4th Bioenergy Studies Symposium, Ankara, Türkiye, 26 - 27 Mayıs 2022
Biomass is the most
abundant and best utilized renewable carbon resource on earth. The direct
conversion of biomass into porous carbon materials offers a promising approach
to energy storage applications. Energy storage systems have become more
important in recent years in order to address the concerns of fossil energy
depletion and global warming. Supercapacitors, as one type of important energy
storage device, have become attractive due to their longer cycle life, higher
power densities, and shorter charging/discharging time compared to batteries,
and exhibit great application potentials in power sources, electric vehicles,
portable electronics, and so on. Porous carbon compounds have received
considerable attention as electrode materials for supercapacitors.
In this study, porous carbon
materials were synthesized from waste tree barks. The synthesis procedure involves
four steps; first refinement of the biomass where the precursor washed
to remove all impurities and then cut into small pieces, then the hydrothermal
step followed by the drying step where the supercritical CO2 drying
was used and the last carbonization step. XRD, SEM and FTIR techniques were
used for the characterization of the synthesized materials. XRD patterns exhibits
a sharp diffraction peak at about 26.6° which corresponds to the aromatic ring
carbon. This is supported by the aromatic carbon bonds seen in the FTIR study. The
surface appeared to be highly homogenous, according to SEM analyses. When
compared to the literature, we may conclude that supercritical CO2
drying contributes significantly to the homogenous surface. Characterization
studies have shown that biomass-based porous carbon is promising for supercapacitor
applications.