Chapter 7: Nanocomposite-based Green Supercapacitors: Advantages and Limitations

The concept of green energy technology is necessary for a safe, sound, and healthy society. Within the strategic framework of green energy storage technology, supercapacitors stand out as a highly efficient and renewable candidate. They are reversible and rechargeable, and have less environmental impact. Energy professionals are striving to design biobased supercapacitors using porous carbon materials. Others are exploring the possibilities for fabricating high performance supercapacitor materials derived from biowastes, forest flowers, nonedible seeds, leaves, and stems. These manifest dual advantages such as fabrication of green supercapacitor precursors and reducing excessive biowastes. Nonetheless, they also possess numerous commendable characteristics, including high porosities, relatively low costs, and ease of accessibility. Adversely, they suffer from low energy density, inferior cyclic stability and poor specific capacitance. These limitations can be resolved by employing innovative techniques including tuning of surface morphology, doping with chemically attuned nanofillers, and fabrication of nanocomposites. In this chapter, detailed advantages and possible limitations of nanocomposite-based green supercapacitor materials for green and efficacious energy storage devices are described.