One-and two-equation models to simulate ion transport in charged porous electrodes

Jorge Gabitto, Costas Tsouris

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

Energy storage in porous capacitor materials, capacitive deionization (CDI) for water desalination, capacitive energy generation, geophysical applications, and removal of heavy ions from wastewater streams are some examples of processes where understanding of ionic transport processes in charged porous media is very important. In this work, one-and two-equation models are derived to simulate ionic transport processes in heterogeneous porous media comprising two different pore sizes. It is based on a theory for capacitive charging by ideally polarizable porous electrodes without Faradaic reactions or specific adsorption of ions. A two-step volume averaging technique is used to derive the averaged transport equations for multi-ionic systems without any further assumptions, such as thin electrical double layers or Donnan equilibrium. A comparison between both models is presented. The effective transport parameters for isotropic porous media are calculated by solving the corresponding closure problems. An approximate analytical procedure is proposed to solve the closure problems. Numerical and theoretical calculations show that the approximate analytical procedure yields adequate solutions. A theoretical analysis shows that the value of interphase pseudo-transport coefficients determines which model to use.

Original languageEnglish
Article number4
JournalColloids and Interfaces
Volume2
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - 2018

Funding

Acknowledgments: This research was partially conducted at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). ORNL is managed by UT-Battelle, LLC, under Contract DE-AC05-0096OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy. Notice: This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the US Department of Energy. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. The Department of Energy will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan).

Keywords

  • CDI
  • Porous media
  • Two-equation models
  • Volume average

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