Source: The Hindu news
Researchers collected waste cake rusk crumbs from local bakeries and heated them in nitrogen gas to obtain highly porous carbon with very high surface area.
Scientists have used cake rusk leftovers to develop low-cost supercapacitors – a electronic component that is used to store charge and has a wide range of applications in everyday modern devices.
Owing to the ever growing energy demand, electrochemical energy storage systems with higher energy and power densities such as lithium-ion batteries and supercapacitors have attracted tremendous attention in recent years.
The researchers from SRM Institute of Science and Technology in Chennai wanted to create low cost alternatives by recycling waste materials and converting them into products that have high demand.
For a study published in the journal Microporous and Mesoporous Materials, they collected waste cake rusk crumbs from local bakeries and heated them in nitrogen gas to obtain highly porous carbon with very high surface area.
Supercapacitors have widespread application from a range of devices such as smartphones, laptops and portable media players.
The device fabricated by the researchers can light up few LED bulbs. In future, the materials may be extended to high end applications, researchers said.
Sasidharan said that the research may bring down the cost of supercapacitors by 70 per cent, since the raw materials are inexpensive.
