`Project Turns Olive Waste Into Supercapacitors - Olive Oil Times
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Project Turns Olive Waste Into Supercapacitors

By Simon Roots
Sep. 18, 2024 17:51 UTC

A project in Spain has suc­cess­fully trans­formed olive waste into acti­vated car­bon with diverse appli­ca­tions.

At the end of its research period, the CARBON+ project, a joint pub­lic-pri­vate enter­prise, has demon­strated the pro­duc­t’s effi­ciency as a super­ca­pac­i­tor mate­r­ial, its effec­tive­ness in waste­water treat­ment and its aid in extend­ing the lifes­pan of brine in olive pro­cess­ing.

These results under­line the poten­tial of acti­vated car­bons in var­i­ous appli­ca­tions, which will con­tribute to the study of the eco­nomic fea­si­bil­ity of scal­ing up the process to an indus­trial level.

Launched in 2022 within the strate­gic projects pro­gram in coop­er­a­tion with the Valencian Innovation Agency of the Valencian Community’s regional gov­ern­ment and co-financed by the European Union, the project was under­taken by Greene Enterprise, Aceitunas Serpis, the University of Alicante and Aitex.

The work was car­ried out at Greene’s pilot plant in the Elche indus­trial park using olive pro­cess­ing residue sup­plied by Serpis, a table olive pro­ducer. The residue is mostly com­prised of olive pits and brine, the olive sec­tor’s pri­mary waste prod­ucts, obtained after pro­cess­ing Manzanilla and Hojiblanca table olives.

See Also:Researchers Transform Olive Grove Waste Into Bioplastic

Despite exten­sive research in recent years into apply­ing the prin­ci­ples of the cir­cu­lar econ­omy to the table olive and olive oil indus­tries, the vast major­ity of waste is still deposited in land­fills.

The end objec­tive of the CARBON+ project was to use pyrol­y­sis to trans­form these waste mate­ri­als into high-qual­ity acti­vated car­bon via an eco­nom­i­cally viable indus­trial process.

This was achieved, and acti­vated car­bon with a spe­cific sur­face area of 1,440 square meters per gram was pro­duced. Since one of acti­vated car­bon’s most use­ful qual­i­ties is its adsorp­tion capac­ity (the adhe­sion of atoms, ions or mol­e­cules from a gas, liq­uid or dis­solved solid to a sur­face), the greater the sur­face area, the more effec­tive the car­bon in such appli­ca­tions.

In addi­tion to suc­cess­fully devel­op­ing this process, three main indus­trial appli­ca­tions were inves­ti­gated to eval­u­ate the acti­vated carbon’s poten­tial end value.

The first lever­ages the pro­duc­t’s high adsorp­tion to elim­i­nate sus­pended organic mat­ter and phe­no­lic com­pounds dis­solved in used olive fer­men­ta­tion brine.

This allows the brine to be reused directly within the olive pro­cess­ing indus­try, thus reduc­ing waste and asso­ci­ated costs. The project’s acti­vated car­bon was more effec­tive in this capac­ity than com­mer­cial alter­na­tives, remov­ing a higher polyphe­nol con­tent due to its greater poros­ity.

In a related appli­ca­tion, acti­vated car­bon was shown to be effec­tive at remov­ing odors in waste­water treat­ment. This was demon­strated by test­ing the prod­uct against fer­men­ta­tion brine, tex­tile waste­water and stan­dard urban waste­water from an active treat­ment plant.

See Also:Bricks Made with Olive Pits Reduce Carbon Footprint of Buildings, Study Finds

Finally, the acti­vated car­bon obtained was assessed for its poten­tial use in super­ca­pac­i­tors for energy stor­age. In recent years, there has been renewed inter­est in using acti­vated car­bons in energy stor­age, and they remain a strong can­di­date in the search for porous mate­ri­als that may enable the hydro­gen econ­omy.

Carbon-based super­ca­pac­i­tors com­prise two porous car­bon elec­trodes with a large spe­cific sur­face area immersed in an elec­trolyte and sep­a­rated by a mem­brane.

The energy stor­age is entirely elec­tro­sta­tic and, there­fore, harm­less to the integrity and sta­bil­ity of the elec­trodes. This allows the super­ca­pac­i­tor to per­form up to 100,000 charge-dis­charge cycles with an elec­trolyte dete­ri­o­ra­tion rate of under 10 per­cent, which makes such energy stor­age highly desir­able in appli­ca­tions such as elec­tric vehi­cles.

It was demon­strated that elec­trodes made from the project’s mate­r­ial per­formed com­pa­ra­ble to those con­structed with com­mer­cial acti­vated car­bon, per­form­ing slightly lower.

Electrochemical per­for­mance improved after wash­ing the acti­vated car­bon with hydrochlo­ric acid and mod­i­fy­ing its sur­face chem­istry through ther­mal treat­ment. The researchers con­cluded that the per­for­mance achieved at this stage was suf­fi­ciently high to war­rant fur­ther research and devel­op­ment.

This con­clu­sion was also drawn con­cern­ing the project as a whole, with Greene stat­ing: ​“In short, these results under­line the poten­tial of acti­vated car­bons in var­i­ous appli­ca­tions, which will con­tribute to the study of the eco­nomic fea­si­bil­ity of scal­ing up the process to an indus­trial level by both com­pa­nies.”

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