Hierarchical Porous Carbon with Interconnected Ordered Pores from Biowaste for High-Performance Supercapacitor Electrodes

Using biowastes as precursors for the preparation of value-added nanomaterials is critical to the sustainable development of devices. Lignosulphonates are the by-products of pulp and paper-making industries and usually discarded as wastes. In the present study, lignosulphonate is used as the precursor to prepare hierarchical ordered porous carbon with interconnected pores for the electrochemical energy storage application. The unique molecular structure and properties of lignosulphonate ensure the acquisition of high-quality porous carbon with a controllable pore structure and improved physical properties. As a result, the as-prepared hierarchical order porous carbon show excellent energy storage performance when used to assemble the symmetric supercapacitor, which exhibits high-specific capacitance of 289 F g(−1) at a current density of 0.5 A g(−1), with the energy density of 40 Wh kg(−1) at the power density of 900 W kg(−1). The present study provides a promising strategy for the fabrication of high-performance energy storage devices at low cost.