Batteries Using Urine As Electrolytes Are More Affordable; Process Tested To Be More Efficient
The most cost-effective and natural way other than water has now been discovered to give power to batteries. Although there are already a number of studies using urine to conduct electricity, its use in making batteries function will help consumers to choose from the cheapest kind, which is urine-based. At Stanford University, urine can now be used in grid storage other than the renewable energy that has been initially discovered.
Since batteries are a part of the household, it is useful and in demand, but the quality of these batteries depends on its cost and the manufacturer. There have been a lot of branded batteries that promises efficiency and long-life, but it corresponds to a price that is why users tend to save batteries to avoid frequent purchase. According to reports from Digital Trends, the use of urine's by-product, urea will eventually solve the high costs of batteries, and the study has already been published in the journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences".
A battery normally consists of a cathode, an anode, and the electrolyte where the electric current travels to and from the anode to the cathode. The liquid of the electrolyte separates the charged atoms to prevent short circuit and is usually water mixed with lead acid or sulfuric acid. Now it will be replaced with urea and aluminum chloride, while the cathode is bounded by graphite powder and the anode is made up of aluminum. Based on reports from Treehugger, the team of chemists at Stanford University led by Professor Hongjie Dai and doctoral candidate Michael Angell has found the answer to grid-scale energy storage for renewable energy.
According to tests done, the urea-based battery is also non-flammable like lithium-ion and it has been giving away high grade of 99.7 percent in Coulombic efficiency. With the prototype reaching 1.500 charge cycles, the team of professor Dai hopes to make it more efficient when they make the commercial version. In terms of problems along the use of renewable energy, events without sunlight and when the air is static will be solved by this extraordinary performance of energy storage.
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