Sustainable Waste Tire Derived Carbon Material as a Potential Anode for Lithium-Ion Batteries

• Main Authors: Joseph S. Gnanaraj, Richard J. Lee, Alan M. Levine, Jonathan L. Wistrom, Skyler L. Wistrom, Yunchao Li, Jianlin Li, Kokouvi Akato, Amit K. Naskar, M. Parans Paranthaman
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2018-08-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: battery grade carbon; waste tires; lithium-ion batteries; pouch cells; disordered carbon microstructure; surface coating
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/8/2840

The rapidly growing automobile industry increases the accumulation of end-of-life tires each year throughout the world. Waste tires lead to increased environmental issues and lasting resource problems. Recycling hazardous wastes to produce value-added products is becoming essential for the sustainable progress of society. A patented sulfonation process followed by pyrolysis at 1100 °C in a nitrogen atmosphere was used to produce carbon material from these tires and utilized as an anode in lithium-ion batteries. The combustion of the volatiles released in waste tire pyrolysis produces lower fossil CO2 emissions per unit of energy (136.51 gCO2/kW·h) compared to other conventional fossil fuels such as coal or fuel–oil, usually used in power generation. The strategy used in this research may be applied to other rechargeable batteries, supercapacitors, catalysts, and other electrochemical devices. The Raman vibrational spectra observed on these carbons show a graphitic carbon with significant disorder structure. Further, structural studies reveal a unique disordered carbon nanostructure with a higher interlayer distance of 4.5 Å compared to 3.43 Å in the commercial graphite. The carbon material derived from tires was used as an anode in lithium-ion batteries exhibited a reversible capacity of 360 mAh/g at C/3. However, the reversible capacity increased to 432 mAh/g at C/10 when this carbon particle was coated with a thin layer of carbon. A novel strategy of prelithiation applied for improving the first cycle efficiency to 94% is also presented.