Farad Power Inc. was founded to develop a new class of advanced carbon materials for energy storage devices with considerable functional improvements over the current generation of commercially available electrode materials for batteries and supercapacitors. Furfuryl alcohol is our primary carbon pre-cursor and is extracted from plant-based biomass (agricultural waste). Specifically, hemicellulose (a heteropolymer mixture of several polymers like xylose, glucose, mannose, etc.) is a component of plant biomass from which the chemical furfural (C₅H₅₄O₂) – also called furfuraldehyde – is extracted. We use furfuryl alcohol (C₅H₆O₂) – produced by hydrogenation of furfural – as our starting point to make our carbons. The basic process is straightforward and utilizes existing manufacturing infrastructure to synthesize the carbon composites. The range of materials that have been synthesized using this technology include plain low surface-area hard carbons, carbon-silicon composites, pre-lithiated and pre-sodiated carbon-sulfur composites and plain and doped high surface area activated carbons.