Efficient desalination of brackish ground water via a novel capacitive deionization cell using nanoporous activated carbon cloth electrodes

Sea water intrusion in ground water sources has made brackish water desalination a necessity in Oman. The application of capacitive deionization (CDI) for the deionization of ground water samples from wells in Al-Musanaah Wilayat is proposed and demonstrated. A CDI cell is fabricated using nanoporous activated carbon cloth (ACC) as the electrodes and is shown to be power efficient for desalting ground water samples with total dissolved solids (TDS) of up to 4,000 mg/l. The CDI cell was able to remove up to 73% of the ionic scaling and fouling contaminants from brackish water samples. The power consumption for deionization of brackish water was estimated to be 1 kWh/m³ of desalinated water, which is much lower than the power required to process water with equivalent TDS by the reverse osmosis processes. The CDI process is elaborated, and observations and analysis of the ion adsorption characteristics and electrical properties of the capacitive cell are elucidated.