Researchers Develop Super Batteries From Aerogel

greenerd writes "Researchers from the University of Central Florida may have found the most efficient (and most bizarre) battery material yet – 'frozen smoke', also known as Aerogel. One of the world's lightest solids, aerogel contains multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) which each one several thousands thinner than human hair. The researchers, Associate Professor Lei Zhai and Postdoctoral Associate Jianhua Zou, believe that this material could soon become the best energy storage material for capacitors and batteries."

Comments

Wish they made it cheap

[rolfwind]

For insulation as well. Several companies make it, but hard to get a hold of a decent size of it at anywhere near an economical price.

Hopefully this spurns added demand to find a cheap way to produce it en masse.

Re:Wish they made it cheap

[Zerth]

You can make an aerogel suitable for home insulation purposes yourself. Just requires some practice, a 10 year old kid did it back in 2002.

http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2008/03/ten-year-old-ma/

Also, there are several companies producing aerogel insulation sheets for the few places regular insulation doesn't make sense. e.g. really thin walls or shims between framing. Anywhere you aren't space constrained, you're probably better off just adding more conventional insulation.

Actual Headline:

[Anonymous Coward]

Researchers Didn't Develop Super Batteries From Aerogel

its the holy grail

[Anonymous Coward]

demand is already ASTRONOMICAL

They think it will make a super battery

[asm2750]

From the TFA it looks like they did not make a working device yet. Still, sounds like an interesting application for aerogel. Hopefully it is safer, cheaper, and easier to make than lithium technology

Re:Also the best insulator

[Pharmboy]

Likely, very much an overstatement. Wood and glass are terrible insulators, and since houses need windows and wood studs (generally), you will still need more BTUs than a candle to heat it. Windows and doors are your major heat losers right now. At least where I live (NC), you are required to put insulation in the walls and attic of any home you build, or remodel over 50%, so it isn't like the homes don't already have reasonable insulation.

Still, it would be a much *better* insulation that could cut heat bills by a large degree, but not 99%.

Numbers please...

[ls671]

As it is often the case with breaking news in battery related articles, I didn't find any numbers about the efficiency of this system in TFA. I would like to see a amazing break through in electricity storage but we have a long way to go still to match gasoline, so expect transportation prices to raise a lot as oil is slowly running out.

Energy density:
gasoline: 46.4 MJ/kg
Lead Acid Battery: 0.14 MJ/kg

http://wiki.xtronics.com/index.php/Energy_density
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density

Since accelerating the mass of the batteries raises the cost even further, batteries are even less efficient for urban transportation when you accelerate and decelerate a lot. We would need to bring back trolleys or another way not to have to transport the energy source for our cars to have something efficient.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus

Insulation as a "house battery"

[LongearedBat]

A house using its insulation as a battery would mean a pretty big battery. With lots of these houses, we could save alot of the energy generated during the night (currently lost, thus wasted due to low demand) to be returned to the grid for use during the day, and especially the evening (peak usage period).

Re:Insulation as a "house battery"

[wagnerrp]

Technically, you are correct. However, power companies have to run peak load plants to make up the difference in power draw from what the baseline plants provide. If you can come up with an economical means of storing vast amounts of energy, you would be able to build and operate more baseline plants, and do away with the more expensive, less efficient, peak plants.

Similarly, if you can provide a significant energy buffer, otherwise unreliable power sources like wind and solar become considerably more viable.

Re:Insulation as a "house battery"

[Rei]

There's also "spinning standby", where you keep the boilers hot and the generator turning over but not producing power so that you can produce power on short notice. The grid has to be able to respond quickly, since there's not exactly a ton of capacitance in the wires to buffer demand fluctuations.

That's one of the things that I find so amusing about the people who rail against wind and solar power: "You'll ruin the grid by making production unstable!" Um, hello, *demand* is already unstable, which is effectively the same thing; this is nothing new. You do increase the need for peaking capacity, but this is overall an issue already very familiar to grid operators.

Article is highly inaccurate

[Giant Electronic Bra]

First of all aerogels are a whole class of materials. They aren't 'made from carbon nanotubes'. Obviously the aerogel they are working with contains carbon nanotubes, but aerogels can be made from MANY materials. You can make them from gelatin for that matter, though silica is the most common material (and what the highly insulating materials are generally based on).

In terms of battery/capacitor applications those are pure speculation. Add to the long list of possible ultra-capacitor and/or super-battery concepts. You can hardly walk into a materials lab nowadays without bumping into some guy that has an idea for a super-battery made from X.

Re:Also the best insulator

[the eric conspiracy]

Total rubbish. Glass only has an R value of 0.14 and softwoods about 1.4. Polyurethane foam is around 7-8.