Orange Peel Derived Activated Carbon for Supercapacitor Electrode Material

The study of processing biomass waste into porous carbon materials as active electrode materials for energy storage applications has been the subject of immense research interest due to its low cost, abundance of raw materials and environmental friendliness. In this work, orange peel-derived porous carbon material has been produced via carbonization followed by chemical activation with KOH (KOPC). The synthesized materials were characterized using different characterization techniques. Microstructural features confirm that the porous structure has pores in the KOPC material. The Fourier transform infrared and Raman analysis revealed that various functional groups, defects and pores exist in the KOPC sample, which could minimize the diffusion length and facilitate the ion diffusion path for improved electrochemical performances. The electrochemical measurements of KOPC were performed as electrode material with an extended and optimized potential window of 0.0 to −1.2 V. The KOPC-based electrode shows a specific capacitance of 267 F/g at 3 A/g with excellent coulombic efficiency and good cycling stability over 5000 charge–discharge cycles at 50 A/g. Thus, this study will utilize biomass wastes to make efficient energy storage devices.