American Ingenuity is Working Hard on Energy Storage

A mixture of concrete and carbon black can be made into a supercapacitor

Damian Stefaniuk has been able to use a carbon cement supercapacitor to power a handheld gaming device (Credit: Damian Stefaniuk) (photo from BBC)

Capacitors store electric potential, but they’re not the same as batteries. They can take a charge quickly, but they also release it quickly when discharged. However, there are ways that superchargers could conceivably be used to store energy from wind and solar renewables, if this new concept could work as a grid size structure. One drawback is that it would call for increased manufacturing of concrete, which uses a lot of power and creates a lot of emissions, somewhat lessening the purpose of renewables. On the other hand, it seems like it would be better than depending entirely on lithium batteries, which also require a lot of power and emissions in the mining process, along with some nasty toxins and unfortunately, slave labor in some places.

BBC has the story. Here’s a piece of it:

“Stefaniuk and his colleagues at MIT initially proved the concept by creating cent-sized 1V supercapacitors from the material before connecting together in series to power a 3V LED. They have since scaled this up to produce a 12V supercapacitor. Stefaniuk has also been able to use larger versions of the supercapacitor to power a handheld games console.

And the research team are now planning to build larger versions, including one up to 45 cubic metres (1,590 cubic feet) in size that would be able store around 10kWh of energy needed to power to power a house for a day.”

Time will tell if this can be made commercially feasible, and I have my doubts, but it’s always good to see innovation in action, and that’s what’s so great about science.