Page 23 - Book of Abstracts

th
8 Biannual Conference on Chemistry - CHEM 08

3D-Microporous Carbon Derived from Biomass Fibers as

Potential Electrode Material for Supercapacitor and
Capacitive deionization Applications

Doha M. Sayed* , Mohamed S. El-Deab , Mohamed E Elshakre and
1
1
1
Nageh K. Allam
2
1 Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Cairo University, Cairo,
Egypt, Energy Materials Laboratory, School of Sciences and
2
Engineering, The American University in Cairo, Egypt.
Email: mdoha@sci.cu.edu.eg

ABSTRACT

There is a clear motivation towards the development of sustainable,
steady and reliable material systems. Driving porous carbonaceous
materials from natural biomass is a promising approach towards
production of environmentally friendly, cheap, high conductivity and
surface area electrode material systems. In this regard, a biomass fiber was
used as precursor to produce a high quality 3-D amorphous carbon that
retaining some crystalline cellulosic planes. The Biomass carbon was
prepared in two simple sequential activation steps (chemical and
thermal). The resulted material exhibits multi-porous structure with
abundant micropores and small mesopores with an exceptional BET
surface area of 2000 m /g. The morphology and structure of the
2
synthesized carbon powder was characterized using various
characterization techniques e.g., TEM, SEM, Raman, FTIR, XPS, and XRD.
The electrochemical performance of the symmetric device made of the
fabricated material was tested in 1.0 M NaCl aqueous electrolyte, where
the material displays ultrahigh ion storage. The symmetric device exhibits
fairly high specific capacitances of 201 F/g at 5 mV/s and 337 F/g at 1 A/g.
Meanwhile, the device shows ultra-high energy and power densities
compared to many expensive carbon materials that are previously
reported in literature. On the other hand, the material also tested as
capacitive deionizer electrode in a batch-mode cell using 5 mM NaCl

solutions, and showed a promising salt adsorption capacity of NaCl (up
to 5 - 16 mg NaCl g ) at an applied voltage varies from 0.8 to 1.7 V. These
–1
results emphasize the importance of tailoring such porous sustainable
based materials for advancement of supercapacitor and capacitive
deionization technologies.
Keywords: Biomass fibers; Porous amorphous carbon; Supercapacitor;
Capacitive deionization.

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