Sweet Side Streams: Sugar Beet Pulp as Source for High-Performance Supercapacitor Electrodes

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A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä

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2024-01-30

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en

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ACS Omega, Volume 9, issue 4, pp. 4733–4743

Abstract

Valorization of the lignocellulosic side and waste streams is key to making industrial processes more efficient from both an economic and ecological perspective. Currently, the production of sugars from beets results in pulps in large quantities. However, there is a lack of promising opportunities for upcycling these materials despite their promising properties. Here, we investigate beet pulps from two different stages of the sugar manufacturing process as raw materials for supercapacitor electrodes. We demonstrate that these materials can be efficiently converted to activated, highly porous carbons. The carbons exhibit pore dimensions approaching the size of the desolvated K+ and SO42- ions with surface areas up to 2600 m2 g-1. These carbons were subsequently manufactured into electrodes, assembled in supercapacitors, and tested with environmentally friendly aqueous electrolytes (6 M KOH and 1 M H2SO4). Further analysis demonstrated the presence of capacitance-enhancing functionalities, and up to 193 and 177 F g-1 in H2SO4 and KOH, respectively, were achieved, which outperformed supercapacitors prepared from commercial YP80 F. Overall, our study suggests that side streams from sugar manufacturing offer a hidden potential for use in high-performance energy storage devices.

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Funding Information: The authors acknowledge the provision of facilities and technical support by Aalto University at OtaNano–Nanomicroscopy Center (Aalto-NMC). They also acknowledge the support by TU Graz Open Access Publishing Fund. The research that also made use of the Academy of Finland funded “RawMatTERS Finland Infrastructure” (RAMI), based at Aalto University Sebastian Stock, is acknowledged for assistance concerning evaluation of Raman data; Adelheid Bakhshi for determining the ash content; Jana Schaubeder for creative support; and Reinhard Turetschek, Bernhard Seidl, and Florian Emerstorfer from Agrana Research and Innovation Center. Funding Information: This work was partially funded by the Academy of Finland’s Flagship Programme under Project Nos. 318890 and 318891 (Competence Center for Materials Bioeconomy, FinnCERES). Publisher Copyright: © 2024 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society.

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Selinger, J, Meinander, K, Wilson, B P, Abbas, Q, Hummel, M & Spirk, S 2024, ' Sweet Side Streams: Sugar Beet Pulp as Source for High-Performance Supercapacitor Electrodes ', ACS Omega, vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 4733–4743 . https://doi.org/10.1021/acsomega.3c07976