Recycled human hair-derived activated carbon for energy-related applications

Activated carbon, having high surface area and porosity, is a carbonaceous material that comes from organic main sources. In this work, activated carbon materials were produced from human hair that belongs to people who can be classified into two age groups (0-18 or 18-40 years). Activated carbons were characterized by nitrogen adsorption/desorption isotherms (BET), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), Raman spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and elemental analysis techniques. Capacitances of the synthesized materials were determined by using cyclic voltammetry (CV). Characterization results showed that the structural properties of activated carbon materials and capacitance values are changed significantly according to different age groups. BET surface areas of the 0-18 and 18-40 age groups were obtained as 2303 m²/g and 2674 m²/g, respectively. It was observed that 18-40 age group showed higher specific capacitance (294 F/g) than the 0-18 age group (219 F/g) due to high surface area.