PREPARATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF POROUS CARBON FROM RICE HUSK APPLIED FOR ELECTRODE MATERIALS

Abstract

Rice husk (RH) was used as the precursor for porous carbon preparation applying as electrode materials. Porous carbon was synthesized by pyrolysis of RH under inert gas atmosphere followed by hydrothermal treatment in NaOH to remove the silica fraction and K2CO3 activation to increase porosity of archived carbon. The temperature of RH decomposition was determined by the thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA) method in the nitrogen atmosphere. The performance of porous carbon and C-SiOx were examined using Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) measurement and Scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The electrochemical characterizations of the synthesized materials were analyzed using cyclic voltammetry (CV) and chronopotentiometry techniques. The effect of parameters of hydrothermal and activation steps on the capacity of these porous carbons were researched. The activated porous carbon which obtained by K2CO3 activation at 9000C in 2 hours has high specific surface area (SBET = 769.3 m2/g). Specific capacitance of the as-prepare electrode is 116.2 F.g-1 at scan rate of 5 mV/s. Therefore, as-prepared porous carbon from RH would be proper candidate for application as electrode material.