Component Degradation-Enabled Preparation of Biomass-Based Highly Porous Carbon Materials for Energy Storage

In this work, a facile and effective route is introduced to optimize the performance of biomass-based porous carbon materials by partially degrading the component (e.g., lignin, hemicellulose, and cellulose) of the raw materials with the following purposes: (i) collapse the organism to increase the porosity of the material and (ii) inhibit the generation of nonporous carbon sheets caused by lignin. The pretreated raw material (chestnut shell) shows a satisfactory outcome utilizing as carbon precursor, the specific surface area of the as-prepared hierarchical porous carbon (HPC) as high as 2621 m2 g–1, nearly a 45% promotion can be achieved compared with the control sample (CPC, 1802 m2 g–1). Thanks to the optimization of the structure, excellent electrochemical performances also have been achieved in the energy device, the HPC-based supercapacitor enjoys an appealing capacitance of 393.1 F g–1 more than the control sample (199.2 F g–1) and superb capacitance retention as high as 96% after 10 000 cycles in the 6.0 M KOH system. Moreover, a delightful energy density of 23.8 W h kg–1 can be delivered at 220 W kg–1 in the Na2SO4 system with a 1.8 V voltage window, exhibiting promising potential application in the energy device.