Sustainable Electrochemical Desalination Using Microporous Carbon Derived From Palmyra Palm Shell

ABSTRACT Research on economical and environmentally sustainable desalination techniques has increased due to the mounting need for fresh water worldwide. Among the various potential desalination techniques, flow electrode capacitive deionization (FCDI) is regarded as a cutting‐edge method for eliminating ions from saline and brackish water. The primary emphasis of this work is to synthesize activated carbon using palmyra palm shell ( Borassus flabellifer ), and utilizing it as flow electrode in FCDI to understand its desalination capacity. The synthesized palm shell activated carbon (PSAC) exhibits partial graphitic domain along with porous morphology and surface functionality with an excellent specific capacitance (∼385 F g −1 ) and surface area (∼937.63 m 2 .g −1 ). The FCDI cell performance at 2 V using 5 wt% PSAC along with 1 wt% graphite powder in 0.5 M NaCl as flow electrode at a flow rate of 100 mL.min −1 has shown an average salt removal rate of around 164 µg.cm −2 .s −1 , salt removal efficiency of 32.69%, average energy consumption of about 0.07 kWh.mol −1 and charge efficiency of nearly 81.93% for 7 mM NaCl feed at 2.5 mL.min −1 flow rate. This research contributes to the mitigation of pollution and the recovery of agro‐waste by developing an economical and sustainable flow electrode for continuous desalination.