Through the benefit of billions of years of evolution, biology has developed tremendous strategies on how to co-exist in high salinity and water scarce environments. Biologically-inspired abiotic systems are becoming a central pillar in how we respond to critical grand challenges that accompany exponential population growth, uncontrolled climate change and the harsh reality that 96.5% of the water on the planet is saltwater. One fascinating biologic adaptation to saltwater is the growth of mangrove trees in brackish swamps and along the coasts. Through a process of salt exclusion, the mangrove maintains a near freshwater flow from roots to leaves to survive. One abiotic approach to water desalination is capacitive deionization, which aims to desalinate low-salinity water sources at energy costs below current technologies, such as reverse osmosis and thermal distillation. In this work, we use one-step carbonization of a plant with developed aerenchyma tissue to enable highly-permeable, freestanding flow-through capacitive deionization electrodes. We show that carbonized aerenchyma from red mangrove roots reduces the resistance to water flow through electrodes by 65-fold relative to carbonized common woody biomass. We then demonstrate the practical use of the intact carbonized red mangrove roots as electrodes in a flow-through capacitive deionization system. These findings have implications in a range of fields including water desalination, bioinspired materials, and plant functionality.
1.Carnegie Mellon Univ, Dept Mech Engn, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 USA 2.Carnegie Mellon Univ, Dept Mat Sci & Engn, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 USA 3.Carnegie Mellon Univ, Dept Biomed Engn, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 USA 4.Carnegie Mellon Univ, Dept Biol Sci, 4400 5th Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 USA 5.Carnegie Mellon Univ, Dept Computat Biol, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 USA 6.Carnegie Mellon Univ, Dept Chem Engn & Engn, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 USA 7.Carnegie Mellon Univ, Dept Publ Policy, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 USA 8.Northwestern Polytech Univ, Inst Biomed Mat & Engn, Xian, Shaanxi, Peoples R China
Recommended Citation:
Wood, Adam R.,Garg, Raghav,Justus, Kyle,et al. Intact mangrove root electrodes for desalination[J]. RSC ADVANCES,2019-01-01,9(9):4735-4743