Recently, activated carbon derived from different agricultural by-products or bio-waste is receiving a great deal of attention due to its low or zero cost and environmental friendliness. In this work, flowers obtained from Borassus flabellifer (BFL) is used as a carbon source and potassium hydroxide (KOH) as activation precursor to produce activated carbon with high specific surface area and predominant micropore. The obtained carbon material was activated at 650 °C. The as-prepared sample had a specific surface area of 930.3 m2/ g and pore size distribution of 1.96 nm. The carbon material exhibited high electrochemical performance with a specific capacitance of 247 F/g at 0.5 A/g in 1 M H2SO4 electrolyte and an excellent cycling stability of 94% after 2500 cycles. A specific energy of 101.1 Wh/kg and a specific power of 4500 kW/kg were obtained. Based on the electrochemical properties exhibited by BFL, it could be used as an excellent electrode material for supercapacitor applications.

    Abstract
    1 Introduction
    2 Experimental
        2.1 Materials
        2.2 Carbonization of flowers of BFL
        2.3 Activation of carbon obtained from flowers of BFL
        2.4 Physiochemical characterization
        2.5 Electrochemical measurements
    3 Results and discussion
        3.1 Characterization of BFL
        3.2 Electrochemical performance of BFL-650
    4 Conclusions
    Acknowledgements 
    References

• Zaharaddeen S. Iro(Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, SRM Institute of Science and Technology)
• C. Subramani(Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, SRM Institute of Science and Technology)
• Jerome Rajendran(Department of Chemistry, SRM Institute of Science and Technology)
• Ashok K. Sundramoorthy(Department of Chemistry, SRM Institute of Science and Technology)