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 11 months 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 11 months ago (1 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 11 months ago (3 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] 8 points 11 months ago

Epoxy coated rebar is already a thing, so insulated rebar shouldn't be that big of a deal - if epoxy isn't enough already.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months 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 11 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Why can’t the steel rebar just be part of the conductive carbon anode?

The design already assumes the concrete is riddled with conductive material. Why would adding fat wires hurt?