Gasification waste,
also known as carbon soot, is solid industrial
waste from the bottom residual of an oil refinery and contains a substantial
amount of toxic vanadium. In this work, we report an environmentally
responsible pathway to harvest toxic vanadium from gasification waste,
and the extracted vanadium can be utilized to synthesize high-purity
V2O5 nanosheets for the fabrication of flexible,
bendable, efficient supercapacitors. The carbonaceous waste was first
rinsed with alkaline solution to leach out toxic vanadium. The vanadium-rich
leachate was next utilized to synthesize high-quality V2O5 crystals with comparable purity (>98%) and crystallinity
to commercial products. Two-dimensional V2O5 nanosheets were further crystallized by hydrothermal treatment for
the fabrication of high-performance electrochemical electrodes. The
V2O5 electrodes derived from gasification waste
demonstrated similar specific capacitance (172 F g–1) to those from commercial V2O5 (173 F g–1). The waste-derived V2O5 nanosheets
were further mixed with leached carbon nanoparticles for the fabrication
of a symmetric, bendable, and flexible supercapacitor. The waste-derived
V2O5 supercapacitor was able to be bent up to
160° and retained its specific capacitance. An environmental
impact assessment was finally conducted to evaluate the environmental
impacts of producing V2O5 crystals from gasification
waste (in terms of the damage to human health, ecosystem diversity,
and resource availability). The waste-derived approach was compared
with traditional mining processes and showed a large improvement in
all three endpoint damage categories.