Scientists
at the University of Maryland have come up with a sodium ion battery which they
claim is more environmentally friendly and will last longer than the
traditional lithium-ion batteries.
The new
battery is made from wood and is surprisingly thinner than a sheet of paper. The
battery is to be used in applications like storing power created by solar
plants. One disadvantage of this new development though is that for now, it
will not be suitable for laptops or smartphones as it cannot handle the usage
of personal electronics well.
The flexible
nature of wood has made it possible for this new innovation. The flexible nature allows more charging
cycles of the wooden battery than the traditional battery. Wrinkles in the wood
cope with expanding and contracting as power movement occurs in the battery.
“Wood
fibres that make up a tree once held mineral-rich water”, explains Liangbing
Hu, one of the lead scientists of the project, “and so are ideal for storing
liquid electrolytes (used in batteries)”
After
depositing a 50-nanometer-thick wood fibres, the wooden batteries have been
recharged 400 times and there are still plans to recharge more cycles. This is
another development to look up to.
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if this goes into mass production, we will drastically decrease the number of trees all around the world, i know its a really good idea but the problem is we already have a thinning tree population and unless we do something about that, i dont think this will ever go out into consumer market
ReplyDeleteYes that's true. I think the remedy to that would be planting trees in place of uprooted ones.
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