Plan to commercialize supercapacitors in the next few years
The team worked out that a 45 cubic meter material block of nanocarbon-black-doped concrete would have enough capacity to store about 10kWh of energy
Try to visualise 45 cubic meters for the energy storage for 1 person for 1 day without any heating/cooling
I thought this was going to be the thing where they use cheap power to raise big weights and then generate power from gravity lowering them.
Direct link to paper: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2304318120
Not my field but takeaways from a quick glace are that they note that the more energy dense they make it the worse it is at being concrete, and that their 10kwh number needs 45m³ of concrete. That would be 15x15x0.2m or like 55ftx55ftx8in which isn’t crazy but it’s a pretty decent amount.
We have already solved this problem, and concrete blocks is not the way to do it.
Water can do the exact same thing, but it flows through pipes and can be moved by pumps, it doesnt “break”, it doesnt require complex moving mechanisms, and it can actually 100% fill a given volume (blocks cannot)
We already do this, right now.
This is the whole “they are trying to re-invent trains again” thing.
Did you read the article? This isn’t gravity storage, they’re making big capacitors by taking advantage of the way carbon black spreads into closely-spaced pockets when added to cement. It would be part of an electrical circuit.
I’m not saying it’s a good idea; I’m not an electrical engineer, so I can’t really assess the benefits and risks. But I don’t think it’s the thing you’re complaining about.
The team worked out that a 45 cubic meter material block of nanocarbon-black-doped concrete would have enough capacity to store about 10kWh of energy, which is reckoned to be the average daily electricity usage for a household, so remote off-grid houses with batteries in the foundations could operate using windmills or solar panels.
That’s ~1600ft^3 for those of us unfortunate enough to have an innate sense of freedom units and not logical units; a lot of concrete!
I’m very curious about the longevity and durability of these bricks, and safety considerations. Such a house could potentially, (pun intended,) instantly discharge a lot of electricity into someone who comes in to contact with its foundation. Don’t use that masonry drill, it might kill you!
Or alternatively, can it even discharge fast enough to provide a meaningful enough amount of electricity?
What does the charge/ discharge cycle do to the integrity of the concrete?
What special conditions are necessary for is curing? Whats the yield? Because the consequences of having a 45 cubic meter block of concrete that was supposed to be a battery sitting in my yard but isn’t are not trivial.
Whats the carbon footprint of adding 45 additional cubic meters of concrete to every structure? It takes a shit ton of energy to rip off the necessary electrons from lime stone to make lime.
