Cyclic utilisation of waste tires as nanostructured anode materials for Li-ion batteries

ABSTRACT

The cyclic utilization of waste tires has been a major problem that plagued the industry. In this paper, we explore a novel method of resource integration and application to solve this problem by using waste tires as the electrode materials. The waste tires were carbonized and coated with sucrose to prepare nano sulfur-carbon (NSC) and carbon-coated nano sulfur-carbon (NSC/C) materials. The results of the microstructures and morphologies showed that the NSC was composed of hexagonal ZnS nanoparticles and amorphous carbon. Electrochemical tests showed that the uncoated NSC composite had a high capacity of 426.6 mAh g^-1, but it also presented a low initial efficiency with poor rate and cycling performance. After coating, the NSC/C exhibited an acceptable specific capacity of 374 mAh g^-1 with lower capacity fading and superior cycling performance than NSC. Materials obtained from carbonized waste tires have great potential for use as anode materials in lithium-ion batteries.

KEYWORDS:

• Waste tires
• carbonisation
• nano sulphur-carbon
• liquid-phase
• lithium-ion battery

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors wish to acknowledge financial support from the Key Research Project of North Minzu University [grant 2019KJ08], Excellent Talents of North Minzu University, Science and Technology Innovation Leader Program of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region [grant KJT2015001], Key Research Project of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region [2016], and Program for Excellent Talents of Ningxia [2018BEB04014].