Electrified cement could turn houses and roads into nearly limitless batteries

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https://www.science.org/content/article/electrified-cement-could-turn-houses-and-roads-nearly-limitless-batteries

By Robert F. Service, Science. 

Excerpt: ...Researchers have come up with a new way to store electricity in cement, using cheap and abundant materials. If scaled up, the cement could hold enough energy in a home’s concrete foundation to fulfill its daily power needs. Scaled up further, electrified roadways could power electric cars as they drive. And if scientists can find a way to do this all cheaply the advance might offer a nearly limitless capacity for storing energy from intermittent renewable sources, such as solar and wind. So far, the cement devices are small, only big enough to power a few LED lightbulbs. But efforts are already underway to scale them up. ...The cement devices are a kind of simplified battery called supercapacitors. They consist of two electrically conductive plates separated by an ion-conducting electrolyte and a thin membrane. As the device is charged, positively charged ions from the electrolyte accumulate on one plate, while negatively charged ions accumulate on the other. The amount of power storage depends on the total surface area of the supercapacitor’s conductive plates. For decades, researchers have tried to incorporate them into structural materials, such as the concrete used in roads and buildings, or the carbon composites used in automotive and aircraft bodies. Unlike today’s best batteries, supercapacitors typically use nonflammable electrolytes, making them safer....

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