Typical university press release: this technology can revolutionize our energy grid by storing energy in a building’s foundation, because we powered an LED with some tiny cells we made.
Harnessing the entropic properties of bulk matter, easily ending up with molecular self assembly, without the need for micromanaging the process--genius!<p><i>The team calculated that a block of nanocarbon-black-doped concrete that is 45 cubic meters (or yards) in size — equivalent to a cube about 3.5 meters across — would have enough capacity to store about 10 kilowatt-hours of energy, which is considered the average daily electricity usage for a household. Since the concrete would retain its strength, a house with a foundation made of this material could store a day’s worth of energy produced by solar panels or windmills and allow it to be used whenever it’s needed. And, supercapacitors can be charged and discharged much more rapidly than batteries.</i><p>What I'm wondering is how to create a lightning battery with this? Unless my math is wrong (probably is) 1 lightning strike is<p><pre><code> 1 zeus = 1 billion joules = 300 kwh.
1 big-cube = 45m^3 = 10 kwh
density = 10/45 kwh/m^3
volume needed to bottle lightning = 300kwh * 45/10m^3/kwh = 1350m^3
cube of sides 12m. or sphere of diameter 14m
</code></pre>
So, what I'm proposing is, we get a 60m high copper pole, stick it in a 14m diameter sphere of this, and put it in a rainstorm.<p>Bottle of lightning?
For 2 m^3 of the material you will need around 1 metric ton of cement. You need around 2.8 GJ to produce 1 t of cement.<p>Therefore you need 63 GJ or 17500 kWh to produce a capacitor of 45 m^3 that can hold 10 kWh. (Omitting the 3% carbon in the mixture obv.) I hope the thing is really resistant and cycles forever without degradation.<p>BTW cement production contributes substantial amounts to global carbon emissions.
Seems to me that the potential of simply lifting a weight up (storage) and down (generation) beats these fancy engineering goals for cost and practicality. Especially if the weight being lifted is a container full of rocks. At first glance there are plenty of those everywhere. No hills or reservoirs needed either.<p>Of course, no papers need to be published ... that may be the goal.
While I love the ingenuity of this system, I have some trouble seeing it used as an economically viable energy storage option. According to the article, they would need about 45 m3 to store 10 kwh. At a concrete price of 200-300 $/m3, that would come to 9-13.5k USD just for the concrete. That's omitting any costs for the carbon black electrolyte, material processing, electrolyte separators and other things, so a very optimistic estimate.<p>Meanwhile, battery prices have fallen so much that you can buy 10 kwh of Li-Ion batteries for about $1500 ($150/kwh 2021 prices). The saving grace <i>might</i> be to have it do double duty as a structural element in the building, but many other posters have pointed out that there are many safety and construction problems that would have to be solved for that first.
There is usualy steel reinforcement (rebar) in the concrete. Isn't introducing electrical current gonna cause galvanic corrosion of the rebar? Might even affect concrete structures around the capacitor, not just the capacitor itself.<p>Also if i understood correctly, this capacitor would need to be kept wet (with water) to remain operational right? Wet basement is extremely annoying thing with many unpleasant consequences to say the least. So this might require some efforts to maintain the moisture while keeping it contained.<p>How do you replace this thing? Eg. once cracks inevitably form in concrete, or when the carbon structure get damaged by accidental overvoltage/overcurrent, or when the insulation layers deteriorate. You cannot simply replace foundation of a building. Therefore it would make sense to keep the capacitor at least partialy separated from the structural parts of the building.<p>Anyway this seems as an interresting idea and i wonder if plastic bucket full of concrete would be enough to power something like UPS to provide 100W to keep PC running for 15 minutes. Might as well stop replacing lead acid batteries every other year if this is at least remotely viable.
> The team calculated that a block of nanocarbon-black-doped concrete that is 45 cubic meters (or yards) in size — equivalent to a cube about 3.5 meters across — would have enough capacity to store about 10 kilowatt-hours of energy, which is considered the average daily electricity usage for a household.<p>Edit: 10kwh/3.5³m³ ≈ 0.233 Wh/l<p>> Besides its ability to store energy in the form of supercapacitors, the same kind of concrete mixture can be used as a heating system, by simply applying electricity to the carbon-laced concrete.
Anyone interested in reproducing it?<p>I presume supercapacitor needs to alternate thin layers of electrode/the cement mix/insulator, not just pour the bulk? It then makes more sense to prefabricate bricks/panels and connect them when laying.
The idea of utilizing materials like water and gelatin to create supercapacitors that can potentially outperform conventional energy storage methods is a testament to human creativity and adaptability.
This is neat. Every house could have its own energy storage built into its foundation. How coool is that.<p>Maybe dams could store excess energy in their structure.