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    Electrocatalytic fuel cell desalination for continuous energy and freshwater generation
    (Maryland Heights, MO : Cell Press, 2021) Zhang, Yuan; Wang, Lei; Presser, Volker
    Advanced hydrogen technologies contribute essentially to the decarbonization of our industrialized world. Large-scale hydrogen production would benefit from using the abundantly available water reservoir of our planet’s oceans. Current seawater-desalination technologies suffer from high energy consumption, high cost, or low performance. Here, we report technology for water desalination at seawater molarity, based on a polymer ion-exchange membrane fuel cell. By continuously supplying hydrogen and oxygen to the cell, a 160-mM concentration decrease from an initial value of 600 mM is accomplished within 40 h for a 55-mL reservoir. This device’s desalination rate in 600 mM NaCl and substitute ocean water are 18 g/m2/h and 16 g/m2/h, respectively. In addition, by removing 1 g of NaCl, 67 mWh of electric energy is generated. This proof-of-concept work shows the high application potential for sustainable fuel-cell desalination (FCD) using hydrogen as an energy carrier.
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    Editorial: Climatic and Associated Cryospheric and Hydrospheric Changes on the Third Pole
    (Lausanne : Frontiers Media, 2021) Wang, Lei; Song, Chunqiao; Conradt, Tobias; Rasmy, Mohamed; Li, Xiuping
    [No abstract available]
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    Three-Dimensional Cobalt Hydroxide Hollow Cube/Vertical Nanosheets with High Desalination Capacity and Long-Term Performance Stability in Capacitive Deionization
    ([Beijing] : China Association for Science and Technology, 2021) Xiong, Yuecheng; Yu, Fei; Arnold, Stefanie; Wang, Lei; Presser, Volker; Ren, Yifan; Ma, Jie
    Faradaic electrode materials have significantly improved the performance of membrane capacitive deionization, which offers an opportunity to produce freshwater from seawater or brackish water in an energy-efficient way. However, Faradaic materials hold the drawbacks of slow desalination rate due to the intrinsic low ion diffusion kinetics and inferior stability arising from the volume expansion during ion intercalation, impeding the engineering application of capacitive deionization. Herein, a pseudocapacitive material with hollow architecture was prepared via template-etching method, namely, cuboid cobalt hydroxide, with fast desalination rate (3.3 mg (NaCl)·g-1 (h-Co(OH)2)·min-1 at 100 mA·g-1) and outstanding stability (90% capacity retention after 100 cycles). The hollow structure enables swift ion transport inside the material and keeps the electrode intact by alleviating the stress induced from volume expansion during the ion capture process, which is corroborated well by in situ electrochemical dilatometry and finite element simulation. Additionally, benefiting from the elimination of unreacted bulk material and vertical cobalt hydroxide nanosheets on the exterior surface, the synthesized material provides a high desalination capacity ( mg (NaCl)·g-1 (h-Co(OH)2) at 30 mA·g-1). This work provides a new strategy, constructing microscale hollow faradic configuration, to further boost the desalination performance of Faradaic materials.