I've had several people say they don't support electricity. One guy won't for for a ride in my EV since he says he will get a headache. What a great excuse to have him never visit me!
@@martyschrader Hee-hee. Actually, I sometimes do, when things drop off surfaces onto the floor. Whether I'm alone or not, I will exclaim, "thank you, unhelpful gravity" or maybe something along the lines of, " well, you've lost all potential there." So, as you can see, from my everyday perspective, there are two types of gravity - one that is helpful, one that is not. 😉
Bricks, being porous, will absorb and store liquid or gelled electrolyte. Add an anode and cathode on opposite sides of the brick and you have a great primary or secondary cell.
Maybe I'm wrong, but doesn't the insulation value come from all the air trapped within the pores of the brick? If you fill those pores with something solid it should make the brick more thermally conductive.
I live in the city of st louis where this idea was imagined up. I am so happy that this idea is gaining traction. My little university has applied so many ideas to the world of science. I could not be more proud.
I hope your little University has Scientific empirical evidence for made made C02 causing climate change as Australia's top government climate scientists in the CSIRO after spending 20 years and $30, 000,000 + could not produce any, none, zilch, when called before the Australian Senate to do so (and for 10 years) for the idea to legislate the taxing of electricity costs so we can use unreliable renewables. This is only going to hurt the poor, the sick and the aged, the normal socialist way of smashing the people who need it least.
@jack the flipper These are confusing statements. I don't know what to do with that. Its not really solving a problem if your just promoting a view of the world. Sure, corrupt people are everywhere. New York, Mumbai and even St. louis. Certainly if the corrupt were literally burning the city to the ground, I like every one in my neighbors would be there to stop it. In life you have to create solutions to make a difference. Pointing out a flaw in the world as if its systemic is the least effective way to solve that problem.
Minor correction: Electrical charge is measured in "coulomb" [C] named after French physicist Charles Augustin de Coulomb The amount of charge a capacitor can hold per volt of potential difference, the capacitance, is measured in farad [F = C/V] @3:40
Old bricky here.. I worked for a company that manufactured architectural terra cotta. There was an engineer from a poly technic school in the Hudson valley that was developing a photovoltaic glaze that could be applied to ceramic building materials, essentially turning the exterior walls and roofs of structures into electrical generators. This idea is way past due. Cheers!
Brilliant, you are becoming one of the best science commentators in media. It's inspiring to see that people can delve into complex subjects, make sense of many aspects of a domain and educate people . Carl Sagan would be proud, and Neil deGrasse Tyson should be feeling the annoyance of upstart competition from outside the sacred sphere of academia . If you can do it, we all can. Thanks for that.
Wow, what an interesting thing! So if their energy capacity can be scaled up enough, the literal power bricks could perform the same function as the super capacitors you mentioned earlier in the video: smoothing out spikes in demand from household appliances, thus prolonging the life of the battery connected to your solar panels.
1. nothing new. 2. older civilizations (tartarians) used this storage of energy in red bricks for as long as thousands of years 3. that was also their demise, becoming fried to death by a massive overload in the energy grid, with only hunter-gatherers surviving bc they were off the grid. The story of cavemen is chapter 18 of humanity, nowhere near its beginning. :)
Great! A quick calculation shows that the 8000 bricks can store about 1 kWh. This is enough to supply the house for about 2 hours (a house needs about 4000 kWh/year). Even if the capacity could be increased by a factor of 10 through improvements, it would only be enough for 24 hours - Probably at an astronomical price, because even if each brick in the production would only cost 1 Euro and another 1 Euro for the necessary wiring (8000 connections!), it would cost 16.000 Euro - For ONE DAY power reserve The same could be achieved with some lead-acid batteries, at a price of about 1500 Euro. By the way, a power storage for a house with solar cells should be able to last for about 3 months (weak sun and highest consumption in winter!), so about 1500 kWh including deep discharge and emergency reserve. So one would need 1500 houses with battery bricks to power ONE house. I always say: if you are for renewables, you cannot calculate. Once again this has been confirmed.
1kwhr of lithium cells is about the size of a car battery and around 10lbs. Why bother with this tech when you could buy something the size of a briefcase for under 2 grand that does the same thing.
