Nutshell Combustion Soot as a Sustainable Carbon Material: From Morphology to Electrochemical and Adsorptive...

Converting waste materials to value-added products is a key strategy for sustainable resource management. In this study, soot generated from the combustion of various biomass sourcesincluding apricot (AP) shells, pistachio (PS) shells, hazelnut (HZ) shells, a combination of apricot and pistachio shells, and a mixture of hazelnut, apricot, and pistachio shellswas collected and systematically characterized using SEM-EDS, BET, XRD, Raman spectroscopy, and FTIR analysis. The result obtained shows that the HZ + AP + PS soot has the largest surface area (76.66 m²/g), highest mass % of carbon (75.65%), abundant oxygen-containing functional groups, and some heteroatoms, which contribute to its promising potential in various applications such as sensors, supercapacitors, batteries, and water treatment. The electrochemical performance of the carbon soot samples using cyclic voltammetry (CV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) demonstrated promising redox activity, particularly in the HZ + AP + PS soot materials, which exhibited the highest electrochemical performance due to a high specific surface area, while the HZ soot exhibited the lowest, suggesting a promising electrode material for the electrochemical reaction. Additionally, batch adsorption experiments demonstrated that all soot samples efficiently removed Pb-(II) and norfloxacin antibiotic from aqueous solutions, achieving adsorption efficiencies of ∼91% at pH 6 and up to ∼99% within 60 min. The HZ + AP + PS soot shows a high electrochemical performance in the detection of streptomycin. The novel findings in this work indicate that the ternary biomass-derived carbon (HZ + AP + PS) soot has substantial potential as a sustainable and cost-effective material for electrochemical applications (sensors, batteries, or supercapacitors) and as an efficient adsorbent for water detoxification.