High surface area activated carbon prepared from wood-based spent mushroom substrate for supercapacitors and water treatment

Edible white-rot fungi are commonly cultivated on wood-based substrates and selectively degrade hemicellulose and lignin to a larger extent during their growth. Spent mushroom substrate (SMS) is produced in huge amounts by the mushroom industry and today there is a lack of proven methods to valorize this kind of biomass waste, which in most cases is landfilled or used as fuel. This study demonstrates that birch wood-based SMS from the cultivation of oyster mushrooms can be converted into high-quality activated carbon (AC) with an extremely high surface area of about 3000 m2/g. These activated carbons showed good performance when used in electrodes for supercapacitors, with energy storage parameters nearly identical to AC produced from high-quality virgin birch wood. Moreover, AC produced from SMS showed high potential as an adsorbent for cleaning reactive orange-16 azo dye from aqueous solutions as well as contaminants from synthetic effluents and from real sewage water. The kinetics of adsorption were well represented by the Avrami fractional order model and isotherms of adsorption by the Liu model. The theoretical maximum reactive orange-16 adsorption capacities were approximately 519 mg/g (SMS-based carbon) and 553 mg/g (virgin birch-based carbon). The removal of contaminants from synthetic effluents made of different dyes and inorganic compounds was around 95 and 83% depending on the effluent composition. The removal of contaminants from raw sewage water was around 84%, and from treated sewage water was around 68%. Overall, the results showed that activated carbon prepared from waste generated during cultivation of white-rot fungi is as good as activated carbon prepared from high-quality virgin wood.