You were on the right-track but then you suddenly lost all credibility with your last sentence: At the utility-scale, renewables provide the lowest marginal cost of generation by far than any other source with wind and solar PV farms being built now producing for between ~$30-40 USD/MWh. This is clearly being touted as a potential future Residential solution (pending further Research & Development, economies of manufacturing scale and safety issues being addressed). You can't compare some proof of concept in a lab and use it as evidence to shit on renewables because of the economics... you're confusing two completely different things: this is talking about levelized cost of storage, not levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) or generation cost. Also, this technology has yet to be proven and scaled.
@@niranjanjha4438 Oh, renewables are the cheapest power source? Then why does Germany have the highest electricity price in the world with so many wind turbines and solar panels? Quite simply because renewable electricity is completely worthless. Germany has to pay its neighbors time and again to take the electricity generated by wind at the wrong time. Not for free, no, they want extra money to take it! Electricity is an on-demand product. It must be delivered when it is needed. Otherwise it is just as worthless as the rolls of a baker who offers them at midnight. You are further proof that people who are in favor of renewables cannot calculate.
We could still use the bricks here, there'd just need to be some sturdy insulation between them and the outside. Couldn't use 'em on an exterior wall, though.
@@Kevin_Street It would work for my NE, SE walls because I insulate them with 200 tonnes of snow for exercise. NW, SW walls are too high though. I'm half my electrical bricks short of a full load then.
@N C True. My house actually has a brick wall on the first story, but that's more unusual. A thin facade is more common when you see brick-faced houses.
A F: Brick veneer tends to be more common on the inside of a home.... Also the posted energy storage method could be used in either case, just to a lesser degree...
2:15 Wood frame houses are more prevalent in North America because of earthquakes, possibly tornados. Bricks just don't hold up when the ground shakes. The mortar cracks, and that weakens the structure. Crack propagation shatters the building, and it collapses under the jolts and swaying of the earth. So, this is an interesting concept, but it's probably best left to non-seismic areas.
At the end of the day it still might be more efficient to build a separate battery, especially if that battery is more efficient energy-wise. Solar panels can only produce so much after all. But wish them luck
yes activated charcoal is cheap as hell and aluminum foil coated in it makes a super cap with much higher power density. These gimmick inventions get pushed all the time on youtube but are really just a money pit that could be put to better use. This will just lead to patents that stifle real inventions.
Laughing at the idea intro because as a bricklayer I got zapped when my trowel contacted damp brick on a house where a short somehow electrified the outside of house
4:20 Plenty capacitors contain chemical substances. For example, basically all electrolytic caps contain electrolyte, which is a chemical liquid. Older metal film caps had a lead substrate vapourized onto the metal film as a coating (lead is environmentally unfriendly). Btw, what is the lifespan of this coating? In the end, lifespan is the primary key to durable products.
I can’t help but thinking, what if the brick wall Hagrid stabbed with his umbrella was one of these? The Philosophers Stone would’ve suddenly been a lot thinner..
The proof of concept with the bricks only really proved that the bricks could be cheaply turned into capacitors. Now the engineers take over and work out HOW to make that into something useful, which will include verifying safety and such.
Since I was at school I had the idea of building a kind of battery which has an iron salt which is dissolved and iron ions could be absorbed by a magnet to one corner of the battery and a semipermiable membrane would separate the iron ions from the negative charged ions. Then when the magnet is removed there would be a charge imbalance which could generate electricity. I actually tried to test this using FeCl3. The issue is the iron ion isnt magnetic (I think). But there must be a way to make an Fe ion which is still magnetic as there are different types of Fe ions. This would be a revolutionary invention if happens.
Revolutionary indeed, because it would be a Perpetuum mobile. Given that magnetic ions exist (they do) the force needed to pull the magnet away would be bigger than the gain you get out of the recombination. Just think that the electrons and ions are also held together by an electromagnetic field, You would have to overcome this force with your magnet and that means there is no gain.
@@TheSpecio It would be a recharging method and not necessarily for more energy. Although I would say putting a magnet next to a cell and removing it wouldnt need as much energy as the amount of electricity could be produced from all those ions moved to another side of the membrane.
How about using the roof tiles? They are of a similar original material. They are interchangeable and if you crazy enough, put a solar cell on them to charge it!
For me it raises questions, retro fitting to existing, the electrical connections between the bricks (unless the mortar is doctored.) and the use of wall ties.
Yes! Very creative people who are very technical, are the most productively minded people in this world!!!! We need to support them even when they fail!!! Some may have extremely advanced properties...
pointless when you consider the cost of a separator film in a normal cap that produces much better results. A brick sized super cap would power that emergency lighting for weeks.
