Submission to Academia Letters

Porous activated carbon from agro-food waste:

low cost, eco-friendly for sustainable green
energy
Jiban Podder, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University
of Saskatchewan, 57 Campus Drive, Saskatoon, SK S7N 5A9, Canada

Ajay K. Dalai, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University

of Saskatchewan, 57 Campus Drive, Saskatoon, SK S7N 5A9, Canada

With growing population and rapid urbanization, the solid waste manage-
ment is now a global issue for sustainable human health and environments. In
our daily lives there are common waste materials found in the environment
like tea, coffee, fruit waste, etc. So, a good waste management system may
build up a strong economy through proper design and optimize for reuse and
recycling. Activated carbon has become an essential component of the mod-
ern world. Activated carbons have wide range of applications, and some the
common uses include air purification, hydrogen and methane storage, metal ex-
traction, gold purification, etc. Carbon molecules with large holes trap big and
heavy molecules of organic chemicals. Small and fine pores pick up smaller and
lighter contaminants.
The activated carbon can be produced from a large number of abundant and
low-cost agricultural waste materials such as camellia oleifera shell, bamboo,
cherry stones, waste tea, and paulownia flower, etc. There is a great interest in
finding cost effective alternatives to compete the existing commercial activated
carbon to environmental sustainability and for future commercial applications.
This study will elucidate that waste tea based carbon could be a low-cost,
renewable, and sustainable biomass source for high potential production of a
highly porous activated carbon for application as an electrode in supercapacitor
and energy storage devices.

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 Activated carbon is a highly porous three-dimensional microcrystalline net-
work of carbon atoms arranged in layers and have a very large surface area
available for adsorption or chemical reactions. In general, the activated carbons
have a low density and depict a low degree of graphitization. Carbon structures
contain the main functional groups such as carboxyl, carbonyl, phenol, lactone
and quinone that are responsible for adsorbing contaminants. The presence of
heteroatoms like oxygen, hydrogen, sulphur, fluorine, boron and nitrogen in the
form of functional groups is the reason for creation of defects due to power-
ful cross-linking between the functional groups. In addition, provides an extra
electroactive sites due to its electron-donor properties, as well as increase the
surface polarity, wettability, and electrical conductivity through the change in
the valence electron orbital energy levels of neighboring carbon atoms [1].
Loosely bonded carbon is removed by the activation process and the acti-
vating materials resulting in the generation of a microporous structure. The
internal pore network results in an extremely large surface area to attract and
hold organic chemicals. The unique adsorption properties depend on the ex-
isting functional groups of activated carbon, which are derived mainly from
activation processes, precursors and thermal purification. The properties of
the yield products depend on the nature of the raw materials and the process
conditions. Due to its unique characteristics, the activated carbon has vast ap-
plications in the purification industries as low cost potential adsorbent in the
separation and purification of environmental pollutant toxic, non-toxic gases,
liquids, sediments, dust particles, heavy metals, hazardous dye compounds, io-
dine, ciprofloxacin from industrial waste water and high performance electrode
materials of supercapacitors, etc.
Tea and coffee are the most widely consumed nonalcoholic beverages across
the world [2]. The consumption growth and production of tea are rising day
by day due to robust demand and well-being benefits of anti-inflammatory,
antioxidant and weight loss effects. Both beverages contain various antioxidants
and phenolic compounds such as flavonoids or caffeine, some of which have
anticancer properties [3]. Now a day black tea and green tea have got consumers’
interest among increased competition from other beverages, including coffee.
Every year, a large amount of waste tea is generated after extraction. China is
the largest consumer of tea, at 1.6 billion pounds a year. Tea waste is the best

