All posts tagged: electrodes

Mushy bourbon sludge recycled into battery electrodes

Mushy bourbon sludge recycled into battery electrodes

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletterđź’ˇ Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. It’s generally not a great idea to mix bourbon with high-voltage electricity. That said, chemists at the University of Kentucky discovered a potentially powerful use for one of whiskey’s most annoying—and plentiful—byproducts. According to the team , the liquor’s waste grains can be recycled into supercapacitors that rival commercially available options. Behind every bottle of bourbon are vats of waste materials. Most of that unwanted trash is stillage—a goopy, mushy mixture of grains and corn. And in Kentucky—where 95 percent of the world’s bourbon is produced— there is a lot of stillage. “From the final volume of bourbon produced, you get 6 to 10 times that amount of stillage as waste,” University of Kentucky chemist Josiel Barrios Cossio explained in a statement. “So it’s a big deal.”  Although stillage is often sold to farmers for livestock feed and soil enrichment, it’s a tricky material to handle. Transporting it is difficult given how watery it is, but it’s also exorbitantly …

Scientists convert cigarette butts into new material for fast, durable energy storage

Scientists convert cigarette butts into new material for fast, durable energy storage

Published by Jenni Sidey

Billions of cigarette butts end up on sidewalks, beaches, and gutters each year. They are small, easy to ignore, and hard to clean up. Over time, they can also leak toxic chemicals into soil and water. A new study suggests this familiar trash could become something far more useful: a high-performance material for fast, durable energy storage. Scientists from Shenyang Agricultural University report that they can convert discarded cigarette butts into an advanced carbon material that works as a strong electrode for supercapacitors. The study describes a process that turns the filters into nitrogen and oxygen co-doped nanoporous biochar. In lab tests, the material stored large amounts of charge, charged quickly, and stayed stable through thousands of cycles. “Our work shows that cigarette butts are not just a pollution problem, but also a valuable carbon resource,” said corresponding author Leichang Cao. “By converting them into functional porous carbon materials, we can address waste management while supporting clean energy technologies.” SEM images of (a) H-hydrochar, (b) CNPB-600-4, (c) CNPB-700-1, (d) CNPB-700-2, (e) CNPB-700-3, (f) CNPB-700-4, (g) …

Scientists use atomic switches to reliably connect individual molecules to electrodes

Scientists use atomic switches to reliably connect individual molecules to electrodes

Published by Jenni Sidey

Electronics keep shrinking, but silicon is starting to run into physical limits. To go smaller, researchers are turning to something far tinier than any transistor on a chip: single molecules that act as circuit elements in their own right. One of the biggest roadblocks has been surprisingly simple to state and very hard to solve. How do you make a clean, stable electrical connection between a single molecule and metal electrodes so those tiny parts can work together as a real circuit for you to use? Cracking the Wiring Problem At the Molecular Scale A team in Japan has now taken a major step toward that goal. Researchers at the Institute of Science Tokyo and partner institutes have built silver based atomic switches that can reliably connect individual molecules to electrodes in a solid device. Their work shows how to build and break metal filaments one atom thick, then let a single molecule slip into that gap and carry current. This sounds abstract, but the goal is concrete. If engineers can wire up molecules in …