Much of the global agricultural by products go waste, especially in developing nations where much of their revenues depend on the exports of raw agricultural products. Such waste streams, if converted to “value added” products could serve as additional source of revenue while simultaneously having a positive impact on the socio-economic well being of the people. We present a preliminary investigation on utilizing chemical activation technique and ball milling to convert agricultural waste streams such as cocoa pod, coconut husk, palm midrib and calabash commonly found in Ghana into ultra-high surface area activated carbon. Such activated carbons are suitable for myriads of applications in environmental remediation, climate management, energy storage and conversion systems (batteries and supercapacitors), and improving crop productivity. We achieved BET surface area as high as ∼ 3000 m2/g.

We present preliminary results on a processing protocol by chemical activation that transforms organic waste product such as coconut husk into high surface area activated carbon. Dried raw materials of the coconut husk were carbonized anaerobically into char. The char was impregnated with KOH of different ratios and were activated at 800°C and 900°C. The transmission electron microscope was used to acquire structural and morphological information of the activated carbon, and the surface area and porosity analysis were performed using Micromeritics ASAP 2020 analyzer. The activated carbons show both micropores and mesopores with specific surface area as high as 2900m2/g.