That was the real world comparison I was hoping for. I'd guess that a standard supercap array the size of a brick would hold more than 16 square metres of these and be cheaper. But the obvious comparison was not made. So we're in the realm of wishful thinking.
Good point. I think the idea here is that for a slightly more expensive brick you can get your building and power bank in one. Lifetime of the brick may be something to consider if this gets going.
Normally, I would be on the same track as you here. But this is just a prove of concept and thus, the capacity cannot be compared to long developed tech. I am pretty sure though, that this can only be an option for niche applications - but having one more option is generally a good thing.
On the same plane, we could use a quartz brick under a load bearing wall.. if calculated correctly the ambient energy of the weight of the house could generate atleast some amount of energy.
As an alternative, bond a thermocouple hot junction to the outside of each brick (that the sun warms) then with the dissimilar metal cold junction say bonded to an earth stake, harvest the power created by the thermocouple effect.
Interested to see if the researchers will adapt & optimise the brick "recipe" to optimise energy capacity while they at the product phase of it's life. Just think, you could get a double brick house & get a government grant to subsidise some of your wall cost to build it.
@@TheSpecio like oil or modern agriculture? Almost every major industry is subsidized in some way, until we remove most of the old subsidies it isn't really accurate to claim that something isn't viable because it needs to be subsidized. Saying a new energy technology is a "worthless idea" because it would need subsidies is analogous to saying a kid is too slow because he can't win a race without a bicycle after everyone else has already been given bicycles.
No, I would not have thought the idea crazy. You can convert pressure (and implicitly, motion) to energy, and in reverse, convert energy into motion, using various piezoelectric substances. And just as you can have permanent magnets, you can have permanent electric charges, known as electrets. I once had a pair of Pioneer headphones that used plastic sheets that were piezoelectric. They sounded pretty good. And of course, for stationary energy storage you usually aren't too concerned about weight. That said, I'm not sure there's much practical value into power packs made of bricks. Also, FWIW I'm not a real fan of brick as a building material, but of course some of that involves taste as well as practical criteria.
I'm building a power station myself, at it can use bricks, or actually anything, it stores power in suspended masses, similar to how clock weights work. The masses only store power though, the power in my case comes from wind and beaver dams
I wonder what would happen if a house built of these things got struck by lightning... I don't think the bricks would explode. But I imagine that a single lightning strike will be enough to induce dielectric breakdown. I think that you may need to replace them all afterwards as they don't self heal and there may be a conductive channel creating a permanent short from the resulting damage.
@Danny Timms most of the cost of a house in the UK is land and house builder profit. The cost of solar could easily be built into the building process without adding to the cost. There a number of ways we could reduce the cost of housing if necessary, we've chosen to design our economy around not doing so.
One thing you got wrong is the charge in a capacitor is actually stored in the dielectric . This can be proven with a simple experiment with a plate capacitor. You can charge it up disassemble it and short the plates. Upon reassembly it will have about the same charge as it had to begin with. There will be minor losses from handling the dielectric.
A fairly common building material round here is a dual wall, with brick on the outside, n timber frame on the inside. well, it was in the 70's. now we generally go with double brick. probably a better formula would be frame on the outside with bulk insulation, and thermal mass on the inside ceramic tiles that are low grade solar collectors, bricks that are low grade storage. cheap to use, simple to install, tech we're already proficient in (how long have we been using muddy blocks to build with?) somewhat challenging to retrofit, but if you were doing a whole housing estate? that could be a serious player.
This section of wall stores as much energy as half a stick of dynamite. Watch what happens when this unsuspecting handyman uses a hammer drill with a masonry bit to install some shelf brackets. ...
@Ichbin Janichblöd I find it hard to believe that firefighters would reuse to work on a house that had solar panels. Non conductive fire retardants are readily available.
@Ichbin Janichblöd the part of a panel that used to be at risk from fire was the backing plastic film, which now are fire retardant. Apart from that, the materials used to make a solar panel are glass silicon, copper and aluminium. The junction box is plastic. Please explain how unstoppable fires develope using these materials.
the bricks- and anything of high density mass- can provide heat and coolth- that is the essence of a "passive solar" house. strategically placed inside- best done at the design phase- can provide 1/2 your heating and cooling load in cold/cool climates that get a lot of sun. but few architects/designers are aware/take advantage of this!
