MIT engineers created a carbon-cement supercapacitor that can store large amounts of energy. Made of just cement, water, and carbon black, the device could form the basis for inexpensive systems that store intermittently renewable energy, such as solar or wind energy.
The original paper says you’d need 45 cubic meters of this stuff to store the daily energy for one house, which is about 60 yards of concrete. But even a relatively thick 5" pad that’s 1500 square feet only has 23 yards of concrete in it.
So they’d have to improve the energy density by 3x before this is commercially viable.
Yeah, but you can use it for demand smoothing: store the collected solar during the day and use that at night.
If you’re gonna use concrete anyway, this is definitely more useful. But if you’re going to use it as your only battery you’re better off with other technologies.
Or you could make the pad thicker for the purpose of storing more power. Or just make some concrete in the driveway, as blocks stored underground and out of the way, or as part of the walls instead of limiting it to only the foundation.
All of which are great for double duty uses even if additional options are needed because it reduces the space needed for additional options.
Is it as function as regular concrete? Could I use it as a shop floor or something?
You’re assuming they can repurpose structural concrete with this stuff. It’s highly unlikely that this capacitor material could be structural. If it’s not a strength concern then it’ll certainly be an efficiency one. I doubt you want metal things and people walking on your capacitor.
Higher energy density is going to be needed for sure, but as a brutalism evangelist, I’m gonna take this chance to say we could just make the whole building out of concrete so it’s all one big battery.
