Wu et al.’s “Sustainable pyrolytic carbon negative electrodes for sodium-ion batteries” recently appeared in Journal of Power Sources. The article reports a sustainable pyrolytic carbon from waste pyrolysis gas and explores its potential as electrode material. This work is done by associate professor Guo-Ming Weng’s team from Shanghai Key Laboratory of Hydrogen Science & Center of Hydrogen Science, School of Materials Science and Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The abstract appears below.

“Considering both sustainability and potential applications in various industrial sectors, pyrolytic carbon from the recycling of organic solid wastes can play a significant part in the unfolding energy revolution. Further innovations in circular-economy waste loops can facilitate higher economic benefits and lower environmental impacts, where a number of opportunities for improving pyrolytic carbon by choices of precursors, easy regulation of pyrolysis conditions and potential post-treatments. Here we propose a method to synthesize sustainable high-quality nanotube-like pyrolytic carbon using waste pyrolysis gas from the decomposition of waste epoxy resin as precursor, and conduct the exploration of its properties for possible use as a negative electrode material in sodium-ion batteries. The obtained pyrolytic carbon shows better cycling and rate performance than benchmark commercial hard carbon, retaining ∼105 mA h g−1 after 2000 cycles at 100 mA g−1 and exhibiting ∼57 mA h g−1 at 1 A g−1. Since the slope-dominated nature of pyrolytic carbon leads to high performance dependence on defects and pore structure, we therefore also investigate the preferred design of pore structure via pore-forming by post-treatment. It is found that reversible adsorption/desorption on defect sites and optimal pore structure are highly needed for pyrolytic carbon toward practical applications. This work highlights the potential of waste pyrolysis gas itself as a valuable feedstock for the production of value-added carbon materials.”

Figure 1. Schematic illustration of the circular-economy solution of the waste pyrolysis gas (top panel), and the properties of the resultant pyrolytic carbon (bottom panel).

This work is supported by National Key R&D Program of China (2022YFC3900700), Shanghai Key Laboratory of Hydrogen Science & Center of Hydrogen Science of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and Shanghai High-Level Oversea Talents Award.  

Read the full article: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpowsour.2024.235262

Share Link (50 days' free access): https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1jf7R_8dCCtHu%7E