WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

We think of batteries as having a common fixed shape, but structural batteries can be any shape and they’re the future …

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There have been thousands of battery and energy breakthroughs recently – literally. Now though a breakthrough with biomorphic batteries, which also go by their other name structural batteries, where the material or object itself, such as this Lamborghini, or this material, or even these bricks, are the battery, could finally let robots like ATLAS, the most advanced humanoid robot, to store up to 72 times more energy in a way that’s similar to how we humans store energy in the fat reserves in our bodies.

Researchers at the University of Michigan in the US who were funded by the US Department of Defense have announced they’ve developed a new rechargeable zinc battery that integrates into the structure of a robot in order to free up space and reduce weight that conventional Lithium-Ion (LiON) batteries create.

“Robot designs are restricted by the need for batteries that often occupy 20 per cent or more of the available space inside a robot, or account for a similar proportion of the robot’s weight,” said Nicholas Kotov, a professor of engineering who led the research.

“[Humans] don’t have a single sac of fat, which would be bulky and require a lot of costly energy transfer. Distributed energy storage, which is the biological way, is the way to go for highly efficient biomorphic devices.”

Biomorphic technology is based on living forms and systems, and is therefore ideal for humanoid robots being developed to work and operate within environments designed for humans.

The use of structural batteries can also be used in everything from drones to delivery robots, with Professor Kotov claiming the new zinc batteries could double the range of such robots immediately.

“This is not the limit, however,” said Mingqiang Wang, a visiting researcher at Professor Kotov’s lab. “We estimate that robots could have 72 times more power capacity if their exteriors were replaced with zinc batteries, compared to having a single lithium-ion battery.”

The zinc battery works by storing and transferring energy through an electrolyte membrane made of carbon-based nanofibres and a water-based polymer gel. The researchers claim the membrane is more environmentally friendly than traditional batteries and are not susceptible to causing fires.

Tests have already been carried out on robotic toys shaped like worms and scorpions, where the zinc batteries were wired into the motors and wrapped around the outsides of the robot insects.

Ahmet Emre, a doctoral student who was involved in the research, said: “Batteries that can do double duty – to store charge and protect the robot’s organs – replicate the multifunctionality of fat tissues serving to store energy in living creatures.”

A paper detailing the breakthrough, titled ‘Biomorphic structural batteries for robotics’, was published in the journal Science Robotics.

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WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

Renewables are the future, but the electricity they generate needs to be stored so it can be used when you need it, now your house can be the battery.

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As more people around the world consider powering their homes using solar panels and coming off the gas grid they’re still stuck with the problem that when the sun fades those panels stop producing electricity. Today we solve that problem by storing the energy those panels produce during the day in Lithium Ion battery packs, like the ones sold by Elon Musk’s SolarCity, on their walls, and tomorrow we’ll solve the problem by simply having solar panels that work at night – as well as in cloudy weather and even on rainy days.

Now though when it comes to storing electricity at home cheaply there’s another alternative looming after researchers at Washington University in the US found a way to convert standard red bricks, which are some of the world’s cheapest and most familiar building materials, and which can now even weirdly replicate themselves using bacteria to create more, into energy storage units that can be charged to hold electricity like a battery.

A battery brick – who knew!?

The researchers have developed a method to make or modify “Smart bricks” that can store energy until required for powering devices. The method converts bricks into a type of energy storage device called a supercapacitor.

“Our method works with regular brick or recycled bricks, and we can make our own bricks as well,” says Julio D’Arcy, assistant professor of chemistry. “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.” The proof-of-concept study shows a brick directly powering a green LED light.

Walls and buildings made of bricks already occupy large amounts of space, which could be better utilized if given an additional purpose for electrical storage. While some architects and designers have recognized the humble brick’s ability to absorb and store the sun’s heat, this is the first time anyone has tried using bricks as anything more than thermal mass for heating and cooling.

“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 says.

The red pigment in bricks, Iron Oxide, better known as rust, is essential for triggering the polymerization reaction, and the researchers’ calculations suggest that walls made of these energy-storing bricks could store a substantial amount of energy.

“PEDOT-coated bricks are ideal building blocks that can provide power to emergency lighting,” D’Arcy says. “We envision that this could be a reality when you connect our bricks with solar panels – this could take 50 bricks in close proximity to the load. These 50 bricks would enable powering emergency lighting for five hours.

“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.”

Source: Washington University

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WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

The pace of change is accelerating, and new technologies are re-writing the narrative for many industries, including aviation.

