Affiliations 

  • 1 School of Applied Physics, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia
Bioresour Technol, 2013 Mar;132:254-61.
PMID: 23411456 DOI: 10.1016/j.biortech.2013.01.044

Abstract

Fibres from oil palm empty fruit bunches, generated in large quantities by palm oil mills, were processed into self-adhesive carbon grains (SACG). Untreated and KOH-treated SACG were converted without binder into green monolith prior to N2-carbonisation and CO2-activation to produce highly porous binderless carbon monolith electrodes for supercapacitor applications. Characterisation of the pore structure of the electrodes revealed a significant advantage from combining the chemical and physical activation processes. The electrochemical measurements of the supercapacitor cells fabricated using these electrodes, using cyclic voltammetry, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and galvanostatic charge-discharge techniques consistently found that approximately 3h of activation time, achieved via a multi-step heating profile, produced electrodes with a high surface area of 1704m(2)g(-1) and a total pore volume of 0.889cm(3)g(-1), corresponding to high values for the specific capacitance, specific energy and specific power of 150Fg(-1), 4.297Whkg(-1) and 173Wkg(-1), respectively.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.