Preparation and property of N-doped porous carbon material by one-step pyrolysis of protein-rich algal biomass

The N-doped porous carbon materials were prepared by one-step pyrolysis of protein-rich algal biomass served as the carbon and nitrogen source. This study investigated the effect of different pyrolysis temperatures at 600, 700 and 800 degrees C, the presence of different activating agents (KOH, ZnCl2) and different impregnation ratios of activator and raw material (1, 2 and 3) on the N-doped porous carbon properties from different raw materials. The SEM, BET, FTIR and XRD analysis were carried out to investigate the structure characterizations. Also, the electrochemical characterization studies were performed by cyclic voltammetry (CV), galvanostatic chargedischarge (GCD). These results demonstrated that ZnCl2 is an efficient activation agent, and the specific surface area and total pore volume reached the maximum values (388.654 m(2) g(-1), 0.550 cm(3) g(-1)) with 3 impregnation ratio at the pyrolysis temperature of 800 degrees C. The samples of AC-P-Z-800-3 exhibited an excellent gravimetric capacitance of 207.6 F/g at 1A/g, which is mainly attributed to the decrease in ion-transport resistance by the high nitrogen doping (9.81%). This study provides a facile method for synthesizing biomassbased self-nitrogen-doped porous carbon material, particularly to utilize seaweed biomass waste that contains high nitrogen content.