Analysis of newly designed CDI cells by CFD and its performance comparison

In this study, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis was conducted to investigate the flow pattern and to find the occurrence of dead zones in an existing capacitive deionization (CDI) cell. Newly designed cells—specifically designed to avoid dead zones —were analyzed by CFD in accordance with the flow rates of 15, 25 and 35 ml/min. Next, the separation performances between the existing and newly designed cell were compared by conducting CDI experiments in terms of salt removal efficiency at the same flow rates. Then, the computational and experimental results were compared to each other. The salt removal efficiencies of the hexagon flow channel 1 (HFC1) and hexagon flow channel 2 (HFC2) were increased 88-124% at 15 ml/min and 49-50% at 25 ml/min, respectively. There was no difference between the existing cell and the foursquare flow cell (FFC) at 35 ml/min.