Scientists at Oregon State University have found a way to convert tree cellulose into high-tech energy storage devices. Because cellulose is a key component of trees and the most abundant organic polymer on earth this discovery will have a profound impact in industry. Scientists were able to heat the tree cellulose in a furnace in the presence of ammonia to create the building block for supercapacitors for use in industrial electronic applications. Supercapacitors are extraordinarily, high-power energy devices for which production has been held back by cost and difficulty in producing high-quality carbon electrodes.

 

The new approach just discovered at OSU can produce nitrogen-doped, nanoporous carbon membranes — the electrodes of a supercapacitor — at low cost, quickly, in an environmentally benign process. The only byproduct is methane, which could be used immediately as a fuel or for other purposes.

 

"The ease, speed and potential of this process is really exciting," said the lead author on a study announcing the discovery in Nano Letters, a journal of the American Chemical Society.

 

"We're going to take cheap wood and turn it into a valuable high-tech product," he said.

 

These carbon membranes at the nano-scale are extraordinarily thin — a single gram of them can have a surface area of nearly 2,000 square meters. That's part of what makes them useful in supercapacitors. And the new process used to do this is a single-step reaction that's fast and inexpensive. It starts with something about as simple as a cellulose filter paper — conceptually similar to the disposable paper filter in a coffee maker.

 

The exposure to high heat and ammonia converts the cellulose to a nanoporous carbon material needed for supercapacitors, and should enable them to be produced, in mass, more cheaply than before.

 

A supercapacitor is a type of energy storage device, but it can be recharged much faster than a battery and has a great deal more power. They are mostly used in any type of device where rapid power storage and short, but powerful energy release is needed.