Navel orange peel-derived hard carbons as high performance anode materials of Na and Li-ion batteries

Deriving carbon electrode materials from biomass resources has been the ongoing research interest for sustainable development of high performance electrochemical energy storage devices. Herein, navel orange peel is used as an abundant raw material to prepare hard carbon anodes for Na and Li-ion batteries through a two-step process. The hydrothermal treatment effectively decomposes the biomass into uniform precursor, while the following high temperature carbonization results in fine hard carbon particles. The hard carbon carbonized at 1300 °C exhibits the best Na ion storage performance including a high initial reversible capacity of 337 mAh g−1 at 0.1 A g−1 and a high remaining capacity of 234 mAh g−1 after 500 cycles at 0.5 A g−1, which can be explained by its featured structure favoring the adsorption-intercalation/filling model. The hard carbon pyrolized at 1100 °C displays a much higher reversible capacity of 428 mAh g−1 than many other biomass-derived hard carbon anodes together with a robust cycle stability. These outstanding Na and Li ion storage properties convincingly demonstrate that the two-step process as well as the abundant navel orange peel resource can provide a potential solution to sustainable development of high performance hard carbon anode materials for Na and Li-ion batteries.