The latest revolutionary treatment, is spray on "Transparent" Solar film, onto your windows. Said to be able to give you more power than ordinary pv. panels. This would seem to be better used on skyscrapers. I await for the application on my spectacles. Keep on finding all these new methods of finding electricity ! Stay safe ! Stu xx
i suggest a story about Passive Solar Home/Building Design! its a low tech solution for heating in winter and cooling in summer. its just correct orientation (long side of building faces south) correct windown orientations (south) and added mass (stone, conc., brick, water containers, etc) its been studied and defined many years ago but little used. it works great (can easily save you 50% in heating cooling bills and can even go up to 80% if you prioritize it ) in sunny/cold locations.
Indeed. The most practical solution i could imagine is building a brick shroud for a fire pit that can ignite the flame. Thats assuming you could generate at least 20 columbs of charge to create the spark.
Here’s what I find interesting 🤔 in the last decade, we have seen amazing improvement in removing the ‘roadblocks’ to clean/sustainable energy production. I would love to know, what percentage of humans have been directly involved in this work, what percentage have been sitting on the sidelines cheering , what percentage are on the sidelines booing and what percentage are actively working against this movement (I guess I’m thinking that this whole challenge would be a ‘piece of cake’ if everyone got on board)....just havin’ a think....
Interesting point. I realize this is anecdotal but at the start of an inturnship I had recently I sat through a couple hours of ranting from a guy who was very anti wind, the funny part is I actually found some of his points compelling so I looked up pretty much everything he said and pretty much everything he said about the technology other than bird kill stopped being accurate by around the time I was 5. Based on the context it was very clear he was primarily citing a combination extreme political rhetoric and frustration. It wouldn't surprise me if a lot of the people who are anti renewable and especially anti wind are functionally stuck in a politically tied(thanks Al Gore) propaganda bubble that has had a lot of its talking heads conveniently funded by one particular industry.
A great idea. However, the construction industry are still not building homes with geothermal heating, solar panels, or battery storage. So an energy storing brick doesn't stand a chance.
60 bricks can run emergency lighting for 50 minutes. I wonder if that means like four 6 watt LED bulbs? If so, 60 bricks would have about 20 watt hours of capacity. If your home has around 6000 bricks, suddenly that 2kwh of capacity, which is actually pretty usable! And I assume the capacity will only improve as they keep researching this tech.
Now that is pretty cool. It would mean that you could keep a much smaller battery bank and use the brick walls as start up capacitors for all your large use items. Or if you had a large battery bank you could start really big loads. If you used the same idea to charge siding that was made of say Cement board made with charcoal aggregate. You could have any type of exterior on your structure.
100% on " Brick Power" !!! I discovered this way back when "hiding" behind my brick from a "Microwave Oven". That is when I knew it "Absorb" Electrons. That was when I made a huge discovery about what brick does and what was in it. Basically, lots of "Lead/Metals" and that is how it actually store it, until full. YES, I have a video if anyone is interested in what I just wrote above.
Super interesting! A little suggestion, please dont add the "like and subscribe" animation in the middle of the video, it makes it seem like the vid is ending (which is kinda scary for this quality content haha)! Keep up the good work, sir😄
Unfortunely I dont think this idea can ever be made economical. Bricks are used in construction because they are dirt cheap. Just baked clay(literaly dirt). This requires they are treated with expensive chemicals and far far worse yet you would then need to assemble them as a capacitor in your wall. Complete with the seperator ,electrolite and conductive wire/plate. This massive increase in complexity will completely brake your budget. I am sure its possible to make the wall be a battery but it will absolutely 100% add more than 10-20k to the construction cost. For that kind of money you can buy several Tesla powerwalls. So unfortunetly this will remain a lab concept or at best a gimmick for rich people. P.S. This is just my 2 cents as an architect that has to actually calculate how much each step in a construction project will cost.
I barely understand most of the technical stuff but the thing that comes to mind is, would such bricks tend to attract lightnings? Still maybe some kind of leap in tech will happen because of this, you never know
Can you increase electrical storage potential using a more porous brick (one loose enough to allow airflow right through it (like a aeration block in a fish tank but terra-cotta)), and force circulating the solution through it when prepping? Also does adding a form of glass insulator between bricks help isolate the charge and prevent it from bleeding out/grounding out? This is some neat stuff!
