{"id":17612,"date":"2013-10-28T03:06:42","date_gmt":"2013-10-28T01:06:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.innovations-report.de\/html\/berichte\/energie_elektrotechnik\/team_forest_waste_develop_cheaper_greener_221775.html"},"modified":"2013-10-27T10:50:21","modified_gmt":"2013-10-27T08:50:21","slug":"team-uses-forest-waste-develop-cheaper-greener-supercapacitors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/team-uses-forest-waste-develop-cheaper-greener-supercapacitors\/","title":{"rendered":"Team uses forest waste to develop cheaper, greener supercapacitors"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Bildschirmfoto
Any kind of wood can be made into biochar by heating in a low-oxygen chamber. Some types of wood work better than others. Pictured, left to right, are white birch, white pine and red cedar. (Photo by L. Brian Stauffer)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. \u2014 Researchers report that wood-biochar supercapacitors can produce as much power as today\u2019s activated-carbon supercapacitors at a fraction of the cost \u2013 and with environmentally friendly byproducts.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cSupercapacitors are power devices very similar to our batteries,\u201d said study leader Junhua Jiang, a senior research engineer at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center at the University of Illinois. While batteries rely on chemical reactions to produce sustained electrical energy, supercapacitors collect charged ions on their electrodes (in this case, the biochar), and quickly release those ions during discharge. This allows them to supply energy in short, powerful bursts \u2013 during a camera flash, for example, or in response to peak demand on the energy grid, Jiang said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSupercapacitors are ideal for applications needing instant power and can even provide constant power \u2013 like batteries, but at lower cost,\u201d he said. They are useful in transportation, electronics and solar- and wind-power energy storage and distribution.<\/p>\n

Many of today\u2019s supercapacitors use activated carbon \u2013 usually from a fossil-fuel source, Jiang said.<\/p>\n

\u201cCostly and complicated procedures are normally used to develop the microstructures of the carbon \u2013 to increase the number of pores and optimize the pore network,\u201d he said. \u201cThis increases the surface area of the electrode and the pores\u2019 ability to rapidly capture and release the ions.\u201d<\/p>\n

In wood-biochar supercapacitors, the wood\u2019s natural pore structure serves as the electrode surface, eliminating the need for advanced techniques to fabricate an elaborate pore structure. Wood biochar is produced by heating wood in low oxygen.<\/p>\n

The pore sizes and configurations in some woods are ideal for fast ion transport, Jiang said. The new study used red cedar, but several other woods such as maple and cherry also work well.<\/p>\n

Expensive and corrosive chemicals are often used to prepare the activated carbon used in supercapacitors, giving the electrodes the physical and chemical properties they need to function well, Jiang said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe use of those chemicals will probably impose some environmental impacts,\u201d he said. \u201cThis should be avoided or at least substantially reduced.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jiang and his team activated their biochar with mild nitric acid, which washed away the ash (calcium carbonate, potassium carbonate and other impurities) in the biochar. The byproduct of this process has a beneficial use, Jiang said: The resulting solution of nitrate compounds can be used as fertilizer.<\/p>\n

These simple approaches dramatically cut the material and environmental costs of assembling supercapacitors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe material costs of producing wood-biochar supercapacitors are five to 10 times lower than those associated with activated carbon,\u201d Jiang said. And when a biochar supercapacitor has reached the end of its useful life, the electrodes can be crushed and used as an organic soil amendment that increases fertility.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe performance of our biochar materials is comparable to the performance of today\u2019s advanced carbon materials, including carbon nanotubes and graphenes,\u201d Jiang said. \u201cWe can achieve comparable performance with much less cost and probably much lower environmental costs.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Illinois Hazardous Waste Research Fund and the HeteroFoaM Center (an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy\u2019s Office of Basic Research) supported this study (award #DESC0001061).<\/p>\n

The Illinois Sustainability Technology Center is part of the Prairie Research Institute<\/a> at the U. of I.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Energie und Elektrotechnik] The report appears in the journal Electrochimica Acta.“Supercapacitors …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[],"supplier":[5821,150,11236],"class_list":["post-17612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","supplier-sustainable-technology-center","supplier-university-of-illinois","supplier-u-s-department-of-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17612\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17612"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=17612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}