Latest Inventions

posted by admin on Dec 10

According to current reports from the US - yes you can…….

Obviously the paper is only a small part of the whole energy source, but could lead the way forward in making energy without mining and disposing of tonnes and tonnes of dangerous and wasteful metals.

Reports from Stanford University suggest that by coating plain copier paper with a carbon and lithium mix could actually power many electrical goods, but research is still in the early stages.

How Is It Done?
Testing so far has allowed for rolled sheets of paper to be painted with a carbon ‘ink’ to form a nanotube structure.  The many inter-connected fibres found in paper could be the key to it’s use - and of course it is bendable, can be folded and manipulated into a whole host of shapes (think origami!) that means it could be better manipulated than many common metals used today and it is much, much, lighter!

Once the structure is prepared, the whole thing is lowered into a lithium solution where electrolytes react to create the electrical current.  Nanotube technology is only small scale at the moment - but with the potential that paper offers, these could be scaled up.

Energy Efficient:
With all the component parts of the battery being one and the same will allow for better energy efficiency as there will be less energy wasted moving it around inside the product - the whole thing is electrical.  I mean, you can even cut the paper in half and it will still work - but at 50% of the output of the original!

They are not currently cost effective though, and paper batteries the size required to power a lightbulb are currently way out of kilter with the cost of other power sources.

But, this small step could lead up to things that noone ever expected - just think of the Internet itself - the technology just ran away with itself!

The Future?
With the potential for larger sizes, and the fact that these batteries can release energy much faster than standard batteries, there is talk of the technology being used to power cars for example - although there has been no actual research into this at the moment.

Similarly there has been talk of pacemakers running on these non-toxic fuel cells - but nothing on paper.

Also, with the structure of paper the same over huge dimensions - it is possible that a whole wall could be painted with the carbon ink and used as an energy store rather than a multitude of smaller devices.  And certain cloths are very similar in structure to paper so could be used as well.

I am not sure that I would want a whole wall or a set of curtains in my home filled with electrical energy, but for factories and other workplaces or vehicles, this could be just the thing!