Recycling diesel carbon nanoparticles for Li-ion battery electrodes

10 November 2014

In a paper published in the Journal of Power Sources, a team from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University report showing that diesel carbon nanoparticles collected from diesel engines can be chemically activated to create a porous structure. The resulting nanostructured carbon electrodes have a high specific capacity of 936 mAh g⁻¹ after 40 cycles at 0.05 A/g, and excellent cycle stability while retaining a capacity of ∼210 mAh g⁻¹ after 1200 cycles at 5 A/g.

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Considerable attention has been devoted to using rational nanostructure design to address critical carbonaceous anode material issues for next-generation lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). However, the fabrication of nanostructured carbonaceous anode materials often involves complex processes and expensive starting materials. Diesel engine is an important source of nanostructured carbon particles with diameters ranging 20 nm–60 nm suspended in air, resulting in a serious scourge of global climate and a series of diseases such as lung cancer, asthma, and cardiovascular disease.

The ready availability of diesel carbon nanoparticles makes them an exciting source for nanostructured carbonaceous anode materials for high-performance lithium-ion batteries, the researchers suggested.

Resources

• Yuming Chen, Chang Liu, Xiaoxuan Sun, Han Ye, Chunshun Cheung, Limin Zhou (2015) “Recycled diesel carbon nanoparticles for nanostructured battery anodes,” Journal of Power Sources, Volume 275, Pages 26-31 doi: 10.1016/j.jpowsour.2014.10.200