Pasit Pakawatpanurut

Energy has become the forefront issue for much of the economic and social development. The success of renewable energy technology is clearly needed for our future sustainable society. However, renewable energy sources are intermittent in nature, an issue that must be addressed by energy storage systems to enable full potential of renewable energy. Supercapacitors and batteries offer viable solutions to the issue. This work reported a new composite prepared from agricultural waste pineapple leaves and MnO2. The synthesis also made use of microwave, which is a low cost and simple process. Furthermore, the resulting composite material yielded a high specific capacitance (195 F/g at 0.1 A/g for three-electrode setup, 133 F/g at 0.1 A/g for a coin cell, and 120 F at 10 mA for a pouch cell). Together with the upscaling feasibility, this agricultural waste-derived material offers not only high-performance electrode with good stability for supercapacitors but also sustainability outlook and potential cost-effectiveness of the preparation steps. Such contributions are consistent with the affordable/clean energy and the climate action SDG goals.