Preparation of furfural residue-based nitrogen-doped porous carbon for utilization as electrode material for supercapacitors

Preparing porous carbon electrode materials for high-performance supercapacitors using green, low-cost, and well-sourced renewable resources is increasingly becoming an important research area. This paper highlights the possibility of furfural residue (FR) as a precursor to porous carbon for utilization as supercapacitor electrode materials. We propose a simple method to prepare FR-based nitrogen-doped porous carbon through H 3 PO 4 hydrothermal pretreatment and KOH/melamine synergistic activation. The obtained carbon material (NFRPC-700) displays a large specific surface area(3259.4 m 2 g -1 ), high pore volume(1.67 cm 3 g -1 ), and excellent nitrogen doping. In the three-electrode system, NFRPC-700 demonstrates great electrochemical performance (specific capacitance value of 337 F g −1 at 0.5 A g −1 ). Assembly into a symmetric supercapacitor provides superior cycling stability (the capacitance retention remained essentially unchanged after 20,002 cycles at a current density of 5 A g −1 ) and high energy density(11.81 Wh kg −1 at 275 W kg −1 power density). This study provides an effective method to achieve high-value utilization of FR waste.