Biochar as a Renewable Substitute for Carbon Black in Lithium-Ion Battery Electrodes

Abstract

Lignin-derived biochar was prepared and characterized toward potential applications as a conductive electrode additive and active lithium host material within lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). This biochar was specifically selected for its high electrical conductivity, which is comparable to that of common conductive carbon black standards (e.g., Super P). Owing to its high electrical conductivity, this biochar serves as an effective conductive additive within electrodes comprising graphite as the active material, demonstrating slightly improved cell efficiency and rate capability over those of electrodes using carbon black as the additive. Despite its effectiveness as a conductive additive in LIB anodes, preliminary results show that the biochar developed in this work is not suitable as a direct replacement for carbon black as a conductive additive in LiFePO4 cathodes. This latter insufficiency may be due to differences in particle geometry between biochar and carbon black; further optimization is necessary to permit the application of biochar as a general-purpose conductive additive in LIBs. Nevertheless, these investigations combined with an assessment of greenhouse gas emissions from biochar production show that replacing carbon black with biochar can be an effective method to improve the sustainability of LIBs.

Highly conductive biocarbon nanostructures from burlap waste as sustainable additives for supercapacitor electrodes

“…[15][16][17] However, they have not been used as the conductive additives (which are used up to 10% of the electrode composition) due to their inadequate electrical conductivity. Recently, Kane et al 18 reported effective utilization of biochar as a renewable substitute for commercial carbon black due to its higher electrical conductivity for the fabrication of electrodes for Li ion batteries. Biocarbons made from biomass materials can exhibit superior features compared to the carbon black, not only in terms of green and sustainability perspectives but also in terms of their high electrical conductivities.…”

Capillary Evaporation on High‐Dense Conductive Ramie Carbon for Assisting Highly Volumetric‐Performance Supercapacitors

“…[20] Recently, conductive biomass carbon with the resistivity of lower than 1 Ω cm possessed the advantages of higher tap density (>0.4 cm 3 g −1 ) than commercialized Super-C45 (0.16 cm 3 g −1 ). [21,22] Their conductivities could be mainly ascribed to surface chemical composition, aggregate structure, porosity, and microcrystalline morphology. [23] Among them, the rearrangement and growth of graphite-like microcrystals would tremendously restrict the rapid movement of 𝜋 electrons.…”

Using Aquatic Plant-Derived Biochars as Carbon Materials for the Negative Electrodes of Li-Ion Batteries

“…Depending on the type of biomass, the resulting carbon material may have a different structure, porosity, and composition [17]. An analysis of the literature shows that various types of biomass can be used to prepare biochar for use as a negative electrode material for metal ion batteries: coniferous and broadleaf wood [18,19], lignin [20], herbal plants (for example, bamboo [21] and cotton [22]), starch [23], coconut husks [24,25], banana peel [26,27], rice husks [28,29], grapefruit [30], hairs [31], various aquatic plants, [32] and even leather production waste [33]. The improvement in the electrochemical characteristics of biochar compared to those of graphite is explained by its large specific surface area (100-3000 m 2 g −1 ), making it possible to achieve a specific capacity of 200-800 mAh g −1 after 100 charge/discharge cycles [4,19,22,30,32].…”