Structurally tuned biomass waste-derived porous carbon from palm oil empty fruit bunch for lithium-ion battery anode

Structurally tuned porous carbon materials derived from palm oil empty fruit bunch (EFB) biomass waste - for application as lithium-ion battery anodes - were synthesized via a tailored thermal and chemical modification process that enables precise engineering of the carbon's microstructure and physicochemical properties. Carbonization at an elevated pyrolysis temperature of 800 °C was the first step in structurally tuning the hard carbon, engineering its defect density and turbostatic structure to create abundant electrochemically active sites that facilitate lithium-ion reaction kinetics. Moreover, an acidic impregnation step not only removed metallic and extraneous impurities from the carbon matrix but also structurally modified the material's surface chemistry and ordered domain arrangement, yielding enhanced chemical stability and electrochemical performance. Further thermal activation under an inert atmosphere amplified the defect structure of the carbon material while structurally tuning its pore architecture to form a hierarchical porous network; this step simultaneously increased the density of active lithium storage sites and optimized ion accommodation and transport pathways. The obtained structurally tuned porous carbon materials were characterized in detail by X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Brunauer-Emmet-Teller (BET), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), High Resolution Transmission Electron Microscopy (HRTEM), Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR), and Thermogravimetric (TGA) analysis to quantify the engineered structural changes (interlayer spacing, porosity, defect density, morphology). Electrochemical studies were carried out via galvanostatic charge-discharge (GCD) testing, cyclic voltammetry (CV), and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) to correlate these structural tunings with electrochemical performance. This work demonstrates that the palm oil EFB-derived structurally tuned porous carbons markedly outperform commercial graphite anodes: EFB-CBM delivers a high specific capacity of 408.3 mAh/g, and the fully optimized, structurally tuned EFB-SM exhibits an promising specific capacity of 690.0 mAh/g - nearly double the theoretical capacity of graphite - along with outstanding cycling stability, retaining over 80% of its capacity (in excess of 500 mAh/g) after 300 consecutive charge-discharge cycles. These results underscore the inherent potential of EFB as a low-cost, sustainable, and high-performance biomass precursor for LIB anode fabrication, while also validating simple, scalable thermal and chemical modification strategies enable precise structural tuning of biomass-derived carbon materials. This intentional structural engineering unlocks tunability of the material's electrochemical properties, maximizing its reversible capacity and cycling performance for practical energy storage applications.

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