Journal of Hazardous Materials, Vol.366, 358-369, 2019
Graphene from discharged dry cell battery electrodes
Utilization of extracted graphite rods from discharged dry cell batteries for synthesis of graphene oxide / graphene serves two purposes, one is waste management which supports environmental safety and the second is low cost production of graphene oxide / graphene which are highly promising 2D materials in various fields of research. In the present work, a sustainable feasibility for the synthesis of graphene oxide / graphene from graphite rods of waste dry cell batteries is demonstrated. The graphite rods separated from the waste dry cell batteries were subjected to electrochemical exfoliation (ECE) in an acidic media. The graphene oxide (GO) obtained from this method was subjected to reduction heat treatment under argon atmosphere at suitable temperature and time period. Finally, the reduced graphene oxide (rGO) i.e., graphene was characterized using XRD, FTIR, Raman Spectroscopy, TGA, BET, SEM and TEM. The few layer graphene structure is supposed to be less defective in comparison to similar exfoliation techniques due to less oxygen-functional groups associated with the intermediate graphene oxide.
Keywords:Waste battery electrodes;Electrochemical exfoliation;Graphene oxide (GO);Reduced graphene oxide (rGO)