Few people have ever imagined that the remains of a chicken meal could be used for a hi-tech battery product. However, a group of researchers at the Yeungnam University in South Korea, have found a technique to convert chicken fat into carbon-based electrodes for supercapacitors, which store energy and power LEDs.
The scientists describe their method in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. The demand has increased for affordable, long-term, and environmentally friendly synthesised carbon-based materials. An easy way of synthesising low-cost carbon nanomaterials without the need for high-temperature processing approach is critical for energy storage applications.
The researchers synthesised multilayered graphitic carbon nano-onions (CNOs) using an oil-wick flame pyrolysis approach, employing biowaste (chicken fat) oil as a cost-effective precursor. The prepared CNOs can provide enhanced ion movement and less resistance for electron transport by interconnecting CNO particles with one another. Furthermore, heteroatom (S,N)-doped CNOs (h-CNOs) were synthesised to optimise the hydrophilic and conductive properties of carbon materials, which eventually exalted the capacitive charge transfer kinetics. The h-CNOs demonstrated superior, highest specific capacitance of 261F/g, while the undoped CNOs showed a capacitance of 180.6F/g at a current density of 1A/g.
In addition to capacitance, the h-CNOs also demonstrated a rate capability of 69% and a good cycling stability of 97.5% under high current densities. An asymmetric supercapacitor was fabricated using the h-CNOs as the negative and MnCo2S4 (MCS) as the positive electrode. The device showed high energy and power performance of 32.8Wh/kg and 7350W/kg, respectively, with a capacitance retention of 97% over 5000 cycles.
The conclusion from the study is that the facile strategic way to produce novel carbonaceous materials derived from biowaste oil (chicken fat oil), could be considered a potential advantage for commercial energy storage devices. It may open the door to producing inexpensive, industrially revolutionising energy storage devices.
