As the world searches for cleaner ways to store and convert energy, scientists are turning to an unlikely source of high-performance materials: biomass. A review published in Biochar examines how biomass-derived materials, especially biomass-derived carbon materials, are being developed for energy storage devices and electrocatalytic energy conversion systems, including supercapacitors, fuel cells, water electrolysis, and carbon dioxide reduction.
The review, titled “Biomass-derived materials for energy storage and electrocatalysis: recent advances and future perspectives,” was conducted by Van-Toan Nguyen, Kanghee Cho, Yujin Choi, Byungwook Hwang, Young-Kwon Park, Hyungseok Nam, and Doyeon Lee. It summarizes recent progress in transforming natural biomass into advanced carbon-based materials with tunable structures, rich surface chemistry, and strong electrochemical performance.
Biomass materials are attractive because they are renewable, abundant, biodegradable, and widely available from sources such as wood, agricultural residues, fruit peels, shells, lignin, cellulose, and other biological precursors. Unlike conventional carbon materials that are often produced from fossil-based feedstocks through energy-intensive processes, biomass-derived carbon materials can offer a more sustainable pathway to functional electrodes and catalysts.
“Biomass is not only a low-cost and renewable carbon source,” said the authors. “Its natural hierarchical structure, abundant heteroatoms, and diverse surface functional groups provide unique advantages for designing materials that can efficiently store and convert energy.”
The review highlights several key features that make biomass-derived carbon materials promising for electrochemical applications. Their porous structures can create fast channels for ion diffusion and electron transport. Their high surface areas can expose more active sites. Their natural or engineered heteroatom doping, including nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, oxygen, or boron, can improve conductivity, wettability, and catalytic activity. These characteristics are especially important for supercapacitors, hydrogen evolution, oxygen evolution, oxygen reduction, and carbon dioxide reduction reactions.
The authors discuss multiple fabrication strategies, including pyrolysis, hydrothermal carbonization, microwave-assisted hydrothermal carbonization, chemical activation, physical activation, and coupled activation methods. These processes can convert raw biomass into carbon materials with different morphologies, such as zero-dimensional carbon dots, one-dimensional fibers or tubes, two-dimensional sheets, and three-dimensional porous networks.
In energy storage, biomass-derived carbon materials have shown potential as electrodes for supercapacitors and hybrid ion capacitors. Their porous networks and surface functional groups help improve charge storage, ion transport, rate capability, and cycling stability. In electrocatalysis, biomass-derived carbon can act as an active catalyst or as a support for metal and metal compound catalysts, helping reduce the need for expensive noble metals.
Despite the promise, the review emphasizes that several challenges remain. Producing high-quality biomass-derived carbon materials with consistent structure and performance is still difficult. Large-scale application is also limited by manufacturing cost, material variability, and the need for greener activation and treatment methods. The authors call for more research into controllable structural design, surface and interface engineering, scalable production, and advanced in situ characterization to better understand how these materials work during real electrochemical reactions.
“Future progress will depend on our ability to precisely control pore architecture, surface chemistry, and catalyst interfaces,” the authors said. “With rational design and greener processing, biomass-derived materials could play an important role in next-generation energy storage and conversion technologies.”
By connecting sustainable feedstocks with advanced materials engineering, the review points toward a future in which agricultural and biological resources may help power cleaner batteries, supercapacitors, fuel cells, and other energy technologies.
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Journal Reference: Nguyen, VT., Cho, K., Choi, Y. et al. Biomass-derived materials for energy storage and electrocatalysis: recent advances and future perspectives. Biochar 6, 96 (2024).
https://doi.org/10.1007/s42773-024-00388-1
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About Biochar
Biochar (e-ISSN: 2524-7867) is the first journal dedicated exclusively to biochar research, spanning agronomy, environmental science, and materials science. It publishes original studies on biochar production, processing, and applications—such as bioenergy, environmental remediation, soil enhancement, climate mitigation, water treatment, and sustainability analysis. The journal serves as an innovative and professional platform for global researchers to share advances in this rapidly expanding field.
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