Synthesis and characterization of a high surface area activated carbon derived from cassava peels waste by KOH activation

Abstract

This work presents the synthesis of activated carbon, a very important material with lots of use cases in textile, food industries and even in energy storage as an electrode material in supercapacitor development. Abundantly available cassava peels was used as a raw material for the production of the activated carbon by adopting the chemical activation approach which utilized KOH as activating agent. The activation was carried out at 800⁰C in a tubular furnace. Scanning electron micrographs (SEM) showed that a highly porous carbon structure was achieved with high specific surface area of 828m²g^-1as evident from the BET results. Raman spectrophotometer analysis showed that the prepared activated carbon was highly graphitized as seen from the G peak. The existence of mesopores and micropores was confirmed by the N₂ adsorption/desorption analysis which also revealed the presence of a hysteris loop and a P/P₀=0.45 value.