Willow Bark for Sustainable Energy Storage Systems

Abstract

Willow bark is a byproduct from forestry and is obtained at an industrial scale. We upcycled this byproduct in a two-step procedure into sustainable electrode materials for symmetrical supercapacitors using organic electrolytes. The procedure employed precarbonization followed by carbonization using different types of KOH activation protocols. The obtained electrode materials had a hierarchically organized pore structure and featured a high specific surface area (>2500 m2 g−1) and pore volume (up to 1.48 cm3 g−1). The assembled supercapacitors exhibited capacitances up to 147 F g−1 in organic electrolytes concomitant with excellent cycling performance over 10,000 cycles at 0.6 A g−1 using coin cells. The best materials exhibited a capacity retention of 75% when changing scan rates from 2 to 100 mV s−1.

Salix spp. Bark Hot Water Extracts Show Antiviral, Antibacterial, and Antioxidant Activities—The Bioactive Properties of 16 Clones

“…To fully utilize willows’ biomass, both bark and stem wood must be separately valorized ( Dou et al, 2016 ). Carbonized willow bark and wood can be used in supercapacitors ( Phiri et al, 2019 ; Hobisch et al, 2020 ) and fiber composites ( Dou et al, 2019 ). The cascading use of biomass would be preferential.…”

Transforming Waste Poly(Ethylene Terephthalate) into Nitrogen Doped Carbon Nanotubes and Its Utility in Oxygen Reduction Reaction and Bisphenol-A Removal from Contaminated Water

“…Since, the earliest description of hydrothermal carbonization of cellulose by Bergius [4], many plant and animal based precursors have been carbonized to engineered carbons. Agro-based precursors such as sucrose [5], glucose [6], fructose [7], common sugar [8], ligno-cellulosic biomasses like bio-refinery residue [9], furfural manufacture waste [10], tamarind wood [11], willow bark [12], olive pomace [13], etc. Besides there are reports on carbonization of polymeric materials such as polypyrrole [14], polymer blends like poly(acrylonitrile)/poly(vinylidene Fluoride) [15] and co-polymers like poly(aniline-co-p-phenylenediamine) [16], etc.…”

Sweet Side Streams: Sugar Beet Pulp as Source for High-Performance Supercapacitor Electrodes

“…The activated carbons were synthesized using a precarbonization step, followed by activation using solid KOH according to literature procedures. , The characterization of the samples before and after carbonization is displayed in Figure . In both precursor materials (BP-MOL and BP-UNM), the cellular structure of beet pulp is clearly visible (Figure a,d).…”