This reminds me of the Edwardian tablecloth as portrayed by _Absolute History_ that was electrified, enabling the table to be lit by light fixtures that are stabbed into the tablecloth with sharp prongs that, if you're lucky, complete the circuit and energize the lamp. What could possibly go wrong? As if those things we use to skewer corn on the cob weren't diabolical enough... 😆
Very cool that they can make this work. But... Its not a very practical way to generate electricity. You'd have to connect all the bricks on the backside, and wire the wall to the home grid. But on the back side, there will be either another brick layer or insulating layers or both. Maybe you could make prefab brick walls with all the insulation and wiring in place, but it would be a lot of extra complexity for very little extra power.
3D patterning may be required to make these bricks actually useful in real world, so I don't expect it to be perfectly "one step and done" process to make these. On the upshot, this seems just perfect for low-tech industrial manufacturing... just like ordinary bricks are. It's going to make bricklayer a high skill job, though!
,...and my invention was using old hand warmers (iron) in concrete to make it look like old rusted metal. I didn't realize that it could double as a porch light. 🤷
I've always considered making things to serve more than one purpose at the same time. It is fairly easy to embed a battery within a brick structure. Tesla did something similar with their solar roof tiles.
that is amazing!!! i really hope they succeed in this. World needs these types of innovation. Especially the underdeveloped countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia. I wish them all the very best.
Underdeveloped countries need CHEAP energy. They can't afford renewables. Just have a look at Germany: Only 30% of the electricity is made with wind and solar, the storage problem is completely unsolved and yet Germany has the highest electricity price worldwide,
@@TheSpecio from what i understand already Offshore wind is cheaper than any fossil fuel alternatives and it is only getting more cheaper. Solar is also getting there.
@@Soothsayer210 A Power plant Providers Electrocity on demand, anytime. How expensive is Wind geneated electricity PLUS storage utilities for a 24/7 Delivery? I will Tell you: About 2 € per kWh.
@@TheSpecio i understand that, that is why we have so much curtailment of Solar and Wind power from California. They car giving free power to Texas to reduce shutting down the wind turbines. The solution is ofcourse a combination of battery added to this like in Australia where Tesla has installed their batteries and solar panels. About 2# per kwh, i believe we have that already in North America.
@@Soothsayer210 Unfortunately you have no idea about numbers. To store just enough electricity for two weeks, a country like Germany would need about 2000 of the biggest hydro pump storage facilities (these are by far the cheapest way to store electricity, batteries are 100 times more expensive!) Such a pump hydro costs 2-3 billion Euro, 2000 of them 4-6 trillion or per household 250.000 Euro in 30 years, the price of a comfortable house. A household needs on average 4000 kWh/year, or 120.000 kWh in 30 years. So each kWh would have an additional cost of 2 Euro or 200 ECent or 235 USCent. At present, electricity costs only 13 USCent/kWh in the USA. You still live with your parents, right? Otherwise you wouldn't talk such nonsense about the electricity price in North America.
It mentioned epoxy coating. Maybe that's where it is waterproofed. I can imagine the pioneer homes will have serious damp issues! Although maybe their intention is to build a further brick wall round the initial brick wall to protect it!
Obviously, the use of a standard brick is just a starting point for researching the extension of the supercapacitor concept into other materials. Nature is filled with all kindsa porous materials that might end up hosting charge storage. We're just getting started here, folks...
03:34 "The _farad is the SI derived unit of electrical capacitance, the ability of a body to store an electrical charge._ It is named after the English physicist Michael Faraday." -wiki. "The unit _faraday_ is sometimes used in electrochemistry. _1 faraday of charge is the magnitude of the charge of 1 mole of electrons_ i.e. 96485.33289(59) _Colombs_ ... _or_ 96.485 kJ per volt-gram-equivalent" -wiki - Also, please do lookup: "the Nernst equation". "Capacitors use static electricity, otherwise known as electrostatics instead of chemistry to store energy. _They actually store electrical charge (which is measured in farads)_ , named after the british chemist and physicist Michael Faraday" - Just have a think.
Capacitors do not store Farads. Their Capacity is measured in Farads, but what they store is Coulombs of electrical charge. The relationship is F=C/V, where F=Farads, C=Coulombs and V= Volts. So, as an example a 1 Farad Capacitor will have a 1Volt potential when charged with 1 Coulomb of static charge whereas a 1000uF (uF = micro-Farad) Capacitor will have a potential of 1000V when charged with 1 Coulomb. Easy Peasy!
