The production of activated carbon from cation exchange resin for high-performance supercapacitor

High-performance activated carbon for electrochemical double-layer capacitors (EDLC) has been prepared from cation exchange resin by carbonization and subsequent activation with KOH. The activation temperature has a key role in the determination of porous carbon possessing high surface areas, and large pore structures. The porous carbon activated at 700 degrees C (carbon-700-1:4) has high surface area (2236 m(2)g(-1)) and large total pore volume (1.15 cm(3)g(-1)), which also displays best capacitive performances due to its well-balanced micro-or mesoporosity distribution. In details, specific capacitances of the carbon-700-1: 4 sample are 336.5 Fg(-1) at a current density of 1 Ag-1 and 331.8 Fg(-1) at 2 Ag-1. At high current density as 20 Ag-1, the retention of its specific capacitance is 68.4 %. The carbon-700-1: 4 sample also exhibits high performance of energy density (46.7 Whkg(-1)) and long cycle stability (similar to 8.9 % loss after 3,000 cycles). More importantly, due to the amount of waste ion-exchange resins increasing all over the world, the present synthetic method might be adopted to dispose them, producing high-performance porous carbons for EDLC electrode materials.