Concrete and water, mixed with a small amount of soot, turn concrete into a supercapacitor that stores energy – photo: MIT
by page new atlasThe energy derived from this concrete block could be enough to power a family or a fast-charging electric car.
The MIT team says that a 45-meter block of carbon black nano-doped concrete (carbon black) will store about 10 kilowatts of electricity—enough to meet about a third of a household’s electricity consumption. Average family in America.
According to MIT, the carbon black will form its own connected electrode structures during the curing process with the concrete.
This process takes advantage of the way that water and concrete react with each other: the water forms a branching network of “channels” in the concrete as it begins to harden and the soot naturally moves into those channels. She goes.
These channels display a fractal structure, with larger branches splitting into smaller ones. This creates extremely large surface area carbon electrodes that run throughout the concrete.
Supercapacitors can charge and discharge almost instantly. As a result, energy density and output are often much higher than those obtained from standard lithium batteries.
The team tested these concrete supercapacitors on a smaller scale. He cut electrode pairs to make a tiny 1-volt supercapacitor and used these three tiny supercapacitors to light a 3-volt LED. The team is currently working on a block the size of a car battery and is aiming for 10 kWh.
Co-author of the study, MIT Professor Franz-Josef Ulm, calls it a super-scalable technology: “You can go from 1-millimetre-thick electrodes to 1-metre-thick electrodes. In this way, you can essentially expand energy storage from lighting an LED for a few seconds to powering an entire house.”
research published in Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
