Maria‐Magdalena Titirici

Energy shortage, environmental crisis, and developing customer demands have driven people to find facile, low-cost, environmentally friendly, and nontoxic routes to produce novel functional materials that can be commercialized in the near future. Amongst various techniques, the hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) process of biomass (either of isolated carbohydrates or crude plants) is a promising candidate for the synthesis of novel carbon-based materials with a wide variety of potential applicatio

Carbon-based structures are the most versatile materials used in the modern field of renewable energy (i.e., in both generation and storage) and environmental science (e.g., purification/remediation). However, there is a need and indeed a desire to develop increasingly more sustainable variants of classical carbon materials (e.g., activated carbons, carbon nanotubes, carbon aerogels, etc.), particularly when the whole life cycle is considered (i.e., from precursor "cradle" to "green" manufacturi

The production of functional nanostructured materials starting from cheap natural precursors using environmentally friendly processes is a highly attractive subject in material chemistry today. Recently, much attention has been focused on the use of plant biomass to produce functional carbonaceous materials, encompassing economic, environmental and social issues. Besides the classical route to produce activated carbons from agricultural side products, the hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) process

Sodium‐ion batteries (SIBs) have attracted more and more attention for scalable electrical energy storage due to the abundance and wide distribution of Na resources. However, the anode still remains a great challenge for the application of SIBs. Here the production of uniform hard carbon microtubes (HCTs) made from natural cotton through one simple carbonization process and their application as an anode are reported. The study shows that the electrochemical performance of the HCTs is seriously a

Microporous nitrogen-doped carbons produced by hydrothermal carbonization of biomass derivative followed by chemical activation showed excellent supercapacitive capacitance performance both in acid and base electrolytes. Detailed facts of importance to specialist readers are published as ”Supporting Information”. Such documents are peer-reviewed, but not copy-edited or typeset. They are made available as submitted by the authors. Please note: The publisher is not responsible for the content or f

This perspective review paper provides an overview on recently developed carbon material technology synthesised from the hydrothermal carbonisation (HTC) approach, with a particular focus on the carbon formation mechanism, perspectives on large scale production, nanostructuring, functionalisation and applications. Perceptions on how this technology will be developed especially with regard to application fields where the use of HTC-derived materials could be extended will also be introduced and d

Reversibly intercalating ions into host materials for electrochemical energy storage is the essence of the working principle of rocking-chair type batteries. The most relevant example is the graphite anode for rechargeable Li-ion batteries which has been commercialized in 1991 and still represents the benchmark anode in Li-ion batteries 30 years later. Learning from past lessons on alkali metal intercalation in graphite, recent breakthroughs in sodium and potassium intercalation in graphite have

Carbon particles are synthesized under hydrothermal conditions using different biomass (glucose, xylose, maltose, sucrose, amylopectin, starch) and biomass derivates (5-hydroxymethyl-furfural-1-aldehyde (HMF) and furfural) as carbon sources. Carbons obtained from mono- and polysaccharides, hexose and pentose sugars, and from the biomass derivatives, HMF and furfural, are compared from the particle morphology, chemical composition and structural point of view. A clear structural and morphological

Hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) has demonstrated that it is an effective technique for the production of functionalized carbon materials from simple carbohydrates, such as monosaccharides and disaccharides. The chemical structure of the HTC carbon has been identified in detail by means of solid-state MAS 13C NMR investigations. However, it has not yet been clearly shown what the effects are of the processing temperature and time on the chemical structure and morphology of the generated HTC carb

A bifunctional graphene catalyst with abundant topological defects is achieved via the carbonization of natural gelatinized sticky rice to probe the underlying oxygen electrocatalytic mechanism. A nitrogen-free configuration with adjacent pentagon and heptagon carbon rings is revealed to exhibit the lowest overpotential for both oxygen reduction and evolution catalysis. The versatile synthetic strategy and novel insights on the activity origin facilitate the development of advanced metal-free ca

Hollow spheres of crystalline metal oxides were synthesized in a simple one-pot synthesis via a hydrothermal approach. Various metal salts were dissolved together with carbohydrates in water, and the mixtures were heated to 180 °C in an autoclave. During the hydrothermal treatment, carbon spheres are formed with metal ions incorporated into their hydrophilic shell. The removal of carbon via calcination yields hollow metal oxide spheres. Using this process, we can produce a wide range of metal ox

Levulinic acid is a sustainable platform molecule that can be upgraded to valuable chemicals and fuel additives. This article focuses on the catalytic upgrading of levulinic acid into various chemicals such as levulinate esters, δ-aminolevulinic acid, succinic acid, diphenolic acid, γ-valerolactone, and γ-valerolactone derivatives such valeric esters, 5-nonanone, α-methylene-γ valerolactone, and other various molecular-weight alkanes (C9 and C18-C27 olefins).

Hydrothermal carbonization is a convenient way to convert biomass at rather moderate conditions into carbonaceous nanostructures, here, mesoporous network structures. A structural view on the micro- and nanoscale reveals interesting features defining the usefulness and application possibilities of the resulting carbonaceous materials as supports and for sorption purposes. Whereas weakly connected plant tissues result in good yields of carbon nanoparticles with very small sizes where the porosity

A chemical process, hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) of low value biomass, is discussed as a tool for the sequestration of atmospheric CO2. Via the available biomass, CO2 can be transformed into an efficient deposited form of carbon, i.e. hardly degradable peat or carbonaceous soil.