It does not need to be new to create an innovation that will revolutionize energy sustainability on the planet.
An old, cheap material used to create strong and sturdy houses, the red brick, can now power an entire building during emergencies. Researchers from Washington University incorporate new technology that revolutionizes bricks to act as battery cells.
Washington University of St. Louis' Department of Chemistry researchers recently published an article in Nature Communications about their findings of turning a "red brick" into a fast-charging battery cell that can store and give off electrical energy.
This finding was submitted last December 2019 and was just recently published on the website.
The Source cites that chemists were the contributors to this innovation that experimented on regular bricks for their experiment. "Smart bricks" are regular bricks coated with "PEDOT," a polymer coating intended to penetrate the brick's porous interior.
"Our method works with regular brick or recycled bricks, and we can make our own bricks as well," said Julio D'Arcy, assistant professor of chemistry at WashU. "As a matter of fact, the work that we have published in Nature Communications stems from bricks that we bought at Home Depot right here in Brentwood (Missouri); each brick was 65 cents."
How the bricks store and give power
Julio D'Arcy, together with Hongmin Wang, a graduate student of Washington University, and colleagues, studied the incorporation of coating to red bricks that turn it into supercapacitors.
It is widely known that red bricks are used by architects and engineers to absorb the sun's heat effectively. Scientists took it to another level by testing if it would be useful in storing electrical energy.
"In this work, we have developed a coating of the conducting polymer PEDOT, which is comprised of nanofibers that penetrate the inner porous network of a brick; a polymer coating remains trapped in a brick and serves as an ion sponge that stores and conducts electricity," D'Arcy said.
The researchers believe that the bricks could be used to power emergency lighting for five hours. D'Arcy notes that 50 of the PEDOT-coated bricks in close proximity would be sufficient to do so.
Why red bricks?
The team took advantage of the brick's composition made from iron oxide or rust. This particular component is needed to make the "polymerisation reaction" work.
Aside from that, the team believes that structures that make use of the bricks stated that these materials take up too much space. Developing the brick would save space and hopefully large energy storage devices like capacitors and cells.
The team highly notes that PEDOT-coated bricks are "ideal building blocks" that can store power effectively without the fear or risk of deterioration. These red bricks will be able to store massive amounts of energy that can provide power as well.
"Advantageously, a brick wall serving as a supercapacitor can be recharged hundreds of thousands of times within an hour. If you connect a couple of bricks, microelectronics sensors would be easily powered." D'Arcy said.
The team envisions that the PEDOT-coated red bricks be paired with solar energy technology to promote and utilize the red brick battery's sustainability effectively.
This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by Isaiah Alonzo
