{"id":222850,"date":"2025-10-03T03:24:01","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T08:24:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/concrete-battery-now-packs-10-times-the-power"},"modified":"2025-10-03T03:24:01","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T08:24:01","slug":"concrete-battery-now-packs-10-times-the-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/concrete-battery-now-packs-10-times-the-power","title":{"rendered":"Concrete \u2018battery\u2019 now packs 10 times the power"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/concrete-battery-now-packs-10-times-the-power.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Concrete already builds our world, and now it\u2019s one step closer to powering it, too. Made by combining cement, water, ultra-fine carbon black (with nanoscale particles), and electrolytes, electron-conducting carbon concrete (ec<sup>3<\/sup>, pronounced \u201ce-c-cubed\u201d) creates a conductive \u201cnanonetwork\u201d inside concrete that could enable everyday structures like walls, sidewalks, and bridges to store and release electrical energy. In other words, the concrete around us could one day double as giant \u201cbatteries.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As MIT researchers <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pnas.org\/doi\/10.1073\/pnas.2511912122\" target=\"_blank\">report<\/a> in a new <i>PNAS<\/i> paper, optimized electrolytes and manufacturing processes have increased the <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/energy+storage\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">energy storage<\/a> capacity of the latest ec<sup>3<\/sup> supercapacitors by an order of magnitude.<\/p>\n<p>In 2023, storing enough energy to meet the daily needs of the average home <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/news\/2023-07-energy-storing-supercapacitor-ancient-materials.html\">would have required<\/a> about 45 cubic meters of ec<sup>3<\/sup>, roughly the amount of concrete used in a typical basement. Now, with the improved <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/electrolyte\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">electrolyte<\/a>, that same task can be achieved with about 5 cubic meters, the volume of a typical basement wall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Concrete already builds our world, and now it\u2019s one step closer to powering it, too. Made by combining cement, water, ultra-fine carbon black (with nanoscale particles), and electrolytes, electron-conducting carbon concrete (ec3, pronounced \u201ce-c-cubed\u201d) creates a conductive \u201cnanonetwork\u201d inside concrete that could enable everyday structures like walls, sidewalks, and bridges to store and release electrical [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-222850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nanotechnology","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222850\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}