The fast consumption of fossil energy accompanied by the ever-worsening environment urge the development of a clean and novel energy storage system. As one of the most promising candidates, the supercapacitor owns unique advantages, and numerous electrodes materials have been exploited. Hence, biomass-derived porous carbon materials (BDPCs), at low cost, abundant and sustainable, with adjustable dimension, superb electrical conductivity, satisfactory specific surface area (SSA) and superior electrochemical stability have been attracting intense attention and highly trusted to be a capable candidate for supercapacitors. This review will highlight the recent lab-scale methods for preparing BDPCs, and analyze their effects on BDPCs' microstructure, electrical conductivity, chemical composition and electrochemical properties. Future research trends in this field also will be provided.

As one of the most promising fast energy storage devices, supercapacitor has been attracting intense attention for many emerging applications. However, how to enhance the electrochemical performance of electrode materials is still the main issue among various researches. In this paper, hierarchical porous carbons derived from Eleocharis dulcis has been prepared by chemical activation process with the aid of KOH at elevated temperature. Results show that the N, P co-doped porous carbon exhibits excellent electrochemical performance, it owns a specific capacitance of 340.2 F/g at 1 A/g, and obtains outstanding cycling stability of 96.9% of capacitance retention at 10 A/g after 5,000 cycles in a three-electrode system. Moreover, in the two-electrode system, the product still maintains a high specific capacitance of 227.2 F/g at 1 A/g, and achieves good electrochemical cycle stability (94.2% of capacitance retention at 10 A/g after 10,000 cycles); besides, its power/energy density are 3694.084 and 26.289 Wh/kg, respectively. Therefore, the combination of facile synthesis strategy and excellent electrochemical performance makes Eleocharis dulcis-based porous carbon as a promising electrode material for supercapacitor.

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As the low-cost, natural multi-component for elemental doping and environment-friendly characteristics, biomass-derived porous carbon for energy storage attracts intense attention. Herein, walnut shells-based porous carbon has been obtained through carbonization, hydrothermal and activation treatment. The corresponding porous carbon owns superior electrochemical performances with specific capacitance reaching up to 462[Formula: see text]F[Formula: see text]g[Formula: see text] at 1[Formula: see text]A[Formula: see text]g[Formula: see text], and shows excellent cycling stability (5000 cycles, [Formula: see text]94.2% of capacitance retention at 10[Formula: see text]A[Formula: see text]g[Formula: see text]). Moreover, the symmetry supercapacitor achieves high specific capacitance (197[Formula: see text]F[Formula: see text]g[Formula: see text] at 1[Formula: see text]A[Formula: see text]g[Formula: see text]), relevant electrochemical cycling stability (5000 cycles, 89.2% of capacitance retention at 5[Formula: see text]A[Formula: see text]g[Formula: see text]) and high power/energy density (42.8[Formula: see text]W[Formula: see text]h[Formula: see text]kg[Formula: see text] at 1249[Formula: see text]W[Formula: see text]kg[Formula: see text]). Therefore, the facile synthesis approach and superb electrochemical performance ensure that the walnut shells-derived porous carbon is a promising electrode material candidate for supercapacitors.