Create a sustainable and economical energy storage system from pine sawdust

The Solid State and Materials Research Group (UPV/EHU) is dedicated to the development of electrochemical energy storage materials. In this case, charcoal has been prepared with the sawdust of the pine insects to form electrodes with them. This sawdust is very common in carpentry shops in the Basque Country; it is not used at all and has a high carbon content.

Energy storage includes batteries and supercapacitors. Supercapacitors have the ability to store less energy than batteries, but they are able to provide a greater amount of energy at a given time. In the present invention, a lithium ion hybrid device has been developed. The mentioned system has the advantages of both: it can store high energy (as in batteries), it can operate at high powers and it is able to withstand many charge-discharge cycles (as in supercapacitors). For this purpose, a battery type electrode and a supercapacitor type electrode have been combined in the same device.

Not all biomass provides the right coal for this application, but researchers at the UPV/EHU have shown that the biomass of pine insinis provides very good results. One of the electrodes is made of hard carbon and the other is made of activated carbon. In the study, on the other hand, great importance has been given to the use of economic and sustainable processes for the generation of electrodes. The electrode formation process has been energy efficient. The synthesis temperatures did not exceed 700°C and cheap additives were used.

This work has shown that the use of the surrounding biomass has yielded very good results and represents a cost-effective and sustainable alternative for the improvement of conventional lithium-ion capacitors. For this reason, researchers stress the importance of continuing research in this area.