Waste Bakelite Board Derived Activated Carbon for Supercapacitor Electrode

Abstract

The low biodegradability of Bakelite waste raises concerns for the environment as it is typically dumped in landfills. Herein we present regenerated activated carbon (AC) prepared from waste Bakelite board. Preparation of the ACs involves carbonization and KOH activation. Afterwards, the as-made AC were doped with N urea and subsequently pyrolyzed at high temperature. The resulting AC, with and without N-doping have been evaluated in supercapacitor. We demonstrate an N-doped AC that exhibits a specific capacitance (C sp ) as high as 203.0 F g −1 at 0.5 A g −1 and retains 93.1% of the C sp after 5000 galvanostatic charge discharge (GCD) cycles at 3 A g −1 . We also show that a symmetric supercapacitor exhibits a maximum energy density of 10.3 Wh kg −1 at 250 W kg −1 . In general, our work shows a cost-effective approach towards high-performance waste-regenerated ACs.