Electrochemical Energy Storage Potentials of Waste Biomass: Oil Palm Leaf- and Palm Kernel Shell-Derived Activated Carbons

Abstract

In this study, activated carbons (ACs) were produced from oil palm leaves (OPL) and palm kernel shells (PKS) using different concentrations (0%, 11%, and 33%) of H3PO4 as the activating agent. The Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) results indicated that surface area decreases with the decreasing of the concentration of the H3PO4 in the following order: AC from oil palm leaves was (OPLAC-0% H3PO4) < (OPLAC-11% H3PO4) < (OPLAC-33% H3PO4), with the BET surface area values of 37, 760, and 780 m2/g, respectively. Similarly, the PKS-derived AC followed the same trend of (PKSAC-0% H3PO4) < (PKSAC-11% H3PO4) < (PKSAC-33% H3PO4), with the BET surface area values of 3, 52, and 1324 m2/g, respectively. Based on this finding, it was observed that H3PO4 had exhibited an influential role on enhancing the surface properties of the AC. On the contrary, it slightly decreased the graphitic trait of the AC by considering their IG/ID trends, which were generated from the Raman spectral analysis. The energy storage capacity of the AC was further tested using cyclic voltammetry. Three of the samples were found to have high capacitance values of 434 F g−1, 162 F g−1, and 147 F g−1 at 5 mVs−1. The first (434 F g−1) is much higher than the specific capacitance value (343 F g−1) of the only oil palm leaf-derived porous carbon nanoparticles ever reported in the literature.

Palm Kernel Shell as an effective adsorbent for the treatment of heavy metal contaminated water

“…Palm Kernel shell (PKS) is the sustainable source and usually it is burned to dispose causing greenhouse effect and resulting in a negative impact to the environment. A lot of research efforts are being done to recycle and utilize the agricultural waste for the betterment instead of open burning which making a negative impact to the environment and causing ozone layer depletion 15 . Application of agricultural waste as an adsorbent for the removal of pollutants, especially heavy metal ions from water and that is a cost effective and eco-friendly technique for the treatment of heavy metal ions contaminated water.…”

Electrochemically Reduced Titania Nanotube Synthesized from Glycerol-Based Electrolyte as Supercapacitor Electrode

“…Despite a monumental effort made by governments and policy makers around the world to address energy and environmental issues, the global energy crisis still remains humanity's concern, owing to the rapidly growing population and sustainability issues associated with fossil fuel reserves. Thus, the increased demand for environmentally-friendly, good-performance and renewable energy storage devices [1,2]. Storage systems, based on electrochemical reactions such as batteries and supercapacitors for renewable energy technologies, have tremendous advantages due to their high quality in energy storage and delivering on demand and in load levelling of the electrical grid [3].…”

Preparation of shape-stabilized phase change material by the valorization of oil palm waste: Reduced graphene oxide-activated carbon derived carbon matrix for thermal energy storage

“…As a facile and scalable production process, first, graphene oxide was prepared as described by Marcano et al (2010), with a slight modification as previously reported (Nasir et al 2017(Nasir et al , 2018. Briefly, the EFB-derived graphite-like powder (3 g) was mixed with concentrated H2SO4/H3PO4 (360:40 mL), and 18 g of KMnO4 was gradually added to the mixture, raising the temperature of the reaction mixture to 35 to 40 °C.…”