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Summary: The thermal treatment of an activated carbon/chars with a nitrogen precursor is not a sustainable nor an efficient method for the incorporation of N into the carbon structure. This study proposes the use of hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) as an environmentally friendly method for the incorporation of N into the bulk of carbon materials. The authors propose the following sequence for the synthesis of N‐enriched carbon materials (NCM) for energy storage applications: HTC of the N precursor and biomass → activation of N‐hydrochar (N‐HC). To investigate the proposed method, HTCs of spent coffee grounds (SCG) with N precursors (urea and alanine) were conducted at 220°C for 5 hours. The resulted N‐HCs were subjected to a mild thermal activation via pyrolysis at 600°C for 2 hours. The results showed that HTC enhances the incorporation of N into the carbon matrix via many reactions, for example, the Maillard reaction (MR) or the Mannich reaction, which may accompany the formation of HC via the solved‐intermediate pathway or the solid‐to‐solid pathway, respectively. However, adjusting some parameters before HTC, for example, the concentration of the N precursor and the pH value of the slurry is important to avoid a significant reduction in the N‐HC yield. The proposed method led to the synthesis of NCM with a N content of 10.3wt% The X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) confirmed the incorporation of N into the bulk of NCM and showed a significant increase in the content of heterocyclic N compounds (pyridinic N, pyrrolic N, and graphitic N) in the NCM. The incorporation of N via the proposed method significantly improved the electrochemical properties of NCM as the values of the specific capacitance and the electrical conductivity in the NCM increased by five times and four times, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the production of biobased carbon materials from potato waste and its application in energy storage systems such as supercapacitors. Three different categories of carbons were produced: hydrochar (HC) from hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) at three different temperatures (200 °C, 220 °C, 240 °C) and two different duration times (two hours and five hours), pyrolyzed hydrochar (PHC) obtained via pyrolysis of the HTC chars at 600 °C and 900 °C for two hours and pyrochar from the pyrolysis of biomass at 600 °C and 900 °C for two hours. The carbon samples were analysed regarding their physico-chemical properties such as elemental composition, specific surface area, bulk density and surface functionalities as well as their electrochemical characteristics such as electric conductivity and specific capacity via cyclic voltammetry. N- and O-enriched carbon materials with promising specific surface areas of up to 330 m2 g−1 containing high shares of microporosity were produced. Electric conductivities of up to 203 S m−1 and specific capacities of up to 134 F g−1 were obtained. The presence of high contents of oxygen (4.9–13.5 wt.%) and nitrogen (3.4–4.0 wt.%) of PHCs is assumed to lead to considerable pseudocapacitive effects and favor the high specific capacities measured. These results lead to the conclusion that the potential of agricultural biomass can be exploited by using hydrothermal and thermochemical conversion technologies to create N- and O-rich carbon materials with tailored properties for the application in supercapacitors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]