Experimental analysis of bamboo groundnut shell and tyre derived biochar for supercapacitor electrode applications

To achieve clean energy demands, as well as cut down on dependence on exhaustible resources and limit environmental impact, there is the need to develop sustainable material energy storage of high performance. Biochar derived from bamboo, ground nutshell and waste tyre rubber were explored in this work as the sustainable electrode material to use in supercapacitors. Pyrolysis of the biochar was conducted under controlled thermal conditions (at 500 °C,800 °C) and subsequently the biochar was refined to maximize the physicochemical characteristics of each biochar in addressing the electrochemical performance. XRD, FESEM, BET, UV, and FTIR were used to study physiochemical analysis of biochar. GCD was considered as electrochemical performance. Using the structural analysis, bamboo-derived biochar had the best surface area (143 m2.g− 1), followed by tyre char (101 m2.g− 1) with a well-developed porous morphology, and favorable graphitization. FTIR showed the existence of oxygenated functional groups that improve the charge storage. The performance of bamboo biochar in a symmetric two-electrode system under electrochemical analysis revealed that it could reach specific capacitance of 180 F.g− 1 at 1 A.g− 1 and low internal resistance (0.8 Ω) which is superior compared to the performance of groundnut shell (141 F.g− 1) and tyre char (98 F.g− 1) in a similar system. Bamboo-derived biochar was the best performer of the three samples, and it showed greater specific capacitance and low internal resistance because of its hierarchical pore and surface functionality. This paper highlights the possibility of transforming agricultural and industrial waste into economical, non-toxic electrode materials to be used in energy storage equipment as a way to a bright future of greener supercapacitor technologies.