentally friendly, economical, and easy-operate technique, capacitive deionization (CDI) has attracted enthusiasm, in which carbon materials play an important role in salt ion removal. In our work, The carbon electrode materials converted from balsa and pine exhibit a comparable salt adsorption performance by capacitive deionization due to the extensive surface area, substantial electrical property, and superior hydrophilic performance. The following activation treatment on balsa converted carbon further enhances the surface and electrical properties and benefits the desalination performance. The salt adsorption capacity of the activated balsa electrode exhibits 12.45mg g-1. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time the wood converted carbon reported an over 10 mg g-1 NaCl adsorption capacity results, and these promising results indicate that activated balsa is an extraordinary material for water desalination.

For most electrodes fabricated with carbon, transition metal compounds, or conductive polymers, the capacitance deteriorates with cyclic charging and discharging. Thus, an electrochemically stable supercapacitor has long been pursued by researchers. In this work, the carbon nano tubes were successfully grown on the surface of the balsa converted carbon by chemical vapor deposition. We found the CNTs offer more active Fe and Ni sites to participate in reduction-oxidation reactions to enhance the capacitance of the balsa carbon/CNTs electrode. As the active sites on Ni and Fe catalysts and inner walls of CNTs were gradually released, the capacitance of the balsa carbon/CNTs increased 66.7% after 4000 charge-discharge cycles. The balsa carbon/CNTs demonstrated an excellent area capacitance of 1940.33 mF/cm².

Presenting Author: Rui He George Mason University

Presenting Author Biography: Rui He obtained his master degree in Material Science and NanoEngineering from Rice University, USA and joined Dr. Pei Dong’s group in Department of Mechanical Engineering, George Mason University, USA for Ph.D degree. His research includes porous carbon material design, such as the preparation of biomass converted carbon, carbon nano fibers, carbon anno tubes and the application in water desalination. He also focusses on polymer synthesis and biomedical application.

Authors:

Rui He George Mason University
Pei Dong George Mason University
Yingchao Yang University of Maine
Min Wang University of Maine