An experimental approach to treat salt and dye contaminated water via capacitive deionization

This article is intended to provide the versatility of the CDI process for an application covering various pollutants, namely, dye and salt contaminated stream treatment. It was observed that tailoring the base material enhances stated properties revealing proficiency in desalting and dye removal performance. Further, the experimental investigations were performed by modifying the surface of agro-waste developed electrodes to improve the sorption of contaminants over bio-based activated carbon (B-AC). The chemical activation was with potassium hydroxide (KOH-BAC) and phosphoric acid (H₃PO₄-BAC). The study indicates the best electrochemical and sorption properties with H₃PO₄-BAC incorporated electrode of the electrode 76.97 F/g specific capacitance. Moreover, these fabricated electrodes were implemented for dye effluent treatment and desalting the concentrated stream from RO reject. It was evaluated that a strong sorption capacity for 18.4 mg/g in the case of salt stream was observed for H₃PO₄-BAC electrode whereas 0.12 mg/g was reported for dye removal. The equilibrium data was fitted into the isotherm and kinetic model of adsorption. Lastly, the study reveals that the fabricated electrode has huge potential to treat contaminated water.