Physico-chemical characterization of activated carbon synthesized from Datura metel’s peels and comparative capacitive performance analysis in acidic electrolytes and ionic liquids

Abstract Oxygen-rich biomass-derived activated carbon is synthesized for electrode materials using Datura metel peels as precursor. Herein, a simple approach activation and carbonization at the same time is utilized to synthesize activated carbon. The as-prepared material exhibits high BET surface area ~ 818 m2/g and high mesopores volume ~ 0.85 cm3/g. Owing to its high oxygen content, supercapacitor was fabricated using the as-prepared activated carbon as electrode material. The calculated value of specific capacitance is 76.4 F/g in the potential window of 0.8V at scan rate of 20 mV/s using 1M sulfuric acid (H2SO4) as aqueous electrolyte, revealing good electrochemical performance of prepared electrode material. Furthermore, the assembled cell in the potential range 0-0.8V yields an energy density of 6.79 × 10−3 Wh/g at power density 24.45 W/g. According to the above features, it can be suggested that datura metel peel is a low cost, and green renewable candidate for the synthesis of activated carbon for its application as electrode material for high efficiency supercapacitor application.