Synthesis and electrochemical properties of ZnO/ activated carbon from vetiver distillation waste

Abstract

The addition of zinc oxide (ZnO) as impregnation for activated carbon (AC) with the hydrothermal method has been performed in this research. Vetiver distillation waste has been used as a precursor for activated carbon synthesized with pyrolisis methods. Carbon is activated by a chemical process using KOH. Enhancement of amorph structure and function group by addition of zinc oxide has been characterized by Raman Spectroscopy, Fourier Transform Infra-Red (FT-IR), and X-Ray Diffraction (XRD). Furthermore, cyclic voltammetry (CV) and galvanostatic charge-discharge (GCD) has been done to show the electrochemical properties enhancement of the ZnO/AC compared to pristine AC. At the current density of 1 A/g, the specific capacitance of VRW-ACM has a value of 277 F/g. After the impregnation process, the specific capacitance of VRW-ACM-ZnO has been improved by 44.4% compared to VRW-ACM. The result showed that the activated carbon-based vetiver root waste impregnated with ZnO has the potential to be applied as supercapacitors electrodes.