Waste utilization of crab shell: 3D hierarchical porous carbon towards high-performance Na/Li storage

Abstract

The reuse of waste biomass has received more and more attention in recent years due to resource and environmental problems. The development of green, environmentally friendly and cost-effective electrode materials for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) and sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) is currently the focus of research as key electrochemical energy storage systems. Herein, a facile strategy is adopted to prepare 3D hierarchical porous carbon anodes for LIBs/SIBs by taking advantage of waste crab shells and iron p-toluenesulfonate. The results show that the reversible specific capacity of the prepared anode could reach 703.2 mAh g⁻¹ in LIBs and 283.2 mAh g⁻¹ in SIBs when the current density is 0.05 A g⁻¹. In addition, the contributions of pseudocapacitance, the kinetic characteristics and the storage mechanisms of lithium/sodium ions are investigated through cyclic voltammetry (CV) and galvanostatic intermittent titration techniques (GITTs). Due to the unique structure, the obtained material displays an excellent electrochemical performance, which lays the foundation for the improvement in the performance of waste biomass in LIBs/SIBs.