Oil Shale Upcycling to Battery-Grade Graphitic Carbon with CO₂-Free H₂ Coproduction

Crude oil shale, an abundant yet underutilized carbon-rich resource with kerogen concentration typically ranging from 20 to 80%, offers significant potential as a feedstock for clean and advanced energy application. Herein, we report an efficient strategy to convert crude oil shale into high-value graphitic carbon materials for lithium-ion battery anodes while simultaneously generating hydrogen-rich gas. The approach utilizes a multistage process, including leaching, supercritical extraction, solid–liquid extraction, and graphitization, to produce high-performance anode materials. The fast hydrogen production is monitored and quantified using the photopyrolysis system coupled with mass spectrometry to track and measure the hydrogen yields. The results demonstrate that this method efficiently generates hydrogen-rich gas in 75 ms, without detectable CO/CO2 emissions. Moreover, the graphitic carbon obtained from the process exhibited outstanding electrochemical performance, achieving a capacity of 349 mAh·g–1 at 0.1 A·g–1 and retained >99.5% of its capacity after 500 cycles at 1 A·g–1, highlighting its excellent stability and potential for advanced energy storage.