Moss Voltaics

iaac.net

23 points·ZunarJ5··4 comments

It would be fun to combine this with the cement-based supercapacitor announced by MIT a couple days ago[1]. It would be possible to create a house who's structure "passively" collects and stores energy made entirely of commodity materials!

Your link is missing.

Also, cement is not very sustainable because of CO2 emissions.

Thank you for pointing out the missing link: https://news.mit.edu/2023/mit-engineers-create-supercapacito...

> Also, cement is not very sustainable because of CO2 emissions.

Agreed that cement is a CO2 issue, but I think the overall environmental savings of not having to refine and transport lithium far outweighs the cost of the cement

Also the cement batteries are *very* simple to construct; it only takes a 4th grade education and can be made from locally sourced materials

No mention of current, energy, what the cathode is made of, what happens to the electrodes after they have reacted for a long time. I don't see any indication that they actually had a test load and they appear to be using an AVR Arduino directly to measure the voltage which is not really a great strategy for evaluating an electrochemical cell like this. There should be a more accurate ADC instrument with a precise measurement impedance and known integration time, and some galvanic isolation to the device under test wouldn't hurt either. This can be DIY built but instruments for this already exist as well.

They suggest that 5 square meters could power a single board computer but there isn't any further detail on what that actually means. I am curious about it but there isn't enough information here.

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