Active materials from agro-industrial waste for its application in lithium batteries electrodes

R. M. HUMANA; ANA JULIA FILIPPIN; LUIS L. BARRIONUEVO; A. CUENCA; GABRIEL CORREA; VISINTIN A.

Antofagasta

Congreso; International Workshop od Lithium Industrial Minerals and Energy (IWLIME 2020).; 2020

International Workshop od Lithium Industrial Minerals and Energy (IWLIME 2020).

The current power supplies are mainly based on limited and nonrenewable fossil fuels. To build a sustainable future, energy source needs to be non-fossil-based, ideally, it should be reliable, affordable and inexhaustible. Therefore, it is essential to explore natural and renewable energy sources to take place of those classical fossil sources, encouraging us to seek greener and more efficient energy technologies to meet the increasing energy demands. Energy conversion and storage plays the key role in achieving global energy sustainability. To date, numerous energy conversion and storage technologies, such as solar cell, fly wheel, compressed air, fuel cell, supercapacitor and battery, have been developed with the goal of utilizing sustainable energy sources, such as solar, wind, geothermal, tidal or biomass energy [1]. Supercapacitors and batteries have been proven to be the most effective electrochemical energy conversion and storage devices for practical application. The breakthroughs in electrode materials design hold the key to next-generation energy storage devices. Ideally, energy storage materials are produced by using renewable resources via simple, low cost and environmentally friendly methods, with controllable morphologies, rich porosity, modified surface chemistry and appropriate functionalities. Much effort is being devoted to designing and synthesizing high-performance, sustainable electrode materials. Carbon materials are playing important roles for energy storage. Graphite is a widely used anode material for commercial lithium-ion batteries which have been regarded as the best energy storage sources for portable electronics and electric vehicles. In addition, plenty of carbon materials ranging from classic activated carbons (ACs) to nanostructured carbons have also been used as electrode materials for supercapacitors to push up their energy densities [2]. Naturally abundant biomass resources often possess hierarchical structures, such as hierarchically porous organization and periodic pattern, which exhibit huge potential to derive advanced carbon materials with desired properties for supercapacitors and batteries On the other hand, biomass resources are recyclable and highly accessible, which can be not only transformed into biofuel (e.g. bioethanol and biodiesel) to replace the fossil fuels , but also converted into ?green? carbon materials by physical activation, chemical activation or hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) methods. The residual biomass from the olive grove and the olive oil industry provides a raw material available to obtain activated carbon.