Environmental Engineering Water Resources Engineering

Yi-Fang Chen and Ching-Yu PengThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Department of Water Resources and Environmental Engineering, Tamkang University, 151 Yingzhuan Road, Tamsui District, New Taipei City 25137, Taiwan

 

 

Received: March 7, 2025
Accepted: April 28, 2025
Publication Date: June 7, 2025

 Copyright The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are cited.


Download Citation: ||https://doi.org/10.6180/jase.202602_29(2).0013  


Phosphorus recovery is essential because phosphorus is a limited resource and excessive phosphorus concentration can adversely affect water quality. Flow-electrode capacitive deionization (FCDI), which employed activated carbons (ACs) or nano iron oxide/activated carbon (Fe3O4/AC) composites as flowable electrode materials, explored in this study has demonstrated effectively remove or recover sodium chloride or phosphorus. Characterization of flow-electrode materials and the effects of operation parameters, including phosphorus concentration, flow-electrode materials, applied voltage, and feasibility of reuse the recycled flow-electrode materials were thoroughly studied. As-prepared Fe3O4/AC composites were characterized as spherical magnetite nanoparticles with particle size of 200-400 nm. Our results showed that an optimal sodium chloride concentration of 20 g/L yielded the highest average salt removal rate (ASRR) of 9.94×10−4 mmol NaCl/min/cm2 and a good charge efficiency of 72.36%. For phosphorus removal, at 1000 mg/L NaH2PO4, FCDI system with the ACs flow electrode can achieve the highest ASRR (8.12×10−5 mmol P/min/cm2), the highest charge efficiency (60.27%), and the lowest energy consumption (192.11 kWh/mmol). FCDI system with Fe3O4/AC composites as flow electrode material demonstrated better selectivity of phosphorus over sodium ( βP/Na= 3.16) with higher charge efficiency and lower energy consumption, indicating its potential to sustainably remove or recover phosphorus. Recycled Fe3O4/AC composites showed its feasibility to be reused with comparable performance as that of original Fe3O4/AC composites. This study revealed that Fe3O4/AC composites can be potential flow-electrode materials for FCDI system to efficiently and sustainably remove or recover phosphorus from wastewater.

 


Keywords: Flow-electrode Capacitive Deionization (FCDI); Activated Carbon; Fe3O4/AC composites; Phosphorus


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