Technology

59402 readers

4020 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

163

MIT scientists propose power storage using cement blocks (www.datacenterdynamics.com)

submitted 1 year ago by VulcanSphere@kbin.social to c/technology@lemmy.world

55 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Plan to commercialize supercapacitors in the next few years

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Rakust@kbin.social 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

One of the big catches is how Greenhouse gas intensive concrete production is

[–] Spedwell@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I think the idea here is to bake it into construction that would happen anyway. If you just need energy storage, keep using batteries. But if you're pouring a foundation already, why not also turn that foundation into a battery?

[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

concrete seems to be used here for its structural properties, just like we do it today. Their solution doesn't seem to require it:

If more powerful capacitors are required, they can be made with a larger concentration of carbon black, at the expense of some structural strength. This could be useful for applications where the concrete is not playing a structural role or where the full strength potential of concrete is not required. For applications such as a foundation, or structural elements of the base of a wind turbine, the “sweet spot” is around 10 percent carbon black in the mix, the team says.

[–] zout@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

And how greenhouse gas intensive is carbon black production?

[–] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 7 points 1 year ago

If you’re releasing CO2 you’re losing carbon.

If you make it with electricity it’s effectively a carbon sink.

[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If it's just a byproduct of other industries, like existing coal power plants, it might be seen as carbon neutral. And lithium batteries also use it.

[–] zout@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Carbon black is produced bij burning a hydrocarbon with a limited amount of air. It's not a byproduct, but uses organic materials. This can be of renewable sources like vegetable oil, but it is made a lot from the heavy fractions in fossil oil.