Oxygen-rich hierarchical porous carbon derived from biomass waste-kapok flower for supercapacitor electrode

Abstract Rational utilization of biomass waste into usable energy is of great significance. In this work, a facile method was proposed to prepare porous carbon as supercapacitor electrode by using biomass waste-kapok flower as a precursor. The obtained porous carbon exhibited hierarchical pores rich in microporous and mesoporous, containing oxygen from kapok flowers. The optimal porous carbon ACF-4.5, which was achieved with a mass ratio of KOH to the precursor obtained from kapok flower was 4.5:1, showed a remarkable electrochemical performance with a capacitance as high as 286.8 F/g at 1 A/g current density. It was worth noting that the capacitance retention rate can still reach 97.4% after 5000 cycles, which indicated that the ACF-4.5 supercapacitor electrode has excellent cyclic stability. Therefore, a strategy that not only utilizes biomass waste, but also produces high-performance supercapacitor electrode in industry effectively was realized.