Decreased charge transport distance by titanium mesh-membrane assembly for flow-electrode capacitive deionization with high desalination performance.

This study employed a titanium mesh-membrane assembly (MMA) as the current collector in flow-electrode capacitive deionization (FCDI) device (designated as M-FCDI), and obtained a much reduced charge transport distance as compared to traditional FCDI with plate-shaped current collectors located far from the exchange membrane. The average salt removal rate of M-FCDI was greatly improved by 76% under 10 wt% carbon content than the control experiment with graphite plate as current collector, and the charge efficiency remained over 75% even under low carbon loading. This improvement was attributed to the reduced resistance as revealed by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy tests. Further investigation on FCDI's performance with different specifications of titanium meshes showed that the implementation of MMA could provide a larger effective electron transfer area, which would lead to better desalting performance.