In the coming decades the aviation industry will, arguably, see more change than it has in the past century, whether it’s because of the introduction of pilotless aircraft, or electric aircraft, and or because in the future airlines will increasingly find themselves competing with new modes of regional and inter-continental travel, from Mach 1 and Mach 3 hyperloop trains, to Mach 27 rockets that will transport anyone to the other side of the planet in just 30 minutes or less. And all of that is before we discuss how the aircraft of the future will be 3D printed, designed by creative machines, and the impact that all the new emerging technologies I discuss on a regular basis have on the customer experience. It was my privilege to be interviewed by APEX Insider on the topic and you can read the article and view the video below, or online here.

In this episode of APEX Insider, founder of the 311 Institute and self-proclaimed “fanatical futurist” Matthew Griffin takes APEX Media director Maryann Simson on a journey into the far-future of aviation. He makes no bones about it, admitting “The future is weird.”

So, what will aviation look like between 2020 and 2070? Futurist Matthew Griffin says biometrics will go far beyond the iris scanners and facial recognition technology passengers are used to today. Instead, he claims artificial intelligence will be able to “determine criminal intent,” and Wi-Fi will be able “to detect whether or not people are ill.”

Griffin predicts cabin interiors will also become increasingly intelligent, with 3D printed dyes that allow cabin colors and designs to change with the flick of a light switch.

Finally, new technology will change the way we power our aircraft, says Griffin. He believes that, by using “photovoltaic technologies, graphene batteries, piezoelectric fabrics and carbon nanotube fabrics,” aircraft will be able to generate their own energy rather than relying on fossil fuels or more traditional batteries.

Source: APEX Insider

The post Featured Futurist, TV Interview: The Future of Aviation 2020 to 2070, APEX Insider appeared first on 311 Institute.

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

As our understanding of how to turn mundane objects and materials into batteries increases in the future anything and everything could be a battery.

As I discussed a little while ago Carbon Fiber is going through its own little revolution, firstly it can now be 3D printed, and secondly it can be made from cheap plant based materials as opposed to expensive dirty fossil fuels. Both of which make it cheaper to mass produce and use. Now though researchers at the Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have announced they’ve also managed to turn it into a battery and act as an electrode by making minor adjustments to the way it’s made. And while that might not seem like big news it could have significant ramifications for the electric car industry and beyond by helping get rid of the need to use traditional Lithium Ion batteries. It’s also a technology concept that’s firmly on Lambourghini and MIT’s radar after the pair announced the development of their Terzo Millenio concept, a batteryless hypercar unlike any other that they hope will be produced on 2030, and the superyacht industry after I spoke at one of their design events recently.

Electric vehicles without the batteries make a huge amount of sense when you think about the benefits and implications – electric cars and trucks could be made of Carbon Fiber instead of steel or aluminium which means they could be up to 50 percent lighter and much more energy efficient. Furthermore if their exterior panels could store electricity they could use fewer batteries, and one day even become batteryless like Lamborghini’s concept, especially if they’re combined with other technologies such as new photovoltaic materials, such as Hyundai’s latest concept, and smart energy generating windows, regenerative braking, roadside wireless charging, as is being experimented with by BMW and others, and more. Also aircraft, which Airbus, Boeing, Rolls Royce and Zunum Aero are electrifying and which today account for a large percentage of carbon emissions could also benefit, again, by eliminating batteries and weight from the equation – something that’s currently holding them back from realising their aspirations of creating the first generation of electric aircraft despite huge advances in recent battery tech. And that’s nothing to say about electrifying the first generation of flying taxis…!

How it works

“A car body would then be not simply a load-bearing element, but also act as a battery,” said Leif Asp, Professor of Material and Computational Mechanics at Chalmers. “It will also be possible to use the carbon fiber for other purposes such as harvesting kinetic energy, for sensors or for conductors of both energy and data. If all these functions were part of a car or aircraft body, this could reduce the weight by up to 50 percent.”

Not all carbon fiber is created equal either, says Asp. Some have large, highly oriented crystals and are twice as strong as steel. That type of carbon fiber does not conduct electricity well. However, other types of carbon fiber have poorly oriented crystals. They are about as strong as steel but have good electrochemical properties. They also have the additional benefit of being less costly to manufacture.

“We now know how multi-functional carbon fibers should be manufactured to attain a high energy storage capacity, while also ensuring sufficient stiffness,” Asp says. “A slight reduction in stiffness is not a problem for many applications such as cars.”