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thought: an innovation opportunity from natural resources. The high carbon
content of waste tea can be an attractive raw material for producing low-cost
activated carbon. The relatively high content of cellulose, hemicellulose and
lignin within the cell walls of tea leaves and tea factory wastes makes it a
suitable precursor material for the production of activated carbon.
The activated carbon is generally derived by first burning a carbonaceous
substance without oxygen to form a carbon ‘char’ and next the ‘char’ is treated
chemically or physically to develop an interconnected series of ‘pores’ or ‘holes’
inside the carbon. There are two processes for preparing activated carbon:
physical activation and chemical activation. The physical activation process is
a two-step process, where pyrolysis is performed in an inert atmosphere (usually
nitrogen) normally at 400–900°C before partial gasification using an oxidizing
gas at 350–1000°C to develop the porosity and surface area. Physical activation
is performed with different oxidizing gases, such as air, O2, CO2, steam or their
mixtures.
Chemical activation is performed with potential activators alkaline groups’
viz. KOH, NaOH, CaCl2, K2CO3 and acidic groups viz. H3PO4, H2SO4,
and metal salts like ZnCl2, AlCl3, MgCl2, etc. and other activating agents.
Selection of the chemical activator agent is very important in controlling the
performance and applicability of activated carbon. In contrast, the chemical
activation process is a one-step process, where an activating agent (typically an
acid, strong base or a salt) is incorporated into the carbon precursor prior to py-
rolysis at a temperature of 450–900°C. The chemical activation process consists
of the heat-treatment of a mixture of the carbon precursor and the activating
agent at a temperature normally in the 450–900 °C range. It has the following
advantages over physical activation: (i) usually involves only one step, (ii) lower
pyrolysis temperatures, (iii) much higher carbon yield, (iv) materials with very
high surface area (ff3600 m2 g−1) can be produced and (v) the microporosity
can be well developed, controlled and tailored to be narrowly distributed. The
chemical activation is more economical than the physical activation, since it re-
quires lower activation temperature, shorter processing time. Moreover, in the
chemical activation method, the development of porous structures is greater.
For super-capacitors, the most common electrode material is carbon and its
varieties like carbon-based materials like activated carbon, carbon fibre-cloth,

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carbide-derived carbon, carbon aerogel, graphite, graphene and carbon nan-
otubes and conducting polymers have been used as the most promising materi-
als. Supercapacitor technology has been considered as one of the most emerging
and efficient technologies for the next-generation energy storage devices. Super-
capacitors are one of the elite classes of those energy storage devices, which have
the ability to store electrical charge in an electric double layer at the interface of
electrode and electrolyte due to fast charging−discharge rate, high power den-
sity and long cycle life [4-5]. For the past few decades, carbon materials with
high surface area have been widely investigated as effective electrode materials
for supercapacitors.
Recently, biomass derived green carbon electrode materials from waste agro-
food are broadly explored as a source of advanced carbons because of their high
abundance, renewable nature, low cost, and eco-friendly properties. In terms of
low-cost, environmental friendliness, abundant sources, and excellent physico-
chemical stability, lignocellulosic based materials have an enormous potential in
improving the electrode performance in supercapacitors because of having high
content carbon and low inorganic matrix [6-7]. Various biomass precursors have
been chemically treated and carbonized into activated carbons for supercapaci-
tors such as cherry stone [8], water bamboo [9], pine-cone [10], waste tea-leaves
[11]. The use of these materials in electrochemical performances is due to large
specific surface area, pore size distribution and pore volume [12].
Since 1990 significant improvements have been made by researchers and
scientists in increasing the energy storage performance, especially in terms of
energy density and power capability and till today. Most available electrochemi-
cal capacitors are electric double-layer capacitors using activated carbon in both
electrodes and electrolyte solvent (propylene carbonate or acetonitrile). To this
end, factors like the specific surface areas, pore structure, surface heteroatoms,
structural defects, and electrode structure should be considered for high electro-
chemical performances of porous carbon used in supercapacitors. The porous
activated carbons are capable of enough energy storage still remains a chal-
lenge. To fulfill the energy storage demand a great variety of highly porous
carbon materials and its favourable physicochemical characteristics are yet to
be explored.

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