Hemp-derived activated carbons for supercapacitors

By Wei Sun and Stephen M. Lipka and Christopher Swartz and David Williams and Fuqian Yang
Published in Carbon NULL 2016

Abstract

Activated carbons are prepared from raw hemp stem (hurd and bast) via hydrothermal processing and chemical activation. Both hemp bast and hemp hurd are converted into activated carbons of low-dimensional structures under certain experimental conditions. The experimental results show that hemp hurd is a better precursor than hemp bast for the preparation of activated carbons. The activated carbons are used to construct the electrodes of supercapacitor cells. The electrochemical performance of the activated carbons used in the supercapacitor cells is dependent on hydrothermal processing conditions and the mass ratio of KOH/biochar in the chemical activation. Excellent electrochemical performance metrics are achieved, including a specific capacitance of 160

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