With continued growth of the broiler industry, large-scale accretion of poultry byproducts poses serious economic and environmental challenges stemming from disposal issues and environmental pollution. Conventional methods for surface application of poultry litter are under scrutiny due to environmental issues including ammonia and nitrous oxide emissions, as well as contamination of ground and surface water with nitrate, phosphate, and pathogens. Therefore, it is critical to devise novel strategies for valorizing poultry litter for ensuring the sustainability of the broiler industry. In this context, there is a great interest in the development of portable devices capable of storing energy. In that regard, carbon-based supercapacitors (SCs) are emerging as the energy storage devices of the future due to their high power densities, superfast charging and discharging abilities, coupled with exceptional durability. However, SCs suffer from low energy densities when compared to commercial batteries, thereby triggering research into new techniques for enhancing energy densities. Lately, the research on increasing energy density has shifted towards heteroatom-doped electrode materials. It is shown that when a few carbon atoms in a carbonaceous material are replaced with non-carbon atoms, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, the electron-donating and accepting ability of the carbon matrix is enhanced, resulting significantly leading to an enhancement of SCs.

Considering that poultry litter is chemically equipped with significant amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus, it is hypothesized that poultry litter can be converted into high-value nitrogen- and phosphorus-doped SC. This will be tested by valorizing litter into nitrogen and phosphorus SC electrodes by pyrolysis, systematically testing the performance of the SC electrodes by electrochemical techniques, and evaluating the environmental feasibility of the litter-to-SC process by a life cycle assessment.

As our publications related to this goal are produced, we will include them on this page.