MIT Engineers Create an Supercapacitor from Very Common Materials
August 1st, 2023This is fascinating, but keep in mind that the energy density is very low.
I don’t know where the average household energy use is 10kwh per day, as stated in the article below, but in the U.S., it’s about 30kwh per day.
Via: MIT News:
Made of cement, carbon black, and water, the device could provide cheap and scalable energy storage for renewable energy sources.
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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.
This reminds me of when computers first took up an entire floor of a bldg, then a room, then a desk top…
I like this. I imagine it could be extended into concrete brickwork.