Batteries Made Of Wood
Would you believe it (pun intended)
Would you believe that wood could be a power source (other than though combustive processes)?
Researchers at the Energy Research Center at the University of Maryland in the United States are developing, hold on to your spoon… a battery made of wood!
Why wood? Well, abundance, that’s why.
The inspiration to use wood as a source of power, actually came from another resource that’s interesting due to it’s abundance — the potato.
Potato is the world’s fourth-largest food crop, behind rice, wheat and corn; and because it’s so easily available across the globe, the humble potato has forever been a source of many experiments — large and small.
Almost every science fair has showcased the simple experiment of using a potato to generate electrical current.
The salts and water in the potato mix and release ions, thus generating an electrical charge.
The potatoes are acidic (pH of 5) and this acid is used in chemical reactions to generate electrical current, similar to a conventional battery.
The prototype of the wood battery created by the researchers has wood fibers as thin sheets, which are coated with carbon nanotubes and packed into small metal discs.
The conventional batteries use lithium ions however the wood batteries use sodium ions. The charged particles move across and within the wood fibers, as it is a good medium for the sodium ions. The wood fibers are also ideal for storing liquid electrolytes, making them not only the base but an active part of the battery.
The researchers found that after charging and discharging the battery multiple times, the wood ended up wrinkled but remained intact. These wrinkles relax the battery while charging and discharging, thus allowing the battery to survive many charging-discharging cycles.
However, they aren’t done with their experiments and discoveries yet.
But this very exciting nonetheless. Wood based storage can definitely be a low cost solution.
We’ve seen this kind of development in light sources, where we’ve moved from conventional light sources to light tubes that used argon and mercury, onto LEDs.
Today, LEDs are now used to spread light around the world with minimal use of electricity in the remotest of villages, and the most complex of electronics.
The researchers say that these batteries would be best suited for large-scale energy storage applications for wind farms or solar energy installations.
Like we said, the team at University of Maryland still has to perfect this technology, but it is a positive step in the direction of developing an inexpensive renewable source of electricity, and the world needs this more than it needed it earlier. Provided of course, that Man remembers that wood too, is a perishing resource at our hands, and that we must grow far more than we consume!
Originally published at Chip-Monks.
