Obtaining clean water from salt water by capacitive deionization (CDI) with chemically modified graphene (rGO) was explored in this study. Strong acid (HNO3:H2SO4 = 2:1) was employed to modify rGO to enhance its hydrophilicity and electrochemical properties. Characteristics of rGO with/without acid modification were analyzed by XRD, SEM, FTIR, contact angle, BET, and cyclic voltammetry (CV). Contributions of sulfonic acid groups, hydroxyl groups, and NO2 stretching after acid modification resulted in better wettability and higher specific capacitance of rGO. The contact angle for rGO dropped from 84.9° to 35.1° (am-rGO), indicating improved hydrophilicity of rGO with acid modification. The specific capacitance of am-rGO can reach 150.2 F/g at the scan rate of 1 mV/s. The average NaCl electrosorption capacity of the CDI process with am-rGO was 0.63 mg NaCl/g electrode (10.86 μmol NaCl/g electrode), which indicated rGO with acid modification can enhance the electrosorption capacity by 3.9 times. This study demonstrated that chemical modification can significantly improve the hydrophilicity, electrochemical properties, and electrosorption performance of rGO, which has potential for applications to other carbon-based materials for CDI systems to improve salt removal efficiency.
