Preparation and Electrochemical Property of Gulfweed-based Super Activated Carbon for Supercapacitor

Abstract

Gulfweed was used as raw material, and KOH activation method was adopted for producing activated carbons with high specific surface area.The prepared super activated carbon not only has large specific surface area, rich pore structure, but also reduces the production cost of activated carbon by using algae as precursor material. In order to explore the experimental approaches and technological conditions, single factor method was used to analyze the influence of impregnation ratio, activation time and activation temperature on specific surface area, pore structure and surface properties, and the electrochemical performance of super-capacitor based on the prepared activated carbon was studied. Measurements such as N2 adsorption, XRD, SEM, constant current charge-discharge techniques, and the cyclic voltammetry were carried out to investigate specific surface area, pore structure and electrochemical performance. The results show:the best preparation condition is concluded as:impregnation ratio at 4:1, activation time for 120 min and activation temperature at 800℃, on the occasion, the largest specific surface area is 2926m2/g, and the biggest pore volume is 1.536cm3/g with all the pore diameters almost under 4nm evenly. The super-capacitor has a large specific capacitance as 358.5F/g in the 6mol/L KOH electrolyte, which means a very good performance.

Keywords

• KOH activation
• gulfweed-based super activated carbon
• supercapacitor
• electrochemical performance