Crustaceans could replace lithium in batteries

 TCD:

Maryland is already famous for its crabs — but researchers at the University of Maryland are looking to give that distinction an entirely different meaning.

A team of scientists at the school’s Center for Materials Innovation found that crustaceans like crabs and lobsters contain a chemical in their shells called chitin, which can be used to power batteries when combined with zinc.

Crustacean shells packed with this chemical are typically thrown out en masse by restaurants that have no other use for them. But researchers believe this waste could serve as a powerful resource in the search for more sustainable batteries.

Lithium-ion batteries, the common kind found in most of our cellphones and laptops, can take hundreds of thousands of years to break down after they’re used up — not to mention the devastating environmental impact lithium extraction has on our planet.

But these shellfish batteries are biodegradable and can decompose in soil after just five months, leaving behind zinc, which can be recycled.

The University of Maryland’s study also found that chitin-zinc batteries were 99.7% efficient after over 400 hours of use, as reported by The Guardian, and that these batteries could likely be produced cheaply at scale.
...

I recall the first time I ate crab meat in Maryland.  It was pretty tasty, but it seemed like a lot of work to get to it.  It will be interesting to see if crab-based batteries become a thing.  We lived in Florida when I was a preschooler and I remember that the driveways were covered in oyster shells rather than rock.  I don't know if they still do that. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t...
Read more

Is the F-35 obsolete?

Headline USA: Pentagon Fires Back after Musk Calls Its Most Expensive Project ‘Obsolete’ 'Yeah, as I'm sure you can appreciate, Mr. Musk is, currently, a private citizen, I'm not going to make any comments about what a private citizen may have to say about the F-35....'   ... ... Drones appear to be replacing jets for many operations.  The Russia-Ukraine war is an example of that.  Drones are often hard to detect and can be used for intelligence operations as well as for attacking enemy targets.  It would not surprise me to see drones engaging other drones in combat.  They also cost much less than manned fighters.  
Read more