Concrete has been used as a building material since 6500BC. Throughout this time, it has been seen solely as a structural material. Today, 14 billion m3 of concrete is poured annually. Recently, considerable efforts have been made to modify concrete formulations in order to reduce the associated emissions and to even embed carbons into building…Continue…Continue Reading MIT hubs explore structural concrete for power storage
On a laboratory bench in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a stack of polished cylinders of black-coloured concrete sit bathed in liquid and entwined in cables. To a casual observer, they aren’t doing much. But then Damian Stefaniuk flicks a switch. The blocks of human-made rock are wired up to an LED – and the bulb flickers into…Continue…Continue Reading The cement that could turn your house into a giant battery
MIT researchers say they have developed an energy storage system that could allow homes to store their own power without external batteries and highways to charge electric vehicles as they traveled on the road — no charging stations needed. And the best part, the researchers say, is their system, called a supercapacitor, could be built…Continue…Continue Reading Is cement the solution to storing renewable energy? Engineers at MIT think so.
MIT engineers have created a “supercapacitor” made of ancient, abundant materials, that can store large amounts of energy. Made of just cement, water, and carbon black (which resembles powdered charcoal), the device could form the basis for inexpensive systems that store intermittently renewable energy, such as solar or wind energy. Click to read more….Continue Reading…Continue Reading MIT engineers create an energy-storing supercapacitor from ancient materials
Your future house could have a foundation that’s able to store energy from the solar panels on your roof—without the need for separate batteries. MIT engineers developed the new energy storage technology—a new type of concrete—based on two ancient materials: cement, which has been used for thousands of years, and carbon black, a black powder…Continue…Continue Reading MIT engineers developed a new type of concrete that can store energy
A mixture of cement and charcoal powder could enable houses to store a full day’s worth of energy in their concrete foundations. This new way of creating a supercapacitor – an alternative to batteries that can discharge energy much faster – could be incorporated into the foundations of both buildings and wind turbines. When paired…Continue…Continue Reading Energy-storing concrete could form foundations for solar-powered homes