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New Method of Fabricating Carbon Materials via Uptake of Nanoplastics into Eichhornia crassipes for Enhancing Supercapacitance
Summary
Researchers used water hyacinth plants that had absorbed polystyrene nanoplastics as a raw material to produce high-performance carbon electrodes for energy storage. While the study is primarily about materials engineering, it demonstrates a novel approach to removing nanoplastics from water using plants and converting the contaminated biomass into a useful product, potentially addressing two environmental problems at once.
A novel strategy of an in situ design precursor has been proposed by absorbing nanoplastic with Eichhornia crassipes. Eichhornia crassipes as the precursor has natural structural advantages. This natural complex network structure ensures the stability of the material and facilitates the efficient transportation of electrolytes in the whole material. The presence of polystyrene nanoplastics (PS NPs) will change the graphitization degree and promote pore formation in carbon materials during carbonization. The obtained carbon materials have an excellent pore structure, large specific surface area (765.202 m2/g), and high graphitization degree. Meanwhile, the Eichhornia crassipes–polystyrene (EC-PS25) carbon electrode material fabricated from the above plant precursor exhibits a specific capacity of 519.0 F/g at 0.5 A/g. This study provides a new idea for improving the performance of carbon-based electrode materials.
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