How to turn regular bricks into electricity-storing supercapacitors

[Pickles von Brine]

Quote

 

A team led by Hongmin Wang at Washington University in St. Louis set out to make a genuine power brick. More specifically, they wanted to see if they could use a vapor coating technique to turn ordinary red bricks into part of a supercapacitor. That actually isn’t quite as weird as it sounds, given that the red of a brick is an iron mineral, and iron is a common component of some battery chemistries. Bricks are often porous as well, meaning there is plenty of surface area where a thin coating could interact with that iron.
 

The process (something they had developed previously) involves heating the brick in an enclosure along with hydrochloric acid and an organic compound that mercifully shortens to “EDOT.” The two liquid substances evaporate and condense on the brick’s convoluted surface. The acid dissolves some of the iron mineral, freeing up iron atoms that help the organic molecules link up to form polymer chains (graduating to “PEDOT”) that coat the surface. The polymer makes microscopic, entangled fibers that form a continuous and electrically conductive layer on each face of the brick, which otherwise remains. (This does have the effect of turning the brick black, though.)...

...Even with full-size bricks, the total energy storage is… less than huge. They estimate that a wall of these bricks could hold about 1.6 watt-hours per square meter of wall area. That means a three meter by six meter (10 feet by 20 feet) wall could hold about 20 watt-hours of electricity. As a result, the researchers’ pitch for this idea is less dramatic than “turn your house into a battery!”

 

Source

Not the most glamourous of news, not the crazies, and definitely not something to get overly hyped over, but still interesting. This could have implications to allow for energy storage over a large area, maybe offset some energy requirements during peak times, or even offer emergency power in certain situations. Few interesting ideas and you do need a large amount of bricks, but it is a cheap process, cheap material to build with and easy enough to get enough of it to make something potentially useful.

What are your thoughts on this? 

[Moonzy]

3 minutes ago, Pickles - Lord of the Jar said:

What are your thoughts on this? 

electricity is stored in the walls

[Windows7ge]

"Hey bruh, my phones almost dead can I borrow your power brick?"

 

"Sure." *Starts up forklift and proceeds to haul in a pallet full of bricks* "Here you go!"

[Enderman]

A lemon stores more energy than that.

Far from a "super" capacitor.

More like a sucker capacitor.

[Not_A_Spider]

How long until they start putting that material in clothes to power things like smartwatches and earbuds?

[Bombastinator]

So turning bricks into capacitors fails.  What about turning capacitors into bricks? Capacitors are pretty lousy energy storage devices to start with as they lose energy over time.  It sounds like one of those interesting thoughts that may eventually lead to something really important, but at the moment doesnt. 

[Trik'Stari]

Am I weird for having no trouble pronouncing Ethylenedioxythiophene?

 

I feel like they could improve the energy density by using the same brick material, but not using the actual shape of a brick?

[Bombastinator]

3 minutes ago, Trik'Stari said:

Am I weird for having no trouble pronouncing Ethylenedioxythiophene?

This is one of those classes of questions that just never goes well.  The best one can generally expect is something on the order of “not for THAT, no..”

[Trik'Stari]

56 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

This is one of those classes of questions that just never goes well.  The best one can generally expect is something on the order of “not for THAT, no..”

I just..... my brain is weird. I started learning reading and writing before school, because my mom was an English major and was determined that I learn before school wanted me to.

 

I see a word like that, my brain takes some extra processing power to figure out the correct pronunciation (compared to other words) and once it has it, it's sort of locked in there.

 

This discussion is in no way meant as a brag. I genuinely find it confusing how vastly people can differ on language comprehension.

[GOTSpectrum]

1 hour ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

Real science includes flopped projects. I love the fact that they were allowed to publish this, even with less than stellar results.

I don't actually see this happening, but if you manufactured the bricks specifically to have more capacity, such as adding layers of brick material sandwiched with electrodes the capacity could most probably be increased drastically 

[mr moose]

1 hour ago, Trik'Stari said:

Am I weird for having no trouble pronouncing Ethylenedioxythiophene?

How do you know you are pronouncing it right?

1 hour ago, Trik'Stari said:

I feel like they could improve the energy density by using the same brick material, but not using the actual shape of a brick?

I feel they could imp[rove chemical names...    somehow.  

[Trik'Stari]

Just now, mr moose said:

How do you know you are pronouncing it right?

I feel they could imp[rove chemical names...    somehow.  

Mostly experience with the language.

 

Mostly, you just separate it into the constituent parts.

 

Ethylene-dioxy-thio-phene.

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, Trik'Stari said:

Mostly experience with the language.

 

Mostly, you just separate it into the constituent parts.

