this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2023
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139
New Breakthrough in Energy Storage – MIT Engineers Create Supercapacitor out of Ancient Materials (scitechdaily.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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New Breakthrough in Energy Storage – MIT Engineers Create Supercapacitor out of Ancient Materials::Constructed from cement, carbon black, and water, the device holds the potential to offer affordable and scalable energy storage for renewable energy sources. Two of humanity's most ubiquitous historical materials, cement and carbon black (which resembles very fine charcoal), may form the basis for

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Can you put steel reinforcement in it? I didn't see it mentioned in the article but I could have missed it. Basically any load bearing bit of concrete will have some amount of steel in it to prevent cracking and in heavier structures to add to the strength of the concrete.

Really promising technology though, concrete is basically everywhere so if we can turn it into batteries relatively cheaply that's absolutely huge.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I doubt it. The carbon acts as the conductor to the cement's insulator. Adding rebar is likely going to cause issues. I expect this wont have applications in high rises, more akin to a cinder block or poured concrete foundations that wouldn't need reinforcement.

Might honestly be a fatal flaw for most applications where we currently use concrete, but maybe purpose built devices would still make sense at power plants/etc.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Maybe different for different regions but I'm pretty sure foundations will generally have a small amount of steel mesh at a minimum to stop cracking. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong though and hopefully they find a way around this limitation as well. Carbon fibre can also be used from memory but I haven't seen it that often presumably due to cost.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Maybe for home foundations and the like, glass fiber rebar could be used.

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