Abstract:
The environmental degradation and hazard to human life caused by the depletion of fossils fuels and the
urgent need for sustainable energy sources to meet the rising demand in energy has led to the
exploration of novel materials that are environmentally friendly, low cost and less hazardous to human
life for energy storage application using the green chemistry approach. Herein, we report on the
transformation of the readily abundant pine cone biomass into porous carbon via KOH activation and
carbonization at 800 C as electrode materials for supercapacitors. The porous carbon material
exhibited a mesoporous framework with a specific surface area of 1515 m2 g 1, a high voltage window of
2.0 V, a gravimetric capacitance of 137 F g 1, energy density of 19 W h kg 1 and excellent cyclability in
neutral 1 M Na2SO4 electrolyte for a symmetric carbon/carbon electrode cell. The result shows that the
material is robust and shows great promise with neutral electrolytes in high-performance energystorage
devices.
