A solution that is inexpensive, scales, is not inconvenient, and fits household demands? What's the catch?
I hope it's as good as it sounds and becomes a thing.
this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
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One of the big catches is how Greenhouse gas intensive concrete production is
I mean, there's a reason why we've taken so long with even electric cars lol I hope this becomes a reality, but moneyed interests will fight tooth and nail.
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?
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?
The catch is, if it works some oil company is gonna buy it out and kill it.
One catch is that carbon black is mostly made from fossil oil.
It's more nuanced than that. The question is whether we're just using carbon black that's already an excess byproduct of other industries, or we'd be actively producing it to make these wall batteries.
The last time this news was posted everyone tore into it. I don't remember the details, but it was funny.
It's just not feasible in reality.
We have already solved this problem, and concrete blocks is not the way to do it.
Water can do the exact same thing, but it flows through pipes and can be moved by pumps, it doesnt "break", it doesnt require complex moving mechanisms, and it can actually 100% fill a given volume (blocks cannot)
We already do this, right now.
This is the whole "they are trying to re-invent trains again" thing.
Isn't it good to have other methods. There will be places where water is impractical.
Blocks of cement infused with a form of carbon similar to soot could store enough energy to power whole households. A single 3.5-meter block could hold 10kWh of energy, and power a house for a day, and the technology could be commercialized in a matter of years, the scientists say.
The team worked out that a 45 cubic meter material block of nanocarbon-black-doped concrete would have enough capacity to store about 10kWh of energy
Try to visualise 45 cubic meters for the energy storage for 1 person for 1 day without any heating/cooling
3x3x5 is like a storage unit for a family
Okay and now I need eleven of these, our house of 4 uses 110kwh per day
Per day?!
Yeah it's cold so the heat pump air conditioning takes about 80kwh each day to heat the house to 17-18C
Hope this works out. It would be amazing to see new construction using this in foundations. Built in energy storage.
Direct link to paper: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2304318120
Not my field but takeaways from a quick glace are that they note that the more energy dense they make it the worse it is at being concrete, and that their 10kwh number needs 45m³ of concrete. That would be 15x15x0.2m or like 55ftx55ftx8in which isn't crazy but it's a pretty decent amount.
The team worked out that a 45 cubic meter material block of nanocarbon-black-doped concrete would have enough capacity to store about 10kWh of energy, which is reckoned to be the average daily electricity usage for a household, so remote off-grid houses with batteries in the foundations could operate using windmills or solar panels.
That would be the foundation of a 1-story 1600ft^2 house, for those of us unfortunate enough to have an innate sense of freedom units and not logical units.
I'm very curious about the longevity and durability of these bricks, and safety considerations. A house could potentially, (pun intended,) instantly discharge a lot of electricity into someone who comes in to contact with its foundation. Don't use that masonry drill, it might kill you!
Technology Connections over here like: IT'S CALLED A WATER HEATER!
I adore his mid-western pragmatism.