作者：塞巴斯蒂安·贝尔

5小时前https://www.carscoops.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/2023-Ford-Mustang-Mach-e-1024x576.jpg

一组研究人员认为，他们已经发明了一种超级电容器，这种超级电容器非常坚固，可以作为房屋的基础，也可以在电动汽车充电时被其驱动。

最棒的是，这项技术结合全球丰富且易于结合的材料:水泥、水和炭黑。他们一起把混凝土变成一种叫做超导体的简单电池。

随着世界转向可再生能源发电，储能问题日益受到关注。太阳能和风力往往只在一天中的特定时间发电，这意味着电力必须储存起来，以便在晚上为家庭供电。

据报道，在Wyss生物工程研究所工作的麻省理工学院研究人员小组并不是第一个探索将混凝土转化为电池的概念的人，但他们可能已经找到了最简单的方法科学。问题是水泥，混凝土的主要成分之一，是一种不良导体。https://www.carscoops.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Tesla-Solar-Roof-1024x727.jpg

你的房子可以储存太阳能，而不需要电力墙。特斯拉提供图片

这导致其他人用石墨烯和碳纳米管等高导电材料浸渍它，以便将其变成电容器。虽然这种方法可行，但是材料很难制造，因此价格昂贵。

来自麻省理工学院的团队正在寻找更便宜的替代品，并想到了使用炭黑(一种人类作为黑色颜料已有数千年历史的材料)的想法，并取得了成功。更好的是，这种材料很自然地想要创造一个超级电容器。

“水通过水泥水合反应被系统地消耗，这种水合作用从根本上影响碳纳米粒子，因为它们是疏水的(拒水的)。”据麻省理工新闻，该论文的主要作者之一佩尔说。"碳黑正在自我组装成一根相连的导线."

实际上，碳黑本身形成了一个分形，具有巨大的表面积来容纳电荷。与由钾和水组成的简单电解质结合，它就构成了电池。到目前为止，该团队只制造了一个纽扣大小的超级电容器，可以为LED灯供电。然而，它预测，一块大约相当于房屋地基大小的掺有纳米炭黑的混凝土可以储存大约相当于房屋一天使用的电量。

该小组补充说，这种材料也可以用来铺路。在这种情况下，表面可以是电池，旁边的风车或太阳能电池板可以给它充电。加上感应技术，它可以给电动汽车充电（当他们驶过它的时候）。

尽管在强度方面有一些权衡，但研究人员表示，需要足够小比例的炭黑，这种混凝土仍然可以在今天已经使用的大多数情况下使用。https://www.carscoops.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Electreon-Inductive-Road-Germany-1024x683.jpg

感应充电技术的德国之路。Electreonttitigtigttigtutigtup提供图片

原文

MIT Researchers Create Concrete That Turns Roads Into Batteries For EV Charging

The material used to write the Dead Sea Scrolls, combined with the material used to make the Colosseum, could help turn your house's foundation into a battery

by Sebastien Bell

5 hours ago

There are solid-state batteries, and then there are really solid state batteries. A group of researchers thinks it has come up with a supercapacitor so sturdy that it can act as the foundation of a house or can be driven over by EVs as it charges them.

Best of all, the technology combines materials that are globally abundant and combine easily: cement, water, and carbon black. Together, they turn concrete into a simple kind of battery called a superconductor.

As the world turns to renewable energy generation, the issue of energy storage becomes an increasing concern. Solar and wind power tend to only make power at certain times of day, which means that the power has to be stored in order to power homes at night.

The group of MIT researchers working at the Wyss Institute for Biological Inspired Engineering isn’t the first to explore the concept of turning concrete into a battery, but may have found the easiest way to do it, reports Science. The problem is that cement, one of concrete’s main ingredients, is a bad conductor.

Read: Israeli Startup To Build Wireless Charging Roads In France And Norway

Instead of needing a Power Wall, your house could store solar power. Credit: Tesla

That has led others to impregnate it with highly conductive materials like graphene and carbon nanotubes, in order to turn it into a capacitor. Although that works, the materials are hard to make and, therefore, expensive.

The team from MIT was looking for cheaper alternatives, and landed on the idea of using carbon black (a material that has been by humans for thousands of years as a black pigment) and it worked. Better still, the materials kind of naturally want to create a supercapacitor.

“The water is systematically consumed through cement hydration reactions, and this hydration fundamentally affects nanoparticles of carbon because they are hydrophobic (water repelling).” said Admir Masic, one of the paper’s lead authors, per MIT News. “The carbon black is self-assembling into a connected conductive wire.”

In effect, the carbon black forms itself into a fractal with enormous surface area for holding electric charge. In combination with a simple electrolyte made of potassium and water, it makes what amounts to a battery. So far, the team has only made a button-sized supercapacitor that can power an LED light. However, it predicts that a block of nanocarbon-black-doped concrete that is roughly the size of a house’s foundation could store roughly the amount of power that house uses in a day.

The team adds that the material could be used to make roads, too. In that scenario, the surface could be a battery, and windmills or solar panels along its side could charge it. With inductive technology added to it, it could charge EVs as they drive over it.

Although there are some trade-offs in terms of strength, the researchers say that a small enough proportion of carbon black is needed that the concrete could still be used in most scenarios where it is already utilized today.

A German road with inductive charging technology. Credit: Electreon

TAGS ECOLOGY ELECTRIC VEHICLES TECH USA