Waste Plastic Generated High-Performance Nanocomposites for Modern EDLC and LIB: A Two-Way Sustainable Approach

All the sustainable development objectives proposed by the United Nations call for a more prudent and responsible use of the world’s natural resources, with the least possible disruption to the environment's delicate balance. One of these main objectives is to make sure that everyone has simple access to modern, sustainable, economical energy. Since they are sustainable, clean, and ecologically benign, researchers are largely focusing on renewable energy sources in this direction. However, there are many barriers that limit their widespread usage in commercial applications, including their low reliability, irregular nature, remote availability, etc. A possible answer to issues including increased energy consumption, dependable and constant electric power, and improved grid stability may be to combine these renewable energy sources with efficient and economical energy storage technology. Modern energy storage technologies like EDLC and lithium-ion batteries have enormous potential for a variety of energy storage applications. The most adaptable fundamental materials for the storage and conversion of contemporary energy may be those based on carbon. The commercially manufactured activated carbon is expensive and unsustainable since it requires the expensive processing of non-renewable and high-priced precursors, i.e., wood, petroleum, and coal. The transformation of waste plastics into value-added, affordable carbon nanomaterials has drawn a lot of scientific interest because of the exponentially rising volume of plastic trash and the need for effective solid waste management. Therefore, plastic waste remediation for the generation of electrode materials of modern electrochemical double-layer supercapacitors (EDLCs) and lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) can be treated as a two-way sustainable approach. It addresses the problems of solid plastic waste management and affordable energy storage for renewable energies at the same time. This book chapter examines the necessity and the efforts undertaken to develop supercapacitors and Li-ion batteries as sustainable modern energy storage devices using carbon materials synthesized from remediation of the waste plastic.