Plan to commercialize supercapacitors in the next few years

  • Bernie Ecclestoned
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    611 months ago

    The team worked out that a 45 cubic meter material block of nanocarbon-black-doped concrete would have enough capacity to store about 10kWh

    10kWh is enough to run a house for a day, how much concrete would be in a house with concrete walls?

    • @[email protected]
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      811 months ago

      I mean, its not clear you want to build a house out of concrete walls that aren’t entirely, well, concrete. Even so, its a neat idea, but coming out of the MIT press mill, I’ll not be holding my breath for it to become real. MIT is basically a meme at this point with regards to press releases that don’t manifest into reality.

    • @[email protected]
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      411 months ago

      I wonder if the foundation of the house would be convenient for this… that much concrete is equivalent to a cube of side length around 10 feet, which seems to at least be in the ballpark for the total amount of concrete in a foundation. I think?

    • @[email protected]
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      11 months ago

      For a basement with a 5-inch slab and exterior walls are 8 inches, 8ft high and also concrete… Then 45 cubic meters is about what you’d need.

      Of course, your basement walls are about as electrically grounded as it gets, so I doubt you’d be able to store power in them. One leak and you’re discharging all that power into the groundwater.

      • Bernie Ecclestoned
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        111 months ago

        So, feasible amount. Just needs isolating and could replace expensive batteries for solar?

    • Eager Eagle
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      11 months ago

      naturally it depends on the walls and house layout, but just to have an idea: assuming a concrete thickness of 20cm and 4 external walls of 20m x 3m each:

      0.2 * 4 * 20 * 3 = 48m^3

      probably in the 100-200m^3 ballpark if we count internal walls, which are thinner, but cover more total length.

      And I know walls are usually not pure concrete, but functions like energy storage could very well change how we build them.

    • @[email protected]
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      111 months ago

      10kWh is enough to run one 110VAC outlet at full capacity for about 10 hours. I don’t know where that 10kWh figure comes from but most American houses use between 15-30kWh per day.

      So that 10 foot cube would need to be closer to 15ft cubed. It’s huge. Perhaps the foundation of the structure would work, as someone else mentioned.

      • Bernie Ecclestoned
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        111 months ago

        UK average is 8 kWh / 24 hours for electricity per household of 2.4 people.