Nanomaterial-enabled electrochemical water treatment, including capacitive deionization (CDI) and battery deionization (BDI), is a novel technology for water desalination, wastewater reclamation, and resource recovery. CDI and BDI technologies are based on the principles of capacitive electrosorption and intercalation of ions, respectively. This proposed process can be simply driven by electricity and does not require additional chemicals. To achieve high-desalination performance and high ion selectivity, the electrode material can be porous carbon, pseudocapacitive, and battery-type materials, or modified with ion-exchange resin layer. Moreover, the CDI/BDI technologies can be driven by applying low voltage due to the efficient charge transfer. This promising electrochemical deionization technology has great potentials on low-energy desalination, water reclamation, nutrient recovery from wastewater, and mining the precious resources (e.g., rare metals) from wastewater/seawater.

Nanomaterial-enabled electrochemical water treatment technology, including capacitive deionization (CDI) and battery deionization (BDI), is proposed as a novel process for water desalination, wastewater reclamation, and resource recovery. This novel technology can have energetic advantages and high selectivity over the other conventional technology.  For example, highly porous carbon electrodes can be modified with pseudocapacitive nanomaterials and ion-exchange resin layer to enhance the desalination performance in CDI. On the other hand, electrochemically selective capture of ions (e.g., nitrate in wastewater or Li+ in seawater) can be achieved by using the intercalation-type electrode in BDI.

Nanomaterial-enabled electrochemical water treatment technology, including capacitive deionization (CDI) and battery deionization (BDI), can be potentially integrated to the seawater plant, wastewater treatment facilities in the manufacturing industries, including chemical and materials, basic metal, metal product manufacturing, printed circuit board, computer and electronic product manufacturing and high-tech industries. The industrial wastewater usually contains high concentration of heavy metal, which is economically feasible to recycle the metal ions from the wastewater and reuse the reclaimed water in terms of circular economy and environmental friendliness.