ARCI develops supercapacitors using tamarind & cotton waste

biomass for hybrid & EV

A Group of Indian Scientists from the International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials (ARCI) have used tamarind seeds and cotton waste biomass to develop materials for making cost-effective supercapacitor devices which are widely used in hybrid and electric vehicles. 

The Tamarind seeds and cotton waste may soon be used to make low-cost supercapacitors for energy storage. This effort will pave the way for affordable electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles which rely on supercapacitors for braking systems and start-stop cycles.

ARCI

To meet the demand of the supercapacitors, the Scientists at the ARCI and autonomous institute of the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Govt. of India, scientists have developed several cost-effective electrode materials for making affordable supercapacitor devices from the waste biomass such as tamarind seeds and industrial cotton waste.

The biomass waste has been converted into highly porous carbon fibres by the activation process and that utilised porous carbon fibres to make high-performance supercapacitor electrodes.

The materials of an electrode made out of biomass waste have been tested with the help of a rapid testing protocol developed by Scientists at Centre for Fuel Cell Technology, ARCI, Chennai to examine the different porous electrode materials for their suitability in supercapacitors.

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The protocol includes Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) and records the impedance which is provided by a material in a small perturbation and the capacitance formed by the arrangement of electrolyte ions over the electrode surface known as double-layer capacitance.

The results shown by the team is a superior double layer capacitance value at all the applied potentials for the optimized sample with high surface area (2645 m2 g-1) within 1 hour of the experiment, they validated that this material can be used for supercapacitor electrode.

What is a supercapacitor?

According to techopedia, A supercapacitor is a type of capacitor that can store a large amount of energy, typically 10 to 100 times more energy per unit mass or volume compared to electrolytic capacitors. It is preferred to batteries owing to its faster and simpler charging, and faster delivery of charge. A supercapacitor is also known as ultracapacitor or double-layer electrolytic capacitor.

(source: Indiaeducationdiary)

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