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Conversion of biomass and plastic wastes into activated carbon with high specific surface area: a clean and promising carbon utilization strategy

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Abstract

Reducing CO2 emissions is an urgent requirement at present. Instead of the incineration and the landfill treatment, the conversion of biomass and plastic wastes into the activated carbon is capable of reducing CO2 emissions and other pollutions. Such method is beneficial for environmental protection and clean utilization of carbon resources. This review thereby firstly introduces the methods used for converting the biomass and plastic wastes into activated carbon with high specific surface area. The recent advance in the carbonization and activation methods as well as their effects on the specific surface area, pore structure and other properties of the obtained carbon material are summarized in detail. In addition, this review explores the applications of obtained carbon material with high specific surface area in the fields of CO2 adsorption, hydrogen storage and supercapacitor since they are closely related to the reduction of CO2 emissions and clean energy. This review also proposes the challenges and future prospects of clean conversion of biomass and plastic wastes as well as improving the adsorption and electrochemical performances of the obtained carbon materials in the above-mentioned fields. It is expected that this review will present useful information on the clean conversion of biomass and plastic wastes into activated carbon with high specific surface area and its utilization potentials in the reduction of CO2 emissions and clean energy.

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The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by Collaborative Innovation Center of Biomass and Coal Utilization of Zhejiang University of Technology.

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XZ investigated the literatures and wrote the manuscript; Other authors revised the manuscript. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Nan Yao.

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Zhou, X., Cen, J., Li, Z. et al. Conversion of biomass and plastic wastes into activated carbon with high specific surface area: a clean and promising carbon utilization strategy. Chem. Pap. 77, 7361–7377 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11696-023-03042-5

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