CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

With the need to move towards renewable sources and away from fossil fuels, the development of new advanced energy storage systems is crucial. These must overcome the limitations of current commercial lithium-ion batteries and address environmental concerns related to CO2 emissions, climate change, and resource scarcity by finding more sustainable, cost-effective, safe, and efficient compounds [1]. Therefore, one of the lines of scientific research focuses on the development of cathode materials for metal-sulfur batteries, with a particular focus on the use of biochars and activated carbons derived from by-products generated in the agri-food industry, lending themselves as a cost-effective, sustainable, and efficient carbon source to host sulfur, which is an abundant, inexpensive, and easily prepared element.This work has focused specifically on the conversion of two agri-food by-products (Figure 1): (i) beer bagasse (BGZ) [2], and (ii) pistachio shells (CP) [3] into biochar through a simple, fast, and scalable thermal treatment. In obtaining biochar from BGZ, the process only requires a direct pyrolysis step in an inert atmosphere. However, in the case of CP, the preparation of biochar requires 3 stages: (a) activation of the CP with potassium hydroxide (KOH) in a dry process, (b) pyrolysis similar to that mentioned above for BGZ, and (c) purification with citric acid, obtaining an activated carbon. The obtained biochars present a high degree of disorder, high carbon content, and remarkable textural properties (1529 m2 ·g-1 for CP and 433 m2·g-1 for BGZ), which make them suitable for use as porous conductive matrices capable of hosting sulfur and being electrochemically active. Thus, these materials could be useful for the development of sustainable and efficient cathodes for Metal-S (Lithium-S and Sodium-S) batteries.

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