The effect of carbon nanotube composite addition on biomass-based supercapacitor

Electric vehicles are set to become a most attractive alternative transportation mode due to their high efficiency and low emission. electric vehicles require an efficient energy storage system,e.g. a supercapacitor. coconut shells have high lignocellulosic content and are not being fully utilized in indonesia. the lignocellulose could be converted into activated carbon for use as the electrode on a hybrid supercapacitor. this research focused on studying the effect of the addition of carbon nanotube (cnt) composite to porous graphene-like nanosheets (pgns) as the electrode on a hybrid supercapacitor. the pgns and cnt composite were synthesized via simultaneous activation and carbonization. nickel oxide was used as the counter electrode. the cnt composite had a large surface area of 1374.8 m2g-1,pore volume of 1.1 cm3g,and pore size of 3.2 nm. on the other hand,the pgns had a surface area of 666.1 m2g-1,pore volume of 0.47 cm3g,and pore size of 2.8 nm. the electrode pair between the nio and the activated carbon achieved 5.69 f/g and 94.1% cycle durability after 10 charging and discharging cycles. the composite had an energy density of 0.38 w h kg-1. the aim of this research was to provide an alternative formula for producing high-performance supercapacitor materials. © 2016 published by itb journal publisher.