This is an idea that seems too good to be true. By adding in a well-known, historical material, carbon black (the Dead Sea Scrolls were written with it, that's how long it has been around) into concrete, the most used man-made building material in the world, you can come up with an energy storage device to power homes or cars.
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“You have these at least two-millennia-old materials that when you combine them in a specific manner you come up with a conductive nanocomposite, and that’s when things get really interesting,” explains MIT professor Admir Masic, who was involved in the research.
The concrete mix of cement and carbon black only requires water, making it a low-cost alternative to other energy storage systems being developed to allow energy networks to remain stable during fluctuations to renewable energy sources like solar, wind and tidal power.
The researchers say their supercapacitor could be used in the concrete foundations of a house to provide an entire day’s worth of energy without adding any additional construction costs. It could even eventually be used on concrete roadways to provide contactless recharging for electric cars as they travel.
Could the future of batteries really be concrete? Read the full story
A next-generation energy storage system made of cement and an ancient ink has the potential to massively scale-up renewable energy operations by transforming homes and roads into giant batteries, according to the scientists who invented it.