Conversion of Agricultural Waste Streams into Value Added Products

Abstract

Much of the global agricultural by products go waste, especially in developing nations where much of their revenues depend on the exports of raw agricultural products. Such waste streams, if converted to “value added” products could serve as additional source of revenue while simultaneously having a positive impact on the socio-economic well being of the people. We present a preliminary investigation on utilizing chemical activation technique and ball milling to convert agricultural waste streams such as cocoa pod, coconut husk, palm midrib and calabash commonly found in Ghana into ultra-high surface area activated carbon. Such activated carbons are suitable for myriads of applications in environmental remediation, climate management, energy storage and conversion systems (batteries and supercapacitors), and improving crop productivity. We achieved BET surface area as high as ~ 3000 m²/g.