It has been known since the beginning of the
century that activated carbon is electrically conductive
and possesses the electrical properties of a
semiconductor. 1 Applications utilizing the electrical
properties of activated carbon have been limited due to
the non-contiguous nature of granular activated carbon
products. Activated Carbon Cloth (ACC) provides a
contiguous carbon form that is ideally suited for use in
electrical applications. Studies have shown that ACC
exhibits good electrical storage capacity; can be
effectively heated using resistance heating; exhibits
extremely fast heat-up and cool-down rates; can be
maintained at any steady state temperature with good
temperature uniformity; and shows no electrical
degradation over thousands of heating and cooling
cycles. In tests with adsorbed species, electrically
heated ACC was shown to rapidly remove nearly all
adsorbed species. These unique properties of ACC are
leading to a variety of novel applications related to the
The objective of this study was to calculate the electrical conductivity of the activated carbons obtained from various cellulose materials (sugarcane bagasse, rice straw, cotton cloth and waste newspaper) by a two-stage process. The DC conductivity was calculated by a two-probe method. Scanning electron microscopy and X-ray analysis confirmed the surface morphology and formation of graphene multilayer, respectively. The carbonization temperature has a distinct effect on the electrochemical performances of the cellulose materials. The activated carbon compressed at 750.12 kPa offered the highest electrical conductivity for all the other samples. It may be due to the dense packing of the material, collapse of the pores and decrease in air gap between the carbon particles as well as a combination of multilayer graphene, which could be the factors accountable for the increase in conductivity with compression pressures. The conductivity increases with an increase in the temperature. In addition, all the carbon samples showed a good electrochemical property and the specific capacitance at the scan rate of 2–3 mV/s.