Storing energy in red bricks

Imagine putting your brick in the house.

Red bricks – some of the cheapest and most well-known building materials in the world – can be converted into energy storage units that can be charged to hold electricity, such as a battery, according to new research from Washington University in St. Louis. . Louis.

Brick has been used in walls and buildings for thousands of years, but it has rarely been found for other uses. Now, chemists in Arts & Sciences have developed a method to create or modify “smart bricks” that can store energy up to required for powering devices. A proof-of-concept published Aug. 11 in Nature communication shows a brick directly with a green LED light.

“Our method works with ordinary brick as well as recycled brick, and we can also make our own brick,” said Julio D’Arcy, assistant professor of chemistry. “Actually, it’s the work we’ve published in Nature communication comes from stones we bought here at Home Depot in Brentwood (Missouri); each brick was 65 cents. “

Brick walls and buildings already occupied large amounts of space, which could be better used if an additional purpose for electrical storage was provided. While some architects and designers recognized the possibility of the dim brick to absorb and retain the heat of the sun, this is the first time anyone has tried to use stones as anything more than thermal mass for heating and cooling.

D’Arcy and colleagues, including Washington University student Hongmin Wang, first author of the new study, showed how red bricks are converted into a type of energy storage device called a supercapacitor.

“In this work, we have developed a coating of the conductive polymer PEDOT, which consists of nanofibers that penetrate into the inner porous network of a brick; a polymer coating remains trapped in a brick and serves as an ionic sponge that stores and conducts electricity. , “Said D’Arcy.

The red pigment in bricks – iron oxide, as a rust – is essential for triggering the polymerization reaction. The authors’ calculations suggest that walls made of these bricks with energy storage can store a substantial amount of energy.

“PEDOT-coated bricks are ideal building blocks that can provide power to emergency lighting,” said D’Arcy. “We think this could be a reality if you connect our bricks to solar cells – this could take up 50 bricks near the loads. These 50 bricks could turn on the lighting for five hours.

“Advantageously, a brick wall that serves as a supercapacitor can be charged hundreds of thousands of times within an hour. If you connect a few bricks, microelectronics sensors would be easily powered.”

The paper, “Energy Storage of Bricks for Stationary PEDOT Supercapacitors,” is scheduled for publication in Nature communication on August 11, 2020.