Studies on Supercapacitor Electrode Material from Activated Lignin-Derived Mesoporous Carbon

Abstract

We synthesized mesoporous carbon from pre-cross-linked lignin gel impregnated with a surfactant as the pore-forming agent and then activated the carbon through physical and chemical methods to obtain activated mesoporous carbon. The activated mesoporous carbons exhibited 1.5- to 6-fold increases in porosity with a maximum Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) specific surface area of 1148 m(2)/g and a pore volume of 1.0 cm(3)/g. Both physical and chemical activation enhanced the mesoporosity along with significant microporosity. Plots of cyclic voltammetric data with the capacitor electrode made from these carbons showed an almost rectangular curve depicting the behavior of ideal double-layer capacitance. Although the pristine mesoporous carbon exhibited a range of surface-area-based capacitance similar to that of other known carbon-based supercapacitors, activation decreased the surface-area-based specific capacitance and enhanced the gravimetric specific capacitance of the mesoporous carbons. A vertical tail in the lower-frequency domain of the Nyquist plot provided additional evidence of good supercapacitor behavior for the activated mesoporous carbons. We have modeled the equivalent circuit of the Nyquist plot with the help of two constant phase elements (CPE). Our work demonstrated that biomass-derived mesoporous carbon materials continue to show potential for use in specific electrochemical applications.

High energy density supercapacitors from lignin derived submicron activated carbon fibers in aqueous electrolytes

“…The produced specific capacitances are much higher than that of unactivated lignin based sub-micron carbon fiber (67 F g À1 ) [37] and lignin-based mesoporous carbon (102.3 F g À1 ) [38]. Moreover, at a relatively high scanning of 50 mV s À1 , 4.3 and 8.1 Wh kg À1 energy densities were achieved for Na-ACF and K-ACF respectively, showing either comparable (Na-ACF) to, or much better performance (K-ACF) than the 3e5 Wh kg À1 energy density of commercialized activated carbon [9].…”

Preparation and Characterization of K2CO3-Activated Kraft Lignin Carbon

“…A few studies used chemical activation with KOH, NaOH, K2CO3, Na2CO3, H3PO4 or ZnCl2, and physical activation with CO2 or steam to prepare KL-ACs (Carrott et al 2008;Torné-Fernández et al 2009;Huang et al 2014;Saha et al 2014). Among the alkaline chemical activating agents, KOH and K2CO3 are preferred (Babel and Jurewicz 2008;Xia et al 2015).…”

Facile preparation of 3D hierarchical porous carbon from lignin for the anode material in lithium ion battery with high rate performance

“…Lignin is an ideal precursor for the preparation of HPC, since it is a soft polymer, and can be tuned to various morphologies and porous structures. Recently, lignin based hierarchical porous carbons (LHPCs) have been prepared by various template methods [16][17][18][19]. Heretofore, LHPCs are mainly researched for electrode materials in supercapacitors.…”