Scientists have managed to take the inner bark from hemp plants, more of a waste product when hemp is used for clothing or building materials, and processed it into a material that is similar to graphene and can be made into a supercapacitor with similar performance – yet at a fraction of the cost. Pretty cool application for an impressive plant. Alta Supercaps is looking into small scale production. Read more at the BBC.
Graphene supercapacitors to replace batteries?
There’s a lot of exciting work being done in battery technology…yet your future electronic devices may end up being powered by a supercapacitor instead if research into this area pays off. Environmentally, it’s pretty awesome…graphene is of course carbon, which is plentiful and non-toxic (potentially, you could even throw a used graphene supercapacitor into your compost bin!). These supercapacitors can store a lot of energy and be recharged extremely quickly (like 100-1000 times faster than a battery). It’ll be interesting to see which wins out here…advanced battery technologies, or supercapcitors? Stay tuned to Peak Geek for all the latest on that, and in the meantime, check out the video below describing these graphene supercapacitors (I love that word, especially as they didn’t mention ‘nano’ anything).