Unraveling the Properties of Biomass-Derived Hard Carbons upon Thermal Treatment for a Practical Application in Na-Ion Batteries

Carolina del Mar Saavedra Rios, Loïc Simonin, Arnaud de Geyer, Camelia Matei Ghimbeu and Capucine Dupont
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Carolina del Mar Saavedra Rios: CEA, LITEN, DEHT, Université Grenoble Alpes, 17 rue des Martyrs, 38054 Grenoble CEDEX 9, France
Loïc Simonin: CEA, LITEN, DEHT, Université Grenoble Alpes, 17 rue des Martyrs, 38054 Grenoble CEDEX 9, France
Arnaud de Geyer: CEA, IRIG, MEM, Université Grenoble Alpes, 17 rue des Martyrs, 38054 Grenoble CEDEX 9, France
Camelia Matei Ghimbeu: Institut de Science des Matériaux de Mulhouse, Université de Strasbourg, Université de Haute-Alsace, CNRS UMR 7361, 15 rue Jean Starcky, 68057 Mulhouse, France
Capucine Dupont: Department of Environmental Engineering and Water Technology, IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, Westvest 7, 2611 AX Delft, The Netherlands

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 14, 1-25

Abstract: Biomass is gaining increased attention as a sustainable and low-cost hard carbon (HC) precursor. However, biomass properties are often unexplored and unrelated to HC performance. Herein, we used pine, beechwood, miscanthus, and wheat straw precursors to synthesize HCs at 1000 °C, 1200 °C and 1400 °C by a two-steps pyrolysis treatment. The final physicochemical and electrochemical properties of the HC evidenced dissimilar trends, mainly influenced by the precursor’s inorganic content, and less by the thermal treatment. Pine and beechwood HCs delivered the highest reversible capacity and coulombic efficiency (CE) at 1400 °C of about 300 mAh·g −1 and 80%, respectively. This performance can be attributed to the structure derived from the high carbon purity precursors. Miscanthus and wheat straw HC performance was strongly affected by the silicon, potassium, and calcium content in the biomasses, which promoted simultaneous detrimental phenomena of intrinsic activation, formation of a silicon carbide phase, and growth of graphitic domains with temperature. The latter HCs delivered 240–200 mAh·g −1 of reversible capacity and 70–60% of CE, respectively, at 1400 °C. The biomass precursor composition, especially its inorganic fraction, seems to be a key parameter to control, for obtaining high performance hard carbon electrodes by direct pyrolysis process.

Keywords: biomass; hard carbon; sodium-ion batteries; valorization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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