Development of Supercapacitor Hydrogel from Self-crosslink Polyaniline and Rice Husk (RH-grafted-PANI)

• Main Author: Rusli, Muhammad Haziq
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: IRC 2015
• Subjects: TP Chemical technology
• Online Access: http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/16269/1/DISSERTATION%20FYP%2015608.pdf; http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/16269/

Nowadays, supercapacitor has been widely used in many applications. Therefore, this research is conducted to synthesize self-crosslink polyaniline (PANI) hydrogel grafted with rice husk fiber electrode for supercapacitor. Also, this research also study the effect of rice husk fiber on water absorbency capacity and conductivity of the hydrogel. Polyaniline (PANI) hydrogel usually synthesized using cross-linkers which greatly impair the electrochemical properties of hydrogel. Eliminating the cross-linkers in synthesizing the hydrogel helps increase its electrochemical properties. Rice husk waste are abundantly dumped and causing environmental and disposal issues. Hence, it is benificial it in other useful application. Sol-gel method was chosen to synthesize the hydrogel by using ammonium persulfate (APS) as initiator, aniline hydrochloric as precursor and gelatin. Five samples of hydrogel were synthesized with 0wt%, 1.5wt%, 3wt%, 4.5wt% and 6wt% of rice husk fiber content. The resulted hydrogels were characterized by Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR), Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) and Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA). Water absorbency capacity test was conducted by soaking the resulted hydrogel in water for 24 hours. While conductivity test was determined using DC conductivity measurement. The highest water absorbency capacity was hydrogel with 3 wt% rice husk which obtained 96.4% absorbency. The conductivity of hydrogel decreased when rice husk content increased but within a small range from 3.120× 10−4 to 3.306× 10−4 s.