A research team at Rensselaer Polytchnic Institute in New York have made a combination battery capacitor out of a combination of carbon nanotubes and cellulose. A sheet of this with a lithium coating is in effect a lithium ion battery, while sheets of it glued together means that it is simultaneously a capacitor.
Batteries store their electricity chemically, which limits the speed by which it can be converted into electricity. Rather like sand in an egg timer it flows slowly from one side to the other with the narrow neck of the egg timer, so that when all the sand is in the bottom you have to push it up again, you can’t just turn it back over. A capacitor on the other hand stores energy as an electrical charge, rather like the static electricity you build up when you put a sweater on over a shirt. The jolt you get from the static electricity when you touch something metal is rather like how a capacitor gives out its energy , in one big jolt.
Now what this research team has done is made something like paper, or more precisely toilet paper, because toilet paper isn’t just one sheet but several sheets layered on top of each other. Now take that idea and give each incredibly thin layer the ability to act as a battery and a capacitor at the same time. Now if it were not enough to have paper thin, flexible battery, this stuff can provide power even while it is being charged, such as from regenerative braking systems in hybrid cars. Even more is that this stuff operates equally well at temperatures from -80c to 180c, is as flexible as paper and contains no toxic ingredients.
Come to think of it, one of the directions that solar cell technology is headed is towards flexible sheets, glue one on top of the other and you could find yourself with a shiney waterproofed piece of paper that both creates and stores energy at the same time. Also rather like putting a protective glaze on pottery you could use that combination as a covering for a wind turbine. Then again, imagine all the things in the world which have padding which only has one purpose, that of making life easier on your behind. Fill it with this stuff and you’ve now got two functions out of the same space. Smaller, better, cheaper: exactly what we need.
I have written before that the hydrogen economy is probably not the way to go if you want to bring power back to communities and away from corporations, which control our resource access, and the governments, who are often more interested in making us malleable than into advanced citizens.
Hydrogen is fiddly, difficult to handle and will need massive investment to distribute it nationally. The one step from solar radiation to electricity (solar) is ideal for community power. The two steps from solar to wind to electricity is also ideal for community power, but it all needs to be stored since it’s not as reliable as burning something; a cheap, flexible non-toxic battery/capacitor is the missing link and we just got closer to bridging it.
