(332j) Environmentally-Responsible Conversions from Gasification Waste to Energy Storage Devices: Synthesis of Waste-Derived Nanomaterials and Environmental Evaluation

Waste gasification technology is considered as a sustainable solution to reduce waste volumes and recover energy by producing syngas. However, the leftover of gasification become another waste which needs combustion and landfill. Herein, with the concept of waste-to-resource, an environmentally-responsible pathway has been developed to extract vanadium from a gasification waste, carbon soot, and further converted into vanadium pentoxide. In this study, V₂O₅ nanosheets were synthesized from the leachate of gasification waste, which show comparable specific capacitance as the one from commercial V₂O₅. A flexible supercapacitor was designed by using waste-derived nanosheet and carbon nanoparticle as active materials. The whole process successfully synthesizes V₂O₅ from carbon soot and explores the potential application of carbon waste. Compared to the traditional process of V₂O₅ production, this process demonstrated significantly lower negative environmental impact in terms of human health, ecosystem diversity and resource availability, in a ReCiPe 2016 environmental impact assessment. Moreover, the interesting physical and chemical properties of carbon soot raise the possibility of utilizing carbon soot as a readily-available resource in a large scope of application of carbon materials.