Interesting! Though, as for the temperature range, it would mainly be practical fro epople like me, living in northern euroe, as the inner shell of a double-shelled house. Still - sounds like a wonderful option of marrying structure and function in yet another way. Me likey.
The technology seems to be really cheap and simple. Rather than making something high-performance- they've instead made something low-performance that can be made cheaply in large quantity, and because the bricks are structural as well, it has multiple functions that doesn't take up any extra space.
I've heard there is a brick factory just outside of Cambridge UK. The brick oven requires no power because the clay coming in contains enough natural gas to fire the oven. I lived nearby. On a calm morning, the world had a terrible stink. How's that for free energy?
I wonder if they could make a powder and spray or apply it to a fine rigid surface bake it the same way as powder-coated paint and then put the panels together as a solid state battery, might have a battery the size of a double-decker bus, just thinking out of the box probably impossible to achieve that
This is interesting, but how useful would it be in practice? First, it seems unlikely that this could be used on anything but new construction. You can add solar to a home, but I doubt anyone would have this done to the bricks in an existing home. Also, how would the cost and capacity of a home's capacitator bricks compare to that of a traditional super capacitator that could be installed in a home? I mean if a super capacitator was a useful addition to a home solar/power wall set up, presumably traditional super capacitator's could be designed and added to both new and existing homes. I see three reasons that the capacitator bricks might be useful. First, if the capacity of the bricks as a whole was much greater than say a traditional super-capacitator a bit bigger than a water heater. (I figure that could easily be fit into most homes.) Second, if the capacitator bricks were much safer than having a traditional super-capacitator in your home. Third, if a capacitator brick system was much cheaper than a traditional alternative. I have no idea the answers to these questions and the researchers might not know for sure yet either. It is definitely an interesting idea though. But I won't be taking advantage of it as I live in a co-op apartment building constructed about 90 years ago.
Is it cheaper than when an ordinary supercap is simply glued up to the ordinary brick? At least there is no problem with a replacement of them. Try to remove just one faulty brick from a wall and you will understand my concern.
just trying to think of what short term power supply would be useful for rather than the infrequent demand of emergency lighting, how about boiling a kettle, could peak supply meet demand of 3000W for 2 minutes?
Maybe you are only joking... maybe. But just in case: Since they only store Direct Current, there is no issue. Inside an electrically-conductive structure the electric charge is _always everywhere zero._
Many modern bricks are not solid but have several channels formed into them when they are molded from the raw clay, I guess to lighten them, pun intended. Wouldn’t this significantly increase the surface area available for storage, plus would it not be possible to tinker with the iron oxide chemistry at the raw brick stage, before firing, to reduce the time required for the HCl diffusion step. Ie look at the whole process of brick making and brick laying rather than focusing on the final brick, as I am sure there will not be many wishing to have HCl gas pumped into their existing brick houses
As an undergrad who has done research in both EDOT conductive polymers and carbon nanotubes, this is very exciting to see!
I would be very excited to see your DIY method for making these bricks into a power wall.
@Mr. Virtual Wikipedia
Update please. Have you or others made these for personal use?
I've had several people say they don't support electricity. One guy won't for for a ride in my EV since he says he will get a headache. What a great excuse to have him never visit me!
Do these same people have a problem with gravity?
@@martyschrader Hee-hee. Actually, I sometimes do, when things drop off surfaces onto the floor. Whether I'm alone or not, I will exclaim, "thank you, unhelpful gravity" or maybe something along the lines of, " well, you've lost all potential there." So, as you can see, from my everyday perspective, there are two types of gravity - one that is helpful, one that is not. 😉
Does this man realize that electric potential is basically how nerves fire?
@@ramblerandy2397 😆
@@martyschrader You sir, have touched a raw open wound for my past history. I used to juggle. I hated gravity.
Bricks, being porous, will absorb and store liquid or gelled electrolyte. Add an anode and cathode on opposite sides of the brick and you have a great primary or secondary cell.
if you soak your brick, it reduces the insulation value...
electrolyte mortar would work as well.
not when dry and only coating the pores
Your comment reminds me of potato clock and lemon juice experiments at school.
😊
Maybe I'm wrong, but doesn't the insulation value come from all the air trapped within the pores of the brick? If you fill those pores with something solid it should make the brick more thermally conductive.
I live in the city of st louis where this idea was imagined up. I am so happy that this idea is gaining traction. My little university has applied so many ideas to the world of science. I could not be more proud.
