Nano carbon materials from palm oil wastes for supercapacitor applications

The decline in fossil fuel reserves and environmental issues led to the need of alternative transportation technology. Electric vehicles are an alternative transportation technology that more environmentally friendly and have high energy conversion efficiency. Electric vehicles using fuel cell as energy source required a high capacity of charge and discharge technology, i.e. supercapacitor. On the other hand, as the greatest producer of palm oil, Indonesia has abundant amount of palm oil waste which is not yet optimally utilized. Therefore, this research is focused on the development of nano carbon material for super capacitor electrode from palm oil waste. Nano particles of activated carbon, graphene and carbon nanotube can be produced using a relatively simple method of hydrothermal and pyrolysis. Activated carbon and graphene are produced from palm oil biomass; meanwhile carbon nano tube is produced from palm oil mill effluent. Surface area analysis shows that the produced graphene has mesopore size of 3.1 nm and surface area of 401.17 m
²
/g. Meanwhile, activated carbon has mesopore size of 2.13 nm and surface area of 383.748 m
²
/g. The electrode of supercapacitor cell made of a mixture of graphene, CNT and activated carbon had a capacitance up to 4.3908 F/g.