Both freshwater shortage and energy crisis are global issues. Herein, we present a double-function system of faradaic desalination and a redox flow battery consisting of VCl3|NaI redox flow electrodes and a feed stream. The system has a nominal cell potential (E0 = +0.79 V). During the discharge process, the salt ions in the feed are extracted by the redox reaction of the flow electrodes, which is indicated by salt removal. Stable and reversible salt removal capacity and electricity can be achieved up to 30 cycles. The energy consumption is as low as 10.27 kJ mol-1 salt. The energy efficiency is as high as 50% in the current aqueous redox flow battery. With energy recovery, the desalination energy consumption decreases greatly to 5.38 kJ mol-1; this is the lowest reported value to date. This "redox flow battery desalination generator" can be operated in a voltage range of 0.3-1.1 V. Our research provides a novel method for obtaining energy-saving desalination and redox flow batteries.
Well-ordered TiO2 nanotube arrays (TNTAs) decorated with graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) were fabricated by anodic oxidization and calcination process. First, TNTAs were prepared via the anodic oxidation of Ti foil in glycerol solution containing fluorinion and 20% deionized water. Subsequently, g-C3N4 film was hydrothermally grown on TNTAs via the hydrogen-bonded cyanuric acid melamine supramolecular complex. The results showed that g-C3N4 was successfully decorated on the TNTAs and the g-C3N4/TNTAs served as an efficient and stable photoanode for photoelectrochemical water splitting. The facile deposition method enables the fabrication of efficient and low-cost photoanodes for renewable energy applications.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s40820-018-0192-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Numerous efforts have been focused on the heterojunction structure for enhancing the electron injection across the interface in application of photocatalysis or photoelectrochemical (PEC) catalysis. The electrochemically deposited ZnO nanorods arrays are sulfurated following hydrothermal reaction to form core–shell heterojunction structure. Furthermore, the graphite‐like C3N4 (g‐C3N4) is added into the formed ZnO/ZnS core–shell nanorods during the sulfuration process to get ZnO/ZnS/g‐C3N4 photoanode. The heterojunction structure is characterized via X‐ray diffraction, scanning electron microscope, X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy, UV‐vis diffuse‐reflectance spectra, time‐resolved photoluminescence, and Raman. The ZnO/ZnS/g‐C3N4 photoanode yields a photocurrent of ≈0.66 mA cm−2 at 1.23 V versus reversible hydrogen electrode, which is fourfold as large as pure ZnO electrode. The enhanced photocurrent is attributed to the improved separation efficiency of photogenerated electron–hole pairs and accelerated transport of hole to the electrode surface for the oxidation of water. These results suggest substantial potential of metal oxide nanorods arrays with controlled heterojunction construction in PEC water splitting applications.
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