Browsing by Author "Mensah-Darkwa, Kwadwo"

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    Molten salt synthesis of nitrogen-doped hierarchical porous carbon from plantain peels for high-performance supercapacitor
    (Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry, 2022-09-01) Nanzumani, Nashiru Mahadeen; Agyemang, Frank Ofori; Mensah-Darkwa, Kwadwo; Appiah, Eugene Sefa; Arthur, Emmanuel Kwesi; Gikunoo, Emmanuel; Koomson, Bennetta; Jadhav, Amol R.; Raji, Akeem
    This work employs a non-corrosive and non-toxic molten salt combination of NaCl and KCl as an activation agent in an air environment to synthesize nitrogen-doped hierarchical porous carbon from plantain peels at 800 °C for supercapacitor application. Due to the synergistic effect of nitrogen doping, the synthesized nitrogen- doped activated unripe porous carbon (AUPN) has a hierarchical (micro-meso-macropores) porous structure and a high surface area of 959 m2/g, providing sufficient active sites for charge storage, rapid electrolyte and ionic mobility. X-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy analysis revealed the formation of a carbon product with a limited degree of graphitization and the crystallite size (La), which is valuable for evaluating the defects caused by nitrogen doping. In a three-electrode cell with a 6 M KOH electrolyte, AUPN recorded a specific capacitance of 550 F/g at 1 A/g. After 1000 cycles, capacitance retention was 99% at 4 A/g. Compared to other reported porous carbon materials, the overall electrochemical performance of AUPN is superior. This is due to the abundant nitrogen-doping, which introduces pseudocapacitance and increases the surface wettability of the porous carbon, resulting in a decrease in ionic-transport resistance. These findings indicate that this green and scalable technique is a potential synthesis method for producing porous carbon materials for energy storage applications.