Carbonaceous mudstone and lignin-derived activated carbon and its application for supercapacitor electrode

To solve the major issues that most carbon materials used as supercapacitors electrode should be prepared from complex chemical products with high cost and side effects to the environment. In this report, a novel kind of low-cost, abundant reserves and environmental friendly carbon materials derived from carbonaceous mudstone and lignin mixture have been prepared and the electrochemical performances have been investigated. By activation treatment with HNO3, the activated carbonaceous mudstone and lignin-derived carbons (ASLDC) has been successfully synthesized. The physical and electrochemical studies exhibit that the ASLDC electrode possesses porous structures and wonderful electrochemical behaviors, a high specific capacitance of 155.6 F g−1 can be achieved when first served as electrodes for supercapacitors, which is three times than that of the untreated carbon electrode. Meanwhile, the charge/discharge measurement further indicates that the ASLDC electrode possess the excellent supercapacitive characteristics. The results demonstrate that the as-prepared low-cost, renewable and environmental friendly carbon electrode materials can be a promising electrode material for high-performance supercapacitors. Furthermore, such abundant reserves materials would be useful for other energy storage and conversion devices.