It’s a regrettable reality that there is never enough time to cover all the interesting scientific stories we come across each month. So every month, we highlight a handful of the best stories that nearly slipped through the cracks. February’s list includes the revival of a forgotten battery design by Thomas Edison that could be ideal for renewable energy storage; a snap-on device to turn those boxers into “smart underwear” to measure how often we fart; and a dish of neurons playing Doom, among other highlights.
Reviving Edison’s battery design
Credit: Maher El-Kady/UCLA Credit: Maher El-Kady/UCLA
At the onset of the 20th century, electric cars powered by lead-acid batteries outnumbered gas-powered cars. The internal combustion engine ultimately won out, in part because those batteries had a range of just 30 miles. But Thomas Edison believed a nickel-iron battery could extend that range to as much as 100 miles, while also having a long life and recharging times of seven hours. An international team of scientists has revived Edison’s concept of a nickel-iron battery and created their own version, according to a paper published in the journal Small.
The team took their inspiration from nature, specifically how shellfish form their hard outer shells and animals form bones: Proteins create a scaffolding onto which calcium compounds cluster. For the battery scaffolding, the authors used beef byproduct proteins, combined with graphene oxide, and then grew clusters of nickel for positive electrons and iron for negative ones. The team superheated all the ingredients in water followed by baking them at very high temperatures. The proteins charred into carbon, stripping away the oxygen atoms in the graphene oxide and embedding the nickel and iron clusters in the scaffolding. Essentially, it became an aerogel.
The folded structure limited the clusters to less than 5 nanometers, translating into significantly more surface area for the chemical reactions fueling the battery to occur. The resulting prototype recharged in mere seconds and endured for more than 12,000 cycles, equivalent to about 30 years of daily recharging. However, their battery’s storage capacity is still well below current lithium-ion batteries, so powering EVs might not be the most promising application. The authors suggest it might be ideal for storing excess electricity generated by solar farms or other renewable energy sources.