Synthesis and Electrochemical Properties of Lignin-Derived High Surface Area Carbons

Abstract

Activated carbons play an essential role in developing new electrodes for renewable energy devices due to their electrochemical and physical properties. They have been the subject of much research due to their prominent surface areas, porosity, light weight, and excellent conductivity. The performance of electric double-layer capacitors (EDLCs) is highly related to the morphology of porous carbon electrodes, where high surface area and pore size distribution are proportional to capacitance to a significant extent. In this work, we designed and synthesized several activated carbons based on lignin for both supercapacitors and Li-S batteries. Our most favorable synthesized carbon material had a very high specific surface area (1832 m2·g−1) and excellent pore diameter (3.6 nm), delivering a specific capacitance of 131 F·g−1 in our EDLC for the initial cycle. This translates to an energy density of the supercapacitor cell at 55.6 Wh·kg−1. Using this material for Li-S cells, composited with a nickel-rich phosphide and sulfur, showed good retention of soluble lithium polysulfide intermediates by maintaining a specific capacity of 545 mA·h·g−1 for more than 180 cycles at 0.2 C.

Isinglass as an Alternative Biopolymer Membrane for Green Electrochemical Devices: Initial Studies of Application in Electric Double-Layer Capacitors and Future Perspectives

“…The use of cellulose, chitin [6,7], chitosan [8,9], dextrin [10,11], dextran [12,13], agar [14,15], lignin [16,17], and other biopolymers [18][19][20][21][22] have been reported in the literature, with their promising use in energy storage devices such as lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) [23][24][25] or electric double-layer capacitors (EDLCs) [26][27][28]. Biopolymers can be used for almost any aspect of electrode construction, from an electrode material binder [8], to conductor glue for improved adhesion and electrical conductivity [29], to an electrolyte [30], and even for preparation of active material responsible for energy storage mechanisms [31,32]. Most of the studies on the use of biopolymer membranes in EDLCs are focused on the use of aqueous electrolytes and can be summarised in Table 1.…”

Assembly of electric double-layer capacitors with hardwood kraft lignin-based electrodes and separator together with ionic liquid electrolyte

“…There are several reports on the preparation of EDLC electrodes from technical lignin (Du et al 2021;Saha et al 2014;Suzanowicz et al 2022;Zhu et al 2020). Among these electrodes, a mat-type electrode, prepared from a mixed dope of kraft lignin, hexamethylene tetramine, and polyethylene glycol by electrospinning with spraying a suspension of conductive carbon black (CB), was suitable for a commercial cellulosic separator, resulting in an EDLC with high energy and power densities (Pakkang et al 2020).…”