The quest for green energy has led us to embrace battery power as the future (and present) of energy production.
But considering batteries as ‘green’ is a bit ironic. The production of lithium has big, ugly side effects. Namely, the mining process:
- uses large quantities of water
- emits a tremendous amount of carbon dioxide
- produces large quantities of mineral waste
- increases respiratory problems
What about instead of lithium, we tried a crazy idea:
Concrete as Batteries
Crazy idea: What if we could store energy in concrete?
It looks like MIT researchers were able to take concrete, water, and an inexpensive additive called carbon black, and made an energy-storing supercapacitor.
They say a 1,589 cubic foot block of concrete could store 10kWh of electricity. This is about 1/3 of the energy required to power a home.
The Future of Concrete Supercapacitors
From here, you could pair these homes with solar panels and it seems this would be a natural fit for 3-D printed homes.
I love this idea and hope it works out in the years to come.
Now hear me out: The pyramids…
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