Tobacco Waste Biomass for Electrochemical Energy Storage Application

A large amount of industrial and agricultural wastes are generated in the tobacco industry, such as tobacco steams, tobacco stalks, and tobacco leaves. How to increase the economic added value of industrial and agricultural wastes is an important issue. It is a promising value-added way that these biological wastes are recycled into carbon materials with excellent electrochemical properties. Herein, biochar were prepared from tobacco waste biomass (mainly tobacco stems, tobacco stalks and tobacco leaves) through one-step carbonization. The as-obtained biochar exhibited high specific capacitance of 305.92 F·g −1 (tobacco stems), 328.07 F·g −1 (tobacco stalks), and 272.48 F·g −1 (tobacco leaves) at 1 A·g −1 , when tested in a three-electrode system with 6 M KOH electrolyte. This study highlights the possibility of reusing tobacco waste to produce low-cost, green and high-performance carbon-based electrode materials for sustainable electrochemical energy storage systems.