Stillage to Storage: Bourbon Waste Becomes High-Energy Supercapacitors
Chemists at the University of Kentucky convert bourbon distillery stillage into hard and activated carbon via hydrothermal carbonization, using the resulting materials as electrodes in supercapacitors. The devices store energy at competitive rates, with activated-carbon cells reaching about 48 W/kg and a lithium-ion–infused hybrid achieving up to 25 times the energy per kilogram of conventional supercapacitors, with ongoing work on scaling and sustainability.