I hope your little University has Scientific empirical evidence for made made C02 causing climate change as Australia's top government climate scientists in the CSIRO after spending 20 years and $30, 000,000 + could not produce any, none, zilch, when called before the Australian Senate to do so (and for 10 years) for the idea to legislate the taxing of electricity costs so we can use unreliable renewables. This is only going to hurt the poor, the sick and the aged, the normal socialist way of smashing the people who need it least.
@jack the flipper These are confusing statements. I don't know what to do with that. Its not really solving a problem if your just promoting a view of the world. Sure, corrupt people are everywhere. New York, Mumbai and even St. louis. Certainly if the corrupt were literally burning the city to the ground, I like every one in my neighbors would be there to stop it. In life you have to create solutions to make a difference. Pointing out a flaw in the world as if its systemic is the least effective way to solve that problem.
Minor correction:
Electrical charge is measured in "coulomb" [C] named after French physicist Charles Augustin de Coulomb
The amount of charge a capacitor can hold per volt of potential difference, the capacitance, is measured in farad [F = C/V]
@3:40
Fair cop Richie. Thanks for the correction.
They should have good English names like Winterbottom. I want to have Winterbottoms of electric heating, it just sounds right.
Cheddar Fodder what do you mean?
If you want to hang a picture on the wall make sure someone else hammers a nail into the wall for you, and stand well back.
I'll just use a magnet instead of a nail.
I will just use sticky pads, as I would on any brick, to avoid shattering the ceramic.
That's funny, thank you I needed that.💥💨💀............👀... whoa dude!..... here's your beer back.
Old bricky here..
I worked for a company that manufactured architectural terra cotta.
There was an engineer from a poly technic school in the Hudson valley that was developing a photovoltaic glaze that could be applied to ceramic building materials, essentially turning the exterior walls and roofs of structures into electrical generators. This idea is way past due. Cheers!
I’m screaming 😂😂😂
‘Luckily there are some pretty crazy people out there, and many of them work in laboratories’
It's as if he knows me.
Brilliant, you are becoming one of the best science commentators in media. It's inspiring to see that people can delve into complex subjects, make sense of many aspects of a domain and educate people . Carl Sagan would be proud, and
Neil deGrasse Tyson should be feeling the annoyance of upstart competition from outside the sacred sphere of academia . If you can do it, we all can. Thanks for that.
It's called a science communicator.
I'd call any resulting product a Powerwall. I hope that trademark isn't already taken.
Wow, what an interesting thing! So if their energy capacity can be scaled up enough, the literal power bricks could perform the same function as the super capacitors you mentioned earlier in the video: smoothing out spikes in demand from household appliances, thus prolonging the life of the battery connected to your solar panels.
Bricks that store electric energy...man, thats DOPE!!!
Perfect for houses in Mars colony, among other things.
1. nothing new. 2. older civilizations (tartarians) used this storage of energy in red bricks for as long as thousands of years 3. that was also their demise, becoming fried to death by a massive overload in the energy grid, with only hunter-gatherers surviving bc they were off the grid. The story of cavemen is chapter 18 of humanity, nowhere near its beginning. :)
Great!
A quick calculation shows that the 8000 bricks can store about 1 kWh. This is enough to supply the house for about 2 hours (a house needs about 4000 kWh/year).
Even if the capacity could be increased by a factor of 10 through improvements, it would only be enough for 24 hours - Probably at an astronomical price, because even if each brick in the production would only cost 1 Euro and another 1 Euro for the necessary wiring (8000 connections!), it would cost 16.000 Euro - For ONE DAY power reserve
The same could be achieved with some lead-acid batteries, at a price of about 1500 Euro.
By the way, a power storage for a house with solar cells should be able to last for about 3 months (weak sun and highest consumption in winter!), so about 1500 kWh including deep discharge and emergency reserve. So one would need 1500 houses with battery bricks to power ONE house.
I always say: if you are for renewables, you cannot calculate. Once again this has been confirmed.
1kwhr of lithium cells is about the size of a car battery and around 10lbs. Why bother with this tech when you could buy something the size of a briefcase for under 2 grand that does the same thing.
You were on the right-track but then you suddenly lost all credibility with your last sentence: At the utility-scale, renewables provide the lowest marginal cost of generation by far than any other source with wind and solar PV farms being built now producing for between ~$30-40 USD/MWh. This is clearly being touted as a potential future Residential solution (pending further Research & Development, economies of manufacturing scale and safety issues being addressed).
