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posted by cmn32480 on Friday November 04 2016, @04:19AM   Printer-friendly
from the almost-diy-low-tech dept.

After reading lots of nice high-tech ideas on how to improve the lifetime, capacity, and re-charge time of commercial batteries, it was interesting to read an article on how high-performance batteries can be built from scrap metal parts basically in a DIY manner. The targeted use-case is not so much laptops, mobile phones, or cars but rather storing energy from renewable sources like solar- or wind-power.

Take some metal scraps from the junkyard; put them in a glass jar with a common household chemical; and, voilà, you have a high-performance battery.

[...] The secret to unlocking this performance is anodization, a common chemical treatment used to give aluminum a durable and decorative finish. When scraps of steel and brass are anodized using a common household chemical and residential electrical current, the researchers found that the metal surfaces are restructured into nanometer-sized networks of metal oxide that can store and release energy when reacting with a water-based liquid electrolyte.

The team determined that these nanometer domains explain the fast charging behavior that they observed, as well as the battery's exceptional stability. They tested it for 5,000 consecutive charging cycles – the equivalent of over 13 years of daily charging and discharging – and found that it retained more than 90 percent of its capacity.

[...] "We're forging new ground with this project, where a positive outcome is not commercialization, but instead a clear set of instructions that can be addressed to the general public. It's a completely new way of thinking about battery research, and it could bypass the barriers holding back innovation in grid scale energy storage," Pint said.

Especially the last part is highly appealing to me. I'm not expert on the matter whatsoever, so I'm looking forward to reading comments on why this is too good to be true, and which caveats I overlooked. What do you think?


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by fnj on Friday November 04 2016, @10:16AM

    by fnj (1654) on Friday November 04 2016, @10:16AM (#422428)

    It was news to me that you CAN anodize steel and brass. Certainly the process is different than either the chromic acid or sulfuric acid anodizing of aluminum. Hint: steel can be anodized using nitric acid or red fuming nitric acid (ugh), resulting in a black coating. I think this is different than common black oxide coating.

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  • (Score: 2) by moondoctor on Friday November 04 2016, @03:25PM

    by moondoctor (2963) on Friday November 04 2016, @03:25PM (#422499)

    I wonder if the anodization (is that a word?) pits the surface on a nanoscale as opposed to fusing a material to the surface.

    Making something an anode just means current will flow through it. That current then makes chemical reactions happen.