Manufacturing Carbon Material by Carbonization of Cellulosic Palm Oil Waste for Supercapacitor Material

Abstract

Palm oil waste as biomass resources in Indonesia were not fully utilized. One of the product that can be made from oil palm biomass is activated carbon. Activated carbon characteristic with high porosity and good conductivity, made activated carbon suitable as supercapacitor electrode material. Activated carbon preparation consists of two main steps that are carbonization and activation. In this research carbonization carried out by hydrothermal process while activation conducted by physcal activation. This research focused on manufacturing activated carbon from palm oil waste by hydrothermal carbonization for supercapacitor application. Activated carbon produced from empty fruit bunch have a surface area of 330 – 1181 m2/gr, pore volume of 0.19 – 0.69 cm3/gr, and pore size of 2.1 – 2.3 nm. While activated carbon produced from oil palm shell have surface area of 8 – 451 m2/gr, pore volume 0.05 – 1.064 cm3/gr, and pore size 2.9 – 20.7 nm. The crystallinity of the activated carbon obtained ranged from 46.5 to 51.9%. In this study, the activated carbon is used as a working electrode on an asymmetric hybrid supercapacitor with nickel oxide being used as second electrode. This palm oil-based supercapacitor cell has a capacitance of 1.7554 F/g.