Converting Polyvinyl Chloride Plastic Wastes to Carbonaceous Materials via Room-Temperature Dehalogenation for High-Performance Supercapacitor

Abstract

Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastics are widely applicable in our daily life; however, their overuse and extremely high resistance to recycling/disposal have caused serious challenges to our environment. In this study, we proposed an effective and green method to convert PVC plastics to carbonaceous materials via KOH-assisted room-temperature dehalogenation, along with the formation of clean byproducts of KCl and H2O. Thereof, high-quality porous carbon materials are obtainable through performing simple annealing on the above-mentioned carbonaceous materials. The as-resulted carbon materials derived from PVC plastics were fabricated into electrodes for supercapacitor application. Remarkably, the porous carbon material derived from PVC plastic wrap (PW-C) exhibited excellent performance for aqueous symmetric supercapacitor. The specific capacitance reached up to 399 and 363 F g–1 (at 1.0 A g–1) in 6.0 mol L–1 KOH and 1.0 mol L–1 H2SO4 electrolytes, respectively. Meanwhile, PW-C showed very good rate capability and cycling stability in both electrolytes. Therefore, our developed method is capable of treating PVC plastic wastes safely and efficiently and converting them into valued-added porous carbon electrode materials, which may find very soon practical implantations.