In another move to look for sustainable energy, engineers at the University of California have discovered a new way to power tablets and smart phones. In a recent study conducted, the researchers found a way to use Portobello mushrooms to power these devices. Yes, the yummy Portobello mushrooms.
As reported in CNET, researchers from Bourns College of Engineering has come up with a new type of high-carbon lithium ion battery compound with the use of heat-treated nanoribbons from the skins of Portobello mushrooms. This discovery can lead to making batteries out of organic materials that can prove to be inexpensive, environment friendly and easy to manufacture.
The scientific findings were published in the journal of Nature Scientific Reports last Tuesday. Researchers conducted the study in the hopes to replace synthetic graphite as the current industry standards for anodes, or positive terminals. Synthetic graphite has high manufacturing cost as it requires a handful of chemical preparations and activations. More so, the process is proven harmful to the environment as it uses a series of acids and bases.
The engineers were draws to using Portobello mushrooms as a form of biomass because of its porosity. This characteristic is essential to batteries since it creates more space for storage and transfer of energy. This is a critical aspect to improving batter performance according to the researchers.
"With battery materials like this, future cell phones may see an increase in run time after many uses, rather than a decrease, due to apparent activation of blind pores within the carbon architectures as the cell charges and discharges over time," said Brennan Campbell, a graduate student in the Materials Science and Engineering program at University of California, Riverside.
However, engineers are quick to say that Portobello mushrooms are not going to replace existing batteries anytime soon. However this concept can be optimized so it can fully replace the standard synthetic graphite batteries. So please do not be surprised if Portobello mushrooms is running on your phone in the next decade or so.
