Food waste-derived activated carbon for supercapacitors

Abstract

This research investigates the utilization of activated carbon synthesized from food waste biomass, specifically, peels of orange, apple, cucumber, and onion, as electrode materials for high-performance supercapacitor applications. The peels were first pre-carbonized at 600 °C and then activated at 700 °C with KOH. The research involved developing a supercapacitor using the synthesized activated carbon as the electrode material and 6 M KOH as the electrolyte. The results indicated that electrodes made from orange peel, apple peel, cucumber peel, and onion peel exhibited specific capacitances of 238.5 F/g, 201.2 F/g, 236.9 F/g, and 118.9 F/g, respectively, at a current density of 1 A/g. When the current density was increased to 2 A/g, the elec-trodes maintained up to 90% of their capacitance.