Structural and electrochemical investigation of waste newspaper based electrodes for supercapacitor applications

There is a general consensus to develop renewable energy storage and conversion technologies to replace fossil fuel energy for sustainable development. Currently, the development of high performance energy storage and conversion devices is an important step on the road to alternative energy technologies. With a special focus on the upgradation of waste to valuable energy, this paper presents an effective synthetic method that utilizes waste newspapers as the precursor to prepare the activated carbon electrodes by the pyrolysis and chemical activation processes. The amorphous nature and surface morphology of the carbon samples were confirmed by XRD and SEM analysis, respectively. Activated waste newspaper carbon (AWNP) showed good electrochemical properties at 800 °C and its specific capacitance at a scan rate of 2 mV/s was found to be 380 F/g. It is important to mention that the source of the raw material is cost effective and suitable for green technology.