Ball-milled Palm-derived Carbon For Fabrication Of Electrochemical Phenolic Compound Sensors And Supercapacitors
Abdulrahman Faisal Al-Betar, وائل محمد امين محفوظ
كلية الكيميائيات والمواد-جامعة الملك فهد للبترول والمعادن · السعودية
A highly electroactive and low-cost electrode material is an essential requirement in the current sensor and supercapacitor research. To meet this demand, synthesizing biomass carbon through a simple process of pyrolysis and ball milling could be an ideal solution. In this work, active carbon was synthesized from the date leaves waste. The surface, structural, and compositional characterizations support the formation of sub-nano and nano-meter-size carbon particles. The synthesized carbon was successfully used for electrochemical phenolic compounds sensing and supercapacitor applications. The synthesized carbon was immobilized on a Glassy carbon electrode to fabricate a chemical sensor to detect 1-naphthol (1-NP) and 2-naphthol (2-NP) simultaneously. The study provides two methods to fabricate electrochemical sensors. The first method is based on the direct oxidation of 1-NP and 2-NP. The second method is based on redox peaks for the quinone formation from the generated dihydroxy naphthalene. The second method shows a higher analytical performance toward simultaneous detection of 1-NP and 2-NP compared to that of the first method. In the second part of the thesis, a novel carbon was utilized by dispensing on a stainless-steel strip to fabricate a high-performance symmetric supercapacitor. The fabricated supercapacitor shows a double-layer capacitance behavior and a pseudocapacitance behavior due to the heteroatoms in the material. By using an electrolyte of (0.1 M sulfuric acid), the fabricated supercapacitor displays a high specific capacitance of (~107 F/g), and the stability test shows a capacitance retention of 92% after a total of 1000 cycles. Furthermore, the supercapacitor’s densities of energy and power are ~10 Wh/Kg and ~200 W/Kg, respectively, offering an ideal supercapacitor for mass-product. This research provides a low-cost and high-performance supercapacitor based on cheap carbon prepared from the date leave waste. Furthermore, the work was supported with supplementary materials about the fabrication of supercapacitor prepared from stainless and electro-synthesized polyaniline (PANI). The fabricated supercapacitor combines the advantages of the low cost of the substrate and the high electrochemical performance of synthesized PANI. The supercapacitor shows an areal capacitance of ~353 mF cm-2 and densities of energy and power of ~ 26.4 µWh cm-2 and ~ 400 µWcm-2 respectively. The capacitance properties were retained after 1000 cycles showing high stability. Based on the result, the fabricated supercapacitor could be an ideal candidate for wide applications and mass product in the future.