It is estimated that as many as 5.6 trillion of toxic used-cigarettes are deposited into the environment worldwide every year. SNU Professor YI Jonghyeop (Dept. of Chemical and Biological Engineering) developed a simple way to convert the used-cigarette butts into an energy storage material. Scientists around the world are currently working towards improving the characteristics of supercapacitors—such as energy density, power density and cycle stability—whilst also trying to reduce production costs, according to the Open Science World. Professor YI demonstrated that the cellulose acetate fibres that cigarette filters are mostly composed of could be transformed into a carbon-based material using a simple, one-step burning technique called pyrolysis. As a result of this burning process, the resulting carbon-based material contained a number of tiny pores, increasing its performance as a supercapacitive material.

• This research was published in the article Preparation of energy storage material derived from a used cigarette filter for a supercapacitor electrode in Nanotechnology on 5 August 2014
• Professor YI Jonghyeop's lab: http://empl.snu.ac.kr/
• SNU Dept. of Chemical and Biological Engineering: http://cbe.snu.ac.kr/

Published in Open Science World