Batteries are known for their negative environmental impact and researches all around the world are trying to find a greener way to power our devices.
Grzegorz Milczarek from Poznan University of Technology in Poznan, Poland, and Olle Inganäs from Linköping University in Linköping, Sweden are working on such a project, having designed a battery cathode from lignin byproducts from the pulp and paper industry, and a polymer known as polypyrrole. According to reports, this new rechargeable battery cathode is comparable to other cathodes that require precious metals and/or rare materials.
“The advantage of using a renewable material for charge storage is the enormous amount of this material that is already being produced on Earth by growing plants, which contain about 20 to 30 percent lignin,” Inganäs says. “It is also a low-value material, currently being used for combustion. Lithium-ion batteries, on the other hand, require metal oxides and some of those materials, such as cobalt, are rather rare.”
Lignin is the second most common polymer produced in nature by living organism after cellulose, with its derivatives being found in abundance in “brown liquor,” the waste product left over from paper processing.
The physics behind this project goes like this:
The polypyrrole is able to hold on to that loose proton until the charge is released and the proton returns to the quinone group of the lignin derivative.
However, the problem is that these kind of rechargeable batteries slowly lose their electric charge as they sit idly. But, Milczarek and Inganäs think there is plenty of room for optimizing them, and they might get more of a charge from by trying various lignin derivatives…
Definitely cool, don’t you think?
[Via: CellularNews]