Abstract
In this paper, we report a systematic comparison of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and graphene oxide (GO) adsorption and desalination efficiency at different oxidation level under electrochemical conditions. Particular care has been devoted to the evaluation of the energy storage performance, through a comparison with the capacitive behavior in a typical aqueous electrolyte, a solution 1M of H2SO4. The specific capacitance calculated from the Cyclic Voltammetry (CV) curve at 2mV/sec for as produced purified CNTs (CNTp), highly hydrophilic CNTs (CNTf), partially reduced CNTf (CNTftt) and GO in H2SO4 are respectively 160 F/g, 356 F/g,298 F/g and 145 F/g. We evaluate for our nanomaterials high capacitive deionization (CDI), we also demonstrate that although surface functional groups are essential to provide better contact between electrode and electrolyte leading to high capacitance, however a more preserved electrical structure allows to obtain higher performance (e.g. 135 F/g and 185 F/g for CNTf and CNTftt, respectively).
