Porous Carbon Derived from Salacca Peel Synthesized Under Hydrothermal Condition Followed By Microwave Assisted Chemical Activation As Lithium Ion Capacitor’s Electrode

Porous carbonaceous materials have been utilized in a wide variety of high performance energy storage, i.e. as an electrode for batteries and supercapacitors. It has advantageous such as simple synthetic process and abundant raw material, excellent conductivity, outstanding physical and chemical stability in strong acid and base electrolyte etc. The waste biomass should be the best candidate for porous carbon in term of availability and price. In addition, it is also viewed as a veritable way of combating waste disposal problem in the agricultural industries. Salacca peel is a good candidate for biomass precursor since it is abundant in quantity and is not utilized properly. The hydrothermal condition (225 o C, 5 hr, 50 bar) was utilized to carbonized salacca peel into hydrochar in the presence and absence of ceria catalyst. Hydrochar was activated using microwave assisted chemical activation with potassium hydroxide (KOH) as an activated agent. The obtained carbon materials were characterized using scanning electron microscope (SEM), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) and the performance of the material in Li half-cell system was evaluated by cyclic voltammetry (CV), galvanostatic charge discharge (GCD) and Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS). The results show that BET surface area as well as specific capacitance of porous carbon synthesized in the presence of catalyst was much higher compare to that of commercial as well as without catalyst.