Abstract
In this work, the wormwood rod residues are pretreated with white rot fungi as the precursor to preparing porous carbon following a simple carbonization and activation process (denoted herein as FWRA sample). The FWRA sample possesses abundant hierarchical pores structure with high specific surface area (1165.7 m(2) g(-1)) and large pore volume (1.02 cm(3) g(-1)). As an electrode for supercapacitors, the FWRA sample offers a high specific capacitance of 443.2 F g(-1) at 0.5 A g(-1) and superb rate ability holding a specific capacitance of 270 F g(-1) at 100 A g(-1) in 6 M KOH electrolyte. The corresponding symmetrical capacitor has a superb cyclic stability with a low specific capacitance decay rate of 0.4% after 20,000 cycles at 5 A g(-1) in 1 M Na(2)SO(4) electrolyte. Moreover, measurements revealed that when used as adsorbent, the FWRA sample is ideal for removing methyl orange (MO) from water, exhibiting a superior adsorption ability of 260.8 mg g(-1). Therefore, this study is expected to provide a simple and environmentally friendly technique for the generation of value-added and functional porous carbon materials from Chinese medicinal herbal residues, thus offering promising candidates for broad application areas.