High Salt Removal Capacity of Metal–Organic Gel Derived Porous Carbon for Capacitive Deionization

Fresh water shortage poses serious threats to humanity. Capacitive deionization (CDI) holds promise for water desalination. Here, porous carbon derived from Al-based metal–organic gels (MOGs) upon calcination has been originally developed as electrodes for capacitive deionization. The obtained material with a large specific surface area, a large percentage of micropore, and a suitable pore size distribution favors slat ion accessibility. Its desalination performance is investigated under various operation conditions. Excitingly, this material displays a remarkable salt removal capacity of 25.16 mg g –1 in a 500 mg L –1 aqueous sodium chloride solution at 1.4 V, superior to those of the recently reported carbon materials. Moreover, the obtained electrode material also exhibits a high salt removal rate and an excellent recycling stability. The results demonstrate that MOG-derived carbon is an appealing candidate as an efficient electrode material in the CDI process for brackish and seawater desalination.