Preparation, characterization and some electrochemical study of waste derived iron Oxide-Carbon nanocomposite

Abstract

Utilization of nanoparticles have seen significant growth as a filler material in different technological and product development. Iron oxide particles are found important due to their special characteristics such as; natural high abundance, low cost, robustness, low toxicity, high surface to volume ratio etc. The preparation of iron oxide nanoparticles using Wealth out of Waste (WoW) process is gaining much interest due to the economic point of view and environmental concern. In the current work, iron oxide nanoparticles with size 46 nm have been prepared by chemical method, using waste iron scrap obtained from mechanical lathe machines. Waste plastic and iron oxide nanoparticles, has been utilized in the pyrolysis process at 700 °C in a fixed bed pyrolysis reactor to prepare iron oxide–carbon composite. The electrochemical study of the composite was carried out and achieved specific capacitance to be 150 F/g and energy density to be 187.50 Wh/kg, which is comparable or even better than some other composite such as Fe3O4/CNT composite, Fe2O3 nanotube arrays, FeOOH rods and Fe3O4/CNF composite. The prepared Fe3O4-carbon composite is significant for reducing plastic waste, iron waste and providing low cost energy storage material.