Abstract
Production of Activated Carbon Electrode for Energy Storage Application in Supercapacitors via KOH Activation of Waste Termite Biomass
Highlights
The hump which appeared over the temperature range of 200 – 500 oC showed that release of volatile materials such as CO, CO2 and CH4 was preceded by an exothermic reaction
The morphology, structure and surface chemistry of the optimal activated carbon sample were analyzed using standard analytical equipment, and the results showed that termite-based activated carbon can be used for energy storage in supercapacitor
Electrochemical experiments were later performed on the activated carbon electrode in 1 M H2SO4 aqueous and 1 M EMImBF4 ionic liquid electrolytes
Summary
Despite the food, feed and medicinal potentials of termites [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12], different studies have reported that termites have devastating effects on woody materials [13], contribute to the rising levels of atmospheric CO2 and CH4 [14] and constitute some health risks (such as allergies, microbial contamination, parasitic and chemical hazards) when consumed as food [15,16,17,18,19]. In order to promote the non-food potentials of termites and stall the contribution of termite activities to the rising levels of CO2 and CH4 in the atmosphere, Brune [20] showed that the enzymatic systems of some species of termites hold great potentials for biotechnological applications for the production of new enzymes. To further investigate the non-food potentials of termites, the present work studies the potential for the production of termite-based activated carbon electrode for energy storage application in supercapacitors. Some research efforts have been made to improve the energy density of supercapacitors by either identifying new electrode materials with improved electrochemical properties or re-engineering the structural properties of existing electrode materials such as carbon nanomaterials, conducting polymers, transition metal oxides and waste biomass [28,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44]
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