Turning Waste Chemicals into Wealth—A New Approach To Synthesize Efficient Cathode Material for an Li–O 2 Battery
An Li–O2 battery requires the oxygen-breathing cathode to be highly electronically conductive, rapidly oxygen diffusive, structurally stable, and often times electrocatalytically active. Catalyst-decorated porous carbonaceous materials are the chosen air cathode in this regard. Alternatively, biomass-derived carbonaceous materials possess great ability to remove heavy and toxic metal ions from waste, forming a metal-adsorbed porous carbonaceous material. The similar structure between the air cathode and the metal-adsorbed biomass-derived carbon nicely bridges these two irrelevant areas. In this study, we investigated the electrochemical activity of a biochar material Ag-ESB directly synthesized from ethanol sludge residue in a rechargeable aprotic Li–O2 battery. Ag ions were adsorbed from sewage and became Ag nanoparticles with uniform coverage on the biochar surface. The as-prepared material exhibits good electrochemical behavior in battery testing, especially toward the battery efficiency and cyclability. This study provides the possibility of synthetically efficient cathode material by reusing “waste” such as biofuel sludge residue. It is an economically and environmentally friendly approach both for an energy-storage system and for waste recycling.
- Research Organization:
- Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States). Advanced Photon Source (APS)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- FOREIGN
- OSTI ID:
- 1409096
- Journal Information:
- ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, Vol. 9, Issue 37; ISSN 1944-8244
- Publisher:
- American Chemical Society (ACS)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- ENGLISH
Similar Records
Revealing the reaction mechanisms of Li–O2 batteries using environmental transmission electron microscopy
In-situ synthesis of porous metal fluoride@carbon composite via simultaneous etching/fluorination enabled superior Li storage performance