Seaweed Supercapacitors
14 August 2006, 18:05
Categories: energy
Supercapacitors provide an alternative to batteries for power storage in portable electronics. They consist of a pair of plates, or electrodes, loaded with electrical charge that can be subsequently tapped, producing a current. Now, Francois Béguin of the CNRS Research Centre on Divided Matter in Orléans, France, says that seaweed, when burned to a charcoal-like form, is just the right stuff for making the electrodes in state-of-the-art supercapacitors. It performs as well as the carbon-based substances currently used in commercial devices, the researchers say. The seaweed-derived polymer that Béguin has hit upon, called alginate, is non-toxic, and is widely used as a thickener in foods and cosmetics; 20,000 tonnes of it are extracted from seaweed for this purpose every year. This makes the material very cheap.
Read More
Posted by: The Editors
Permalink to this article
Previous: A History of the Nanofactory
Next: Xerox: Roll-Up Telly in 7 Years