Simple and sustainable preparation of non‐activated porous carbon from brewing waste for high‐performance lithium–sulfur batteries

TESIO, ALVARO Y.; GÓMEZ-CAMER, JUAN LUIS; MORALES, JULIÁN; CABALLERO, ALVARO

CHEMSUSCHEM

WILEY-V C H VERLAG GMBH

Año: 2020

1864-5631

The development of renewable energy sources requires theparallel development of sustainable energy storage systemsbecause of its noncontinuous production. Even the most-usedbattery on the planet, the lithium-ion battery, is reaching itstechnological limit. In light of this, lithium?sulfur batterieshave emerged as one of the most promising technologies toaddress this problem. The use of biomass to produce cathodesfor these batteries addresses not only the aforementionedproblem, but it also reduces the carbon footprint and givesadded value to something normally considered waste. Here,the production, by simple and nonactivating pyrolysis, of acarbon material using the abundant ?after-boiling waste? derivedfrom beer brewing is reported. After adding a high sulfurloading (70%) to this biowaste-derived carbon by the ?meltdiffusion? method, the sulfur?carbon composite is used as aneffective cathode in Li?S batteries. The cathode shows excellentperformance, reaching high capacity values with longtermcyclability at high current?847 mAhg1 at 1C,586 mAhg1 at 2C, and even 498 mAhg1 at 5C after400 cycles?drastically reducing capacity loss to values approaching0.01% per cycle. This work demonstrates the possibilityof obtaining low-cost, highly sustainable cathodic materialsfor the design of advanced energy storage systems.