A team of researchers have discovered an environment-friendly battery technology.
The researchers from MIT have found an environmentally friendly process to "generate electricity that harnesses heat but uses no metals or toxic materials."
This discovery is considered to be a breakthrough especially because most of the batteries produced today contain toxic materials that include lithium. Lithium is not only hard to dispose but it is also extremely flammable. To add to that, the lithium supply is limited globally.
It is also being reported that the nontoxic battery has the potential to be used in deep space program as this kind can remain dormant for many years. At the same time, this nontoxic battery can also provide the power it needs whenever heat is applied. However, it might take years before the product becomes commercialized.
According to FOX News, the breakthrough was first started by MIT's Michael Strano back in 2010. Strano found out that a wire made from carbon nanotubes (tiny cylinders of carbon) can generate an electrical current when progressively heated from one end to the other. The same process when lighting a fuse. This is because the heat carries "electrons with it like a bunch of surfers riding a wave" through the carbon nanotube bundles.
Strano together with his team and MIT graduating students Sayalee Mahajan and Albert Liu took the discovery a step further by "increasing the efficiency of this technique more than a thousandfold." Meaning to say, these brilliant minds have produced devices that can "put out power similar to what can be produced by today's best batteries."
Kourosh Kalantar-Zadeh, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at RMIT University in Australia who was not involved in this research, said in a statement that this work is "an important demonstration of increasing the energy and lifetime of thermopower wave-based systems."
"I believe that we are still far from the upper limit that the thermopower wave devices can potentially reach," he said. "However, this step makes the technology more attractive for real applications."
Strano and his team's work was published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science.
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