Controllable Carbonization of Plastic Waste into Three-Dimensional Porous Carbon Nanosheets by Combined Catalyst for High Performance Capacitor

Xueying Mu; Yunhui Li; Xiaoguang Liu; Changde Ma; Hanqing Jiang; Jiayi Zhu; Xuecheng Chen; Tao Tang; Ewa Mijowska

doi:10.3390/nano10061097

Controllable Carbonization of Plastic Waste into Three-Dimensional Porous Carbon Nanosheets by Combined Catalyst for High Performance Capacitor

Nanomaterials (Basel). 2020 Jun 2;10(6):1097. doi: 10.3390/nano10061097.

Authors

Xueying Mu^{1

2}, Yunhui Li¹, Xiaoguang Liu³, Changde Ma², Hanqing Jiang², Jiayi Zhu⁴, Xuecheng Chen³, Tao Tang², Ewa Mijowska³

Affiliations

¹ School of Chemistry and Environmental Engineering, Changchun University of Science and Technology, Changchun 130022, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun 130022, China.
³ Faculty of Chemical Technology and Engineering, West Pomeranian University of Technology, Piastow Ave. 42, 71-065 Szczecin, Poland.
⁴ State Key Laboratory of Environment-friendly Energy Materials, School of Science, Southwest University of Science and Technology, Mianyang 621010, China.

Abstract

Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic has been extensively used in our social life, but its poor biodegradability has led to serious environmental pollution and aroused worldwide concern. Up to now, various strategies have been proposed to address the issue, yet such strategies remain seriously impeded by many obstacles. Herein, waste PET plastic was selectively carbonized into three-dimensional (3D) porous carbon nanosheets (PCS) with high yield of 36.4 wt%, to be further hybridized with MnO₂ nanoflakes to form PCS-MnO₂ composites. Due to the introduction of an appropriate amount of MnO₂ nanoflakes, the resulting PCS-MnO₂ composite exhibited a specific capacitance of 210.5 F g^-1 as well as a high areal capacitance of 0.33 F m^-2. Furthermore, the PCS-MnO₂ composite also showed excellent cycle stability (90.1% capacitance retention over 5000 cycles under a current density of 10 A g^-1). The present study paved an avenue for the highly efficient recycling of PET waste into high value-added products (PCSs) for electrochemical energy storage.

Keywords: PET; carbonization; energy storage; waste plastic.