Preparation and electrochemical properties of biochar from pyrolysis of pomelo peel via different methods

Abstract

Dried pomelo peel waste was employed as raw material and heated separately via three different thermal treatment methods which are vacuum tube furnace (700 °C, 300 ∼ 1 × 10−5 Pa), muffle furnace (300 °C in air) and hydrothermal treatment in an oven (200 °C, sealed). Therefore, three kinds of amorphous porous carbon were obtained and named as S1, S2 and S3, respectively. XRD, SEM, EDS, specific surface area and pore size analyzer have been used to characterize the morphology, composition and porosity of the biochar materials which show 3 dimensional porous framework morphologies, but only S1 possesses highest specific surface area (464.96m2/g) among the 3 biochar materials. The electrochemical properties were characterized via galvanostatic charge/discharge method, cyclic voltammetry (CV) and AC impedance. After 100 cycles of charge and discharge process, the specific capacity of the biochar S1 maintained 297.0mAh/g. The specific capacity of S2 was 103.3mAh/g and the specific capacity of S3 is 106.0mAh/g. Thus, S1 exhibits a high specific surface area and excellent electrochemical performance which may have potential application due to low cost of the biochar prepared from pomelo peel wastes.