The researchers say they are already exploring how to use the new technology with several automobile and aircraft manufacturers. For airplanes, the carbon fiber might need to be slightly thicker than it would be for automotive use to compensate for its decreased rigidity, but making it thicker also increases its energy storage capacity so you loose some and you win some.

“The key is to optimize vehicles at system level – based on the weight, strength, stiffness and electrochemical properties. That is something of a new way of thinking for the automotive sector, which is more used to optimizing individual components. Structural batteries may perhaps not become as efficient as traditional batteries, but since they have a structural load bearing capability, very large gains can be made at system level,” Asp says. “In addition, the lower energy density of structural batteries would make them safer than standard batteries, especially as they would also not contain any volatile substances.”

If the whole idea of vehicles that are also batteries seems a little far fetched to you then it’s probably time to recall that nuclear powered submarines and sending people to the Moon were also once fanciful ideas. And just a scant ten years ago electric cars themselves were dismissed as a joke by many in the industry, yet here we are, on the verge of electrifying the entire industry, and just like Lithium Ion batteries today, tomorrow structural batteries could play an important role in decarbonizing the transportation sector and that would be a great thing for all of us, and the environment.

The post Breakthrough carbon fiber battery could usher in batteryless electric vehicles appeared first on 311 Institute.

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

It’s likely that our flirtation with battery packs in cars won’t last as long as we think as new wirelessly charged cars start emerging, and as new materials let the cars themselves become the batteries.

Lamborghini and MIT recently introduced the Terzo Millennio concept, which translated into english means “Third millennium,” an ultra-futuristic all electric, self-healing hyper car concept, to showcase what the eco-friendly sports car of tomorrow could look like. While the whole package tells a tale set in the relatively distant future the head of Lamborghini’s Research and Development department, Maurizio Reggiani, says that it might not be as sci-fi as it first appears.

Speaking to an audience at a recent motor show in Europe Reggiani said Lamborghini often discusses what a full electric car, that’s made from self-healing materials, could look like and when it might realistically arrive, but his team always comes to the same conclusion, namely that the present day battery technologies used in cars built by the likes of Tesla and others isn’t suitable to power a super sports car like the Aventador S, with the main problems being the weight and the way the batteries are packaged.

“[Our cars] must have a top speed superior to 186 mph, they must be able to run three full laps at full speed on the Nordschleife, and they must have state-of-the-art handling. You cannot do this with the current battery technology,” he explained.

As it stands, a majority of existing and upcoming electric vehicles destined for volume production use a skateboard-like chassis that places a Lithium Ion (LiON) battery pack roughly as big as a queen sized mattress between the axles. This solution works particularly well for crossovers and SUVs, but it doesn’t cut it for Lamborghini because it creates packaging constraints and adds far too much weight. The answer, according to Reggiani, likely lies in state of the art rechargeable body panels.

The Terzo Millennio concept partially illustrates that it’s already technically possible to store energy not just in the car’s carbon fiber body panels, but even suspension components and the seat backs. In fact anything that’s made with the lightweight composite material is fair game, and it’s a future ground breaking technology the brightest minds from Lamborghini and MIT are working to turn into a reality. The first iteration of the car will likely store energy in carbon fiber nanotubes which are capable of releasing energy faster than batteries – ideal for performance. They also cut down on weight compared to batteries, ending the tradeoff between battery size and vehicle mass.

Reggiani stresses though that, in his opinion, offsetting the weight of an electric drivetrain by storing energy in the body panels is the only way to make a hyper sports car electric. So, what does the future hold for the Terzo Millennio and the technology it demonstrates? Well, as ever, it ultimately depends on a variety of factors, including some outside of the brand’s control.

“I can tell you the research project [with MIT] will finish in three years. When we arrive at the end of the project we’ll decide whether it’s yes or no. Assuming it’s a yes, you need about two years for industrialization. Plus, you need another five years to put a car in production. That means, theoretically, in 2030 you could have a full electric Lamborghini. If something fails we’ll say no,” Reggiani clarified.

Reading between the lines, his comments all but confirm the current Aventador’s successor won’t arrive as an electric vehicle, or at least a purely electric one at least, but inevitably, as our knowledge of materials, supercapacitors and superconductors continue to advance, and as we close in on new materials that can store and release energy fast and efficiently, then it might not be long before we can ditch those big old battery packs altogether and create gorgeous hyper cars that never need to plug in, and never need to stop at a petrol station ever again.

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