 

Ethylene-dioxy-thio-phene.

 

d-i-o thene

 

or

 

D-e-o-thene

 

??

[Trik'Stari]

6 minutes ago, mr moose said:

 

d-i-o thene

 

or

 

D-e-o-thene

 

??

D-i-o thene

 

If it was D-e-o, I would expect it to be spelled d-e-o

 

Die-o and not Dee-o.

 

Mainly because of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). Currently trying to google the actual difference between d-e-o and d-i-o in chemistry, but I keep getting results about f**king Jojo.

 

Edit: That and f**king articles about deoderant. Great job Google.

[mr moose]

Just now, Trik'Stari said:

D-i-o thene

 

If it was D-e-o, I would expect it to be spelled d-e-o

 

Mainly because of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). Currently trying to google the actual difference between d-e-o and d-i-o in chemistry, but I keep getting results about f**king Jojo.

 

Di, is meaning 2 parts.  which is usually pronounced hard I,  but I am just messing,  because it gets more fun when you point out that once you determine it to be a noun and not a descriptor the pronunciation becomes Dee with a hard E sound.

 

Just to piss people off with how confusing English can be.

 

 

[imreloadin]

2 minutes ago, Trik'Stari said:

but I keep getting results about f**king Jojo.

As you should...

[Trik'Stari]

2 minutes ago, mr moose said:

 

Di, is meaning 2 parts.  which is usually pronounced hard I,  but I am just messing,  because it gets more fun when you point out that once you determine it to be a noun and not a descriptor the pronunciation becomes Dee with a hard E sound.

 

Just to piss people off with how confusing English can be.

 

 

I was just realizing that from a wiki article. Apparently I learned the correct way of pronouncing that prefix/suffix in relation to chemistry, without knowing how I learned it.

 

English is only confusing because it's a very contextual language, and people learning it for the first time lack the breadth of context required to be truly fluent.

[Brooksie359]

9 minutes ago, mr moose said:

 

Di, is meaning 2 parts.  which is usually pronounced hard I,  but I am just messing,  because it gets more fun when you point out that once you determine it to be a noun and not a descriptor the pronunciation becomes Dee with a hard E sound.

 

Just to piss people off with how confusing English can be.

 

 

And that is why English is know pretty much anywhere. Because it's such a fun language. 

[mr moose]

10 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

And that is why English is know pretty much anywhere. Because it's such a fun language. 

And here was me thinking it was because the mother country spent the better part of 5 decades colonizing the world.

 

 

[StDragon]

The application is useless. And, even if someone were to leverage this, usually involving such chemistry in structural materials would no doubt have a side-effect of breaking-down over time.

 

For modern applications, bricks are for aesthetics, not structural load. But, they do serve a purpose of withstanding weathering over time and acting as a form of insulation to help with interior climate.

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, Trik'Stari said:

I just..... my brain is weird. I started learning reading and writing before school, because my mom was an English major and was determined that I learn before school wanted me to.

 

I see a word like that, my brain takes some extra processing power to figure out the correct pronunciation (compared to other words) and once it has it, it's sort of locked in there.

 

This discussion is in no way meant as a brag. I genuinely find it confusing how vastly people can differ on language comprehension.

Oh I get it.  Some people will, some won’t.  Another way that can happen in this case is if they ever took Latin.  Especially when young. 

[Trik'Stari]

18 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Oh I get it.  Some people will, some won’t.  Another way that can happen in this case is if they ever took Latin.  Especially when young. 

That's interesting because I was going to point out that I took Intro to Latin 1 and 2 in middle school, and while I hated it, it definitely helped me in some ways (or I feel like it did) with later classes in science.

[Bombastinator]

20 minutes ago, Caroline said:

1.6w per sq meter. You could literally get more with potatoes or lemons, cover the same area with potatoes, wire them together and you could light up some low power LEDs

 

so why is stuff like this getting millions in funding while potatoes aren't?

I vaguely recall a YouTube video where someone powered an f1 e-racer with a wall of lemons, so arguably it already happened. 
 

Potato research does get millions in federal funding.  It’s a major crop.  Lemons too most likely.  USDA does that kind of thing, or used to anyway. 

[Bombastinator]

21 minutes ago, Trik'Stari said:

That's interesting because I was going to point out that I took Intro to Latin 1 and 2 in middle school, and while I hated it, it definitely helped me in some ways (or I feel like it did) with later classes in science.

It’s also supposed to help with medicine and law.

[Dylanc1500]

4 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

I vaguely recall a YouTube video where someone powered an f1 e-racer with a wall of lemons, so arguably it already happened. 

That was Mark Rober.