New green electrode materials derived from waste cigarette butts for capacitive deionization

Smoked cigarette butts are a non-biodegradable pollutant that has damaged the planet. However, carbon materials derived from cigarette butts have proven to be suitable for various applications. We synthesized cigarette butt-derived carbon via hydrothermal carbonization and chemical activation methods and then converted it to an electrode material for capacitive deionization. The fabricated material, SCC-750, exhibited a relatively high salt adsorption capacity of 10.27 mg g-1. The excellent CDI (capacitive deionization) performance is due to the high specific surface area of 3,093.10 m2 g-1 and a pore volume of 1.754 cm3 g-1. This work offers a new method to recycle harmful cigarette butts by converting them into promising electrode materials for capacitive deionization.