Potato peels biochar composite with copper phthalocyanine for energy storage application

Generation and disposal of large quantities of bio-waste is a great problem faced all over the world. One of the eco-friendly approaches is to chemically convert bio-waste resources into carbon functional materials. In this work, the abundantly available potato peels waste was converted to bio-char by the hydrothermal carbonization method and the carbon was activated by KOH. The activated carbon material (Pot) was mixed with copper phthalocyanine (Cu-Pc) which is a high nitrogen enriched compound to form a composite material(Cu-Pc/Pot).The synthesized bio-char and the composite material were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), UV–Visible spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy techniques. The electrochemical behaviors of the synthesized materials were investigated by cyclic voltammetry (CV), galvanostatic charge-discharge (GCD) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). The composite material shows a good capacitance value of 237 F/ g at 0.1 Ag⁻¹ current in a 1 M H₂SO₄ aqueous electrolyte. The material also exhibits a long cycling stability, up to 1000 cycles at 1Ag⁻¹. These results clearly suggested that Cu-Pc/Pot composite material can be used as a suitable electrode material for electrochemical supercapacitor energy storage applications.