Boron and nitrogen co-doped porous carbon derived from sodium alginate enhanced capacitive deionization for water purification

Abstract

Capacitive deionization can alleviate water shortage and water environmental pollution, but performances are greatly determined by the electrochemical and desalination properties of its electrode materials. In this work, B and N co-doped porous carbon with micro-mesoporous structures is derived from sodium alginate by a carbonization, activation, and hydrothermal doping process, which exhibits large specific surface area (2587 m²·g^‒1) and high specific capacitance (190.7 F·g^‒1) for adsorption of salt ions and heavy metal ions. Furthermore, the materials provide a desalination capacity of 26.9 mg·g⁻¹ at 1.2 V in 500 mg·L^‒1 NaCl solution as well as a high removal capacity (239.6 mg·g^‒1) and adsorption rate (7.99 mg·g^‒1·min^‒1) for Pb²⁺ with an excellent cycle stability. This work can pave the way to design low-cost porous carbon with high-performances for removal of salt ions and heavy metal ions.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

capacitance deionization / porous carbon / B/N co-doping / heavy metal ions / water purification

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Competing Interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51472174, 61604086, and 21776147), the Shandong Province Natural Science Foundation (Grant Nos. ZR2018BB066, ZR2021YQ32, and ZR2022QB164), and the Taishan Scholar Project of Shandong Province (Grant No. tsqn201909117). L. F. Dong thanks financial support from the Malmstrom Endowed Fund at Hamline University. We also thanks Dr. Yong Liu for his help in the fabrication of CDI module.

Electronic Supplementary Material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at https://doi.org./10.1007/s11705-023-2346-4 and is accessible for authorized users.

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