You can't compare some proof of concept in a lab and use it as evidence to shit on renewables because of the economics... you're confusing two completely different things: this is talking about levelized cost of storage, not levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) or generation cost. Also, this technology has yet to be proven and scaled.
@@niranjanjha4438 Oh, renewables are the cheapest power source?
Then why does Germany have the highest electricity price in the world with so many wind turbines and solar panels?
Quite simply because renewable electricity is completely worthless. Germany has to pay its neighbors time and again to take the electricity generated by wind at the wrong time. Not for free, no, they want extra money to take it!
Electricity is an on-demand product. It must be delivered when it is needed. Otherwise it is just as worthless as the rolls of a baker who offers them at midnight.
You are further proof that people who are in favor of renewables cannot calculate.
Not only could you generate power, but the big bad wolf couldn't blow your house down...
that's a killer deal
Unlike those American matchstick and cardboard contraptions :o)
And with that power that the bricks generates you can use it to power a railgun!
:D
@@kaedo-2740 Yes, railguns need rapid discharge rate of capacitors.
@@bazoo513 dang I was just joking i didn't think that it could be feasible
D:
It's capable of storing charges down to -20C. *Canada has left the chat.*
Cold weather mean lower humidity, which translates to higher charge capacity.
We could still use the bricks here, there'd just need to be some sturdy insulation between them and the outside. Couldn't use 'em on an exterior wall, though.
@@Kevin_Street It would work for my NE, SE walls because I insulate them with 200 tonnes of snow for exercise. NW, SW walls are too high though. I'm half my electrical bricks short of a full load then.
@@Kevin_Street use a layer of aircreet on the outside provides insulation and is still hard
South east az humidity 17% temps never that cold hmmmmm.
FWIW, bricks are very common for US homes but mostly as a facade...
@N C True. My house actually has a brick wall on the first story, but that's more unusual. A thin facade is more common when you see brick-faced houses.
A F: Brick veneer tends to be more common on the inside of a home.... Also the posted energy storage method could be used in either case, just to a lesser degree...
it's such a trashy trend, if you're going to have stone it should be real!
2:15 Wood frame houses are more prevalent in North America because of earthquakes, possibly tornados. Bricks just don't hold up when the ground shakes. The mortar cracks, and that weakens the structure. Crack propagation shatters the building, and it collapses under the jolts and swaying of the earth. So, this is an interesting concept, but it's probably best left to non-seismic areas.
At the end of the day it still might be more efficient to build a separate battery, especially if that battery is more efficient energy-wise. Solar panels can only produce so much after all. But wish them luck
yes activated charcoal is cheap as hell and aluminum foil coated in it makes a super cap with much higher power density. These gimmick inventions get pushed all the time on youtube but are really just a money pit that could be put to better use. This will just lead to patents that stifle real inventions.
Laughing at the idea intro because as a bricklayer I got zapped when my trowel contacted damp brick on a house where a short somehow electrified the outside of house
Did they ever figure out what caused it? How bad was the zap btw?
4:20 Plenty capacitors contain chemical substances.
For example, basically all electrolytic caps contain electrolyte, which is a chemical liquid.
Older metal film caps had a lead substrate vapourized onto the metal film as a coating (lead is environmentally unfriendly).
Btw, what is the lifespan of this coating?
In the end, lifespan is the primary key to durable products.
Good question. Lifespan is especially important when it's a structural component of the home. Not exactly easy to replace.
Concerns: static shock when you touch your wall, and lightning.
If those have been thought of or can't be a problem because physics... Cool :)
I can’t help but thinking, what if the brick wall Hagrid stabbed with his umbrella was one of these? The Philosophers Stone would’ve suddenly been a lot thinner..
The proof of concept with the bricks only really proved that the bricks could be cheaply turned into capacitors. Now the engineers take over and work out HOW to make that into something useful, which will include verifying safety and such.
Would imagine this is Low Voltage
Since I was at school I had the idea of building a kind of battery which has an iron salt which is dissolved and iron ions could be absorbed by a magnet to one corner of the battery and a semipermiable membrane would separate the iron ions from the negative charged ions. Then when the magnet is removed there would be a charge imbalance which could generate electricity.
I actually tried to test this using FeCl3. The issue is the iron ion isnt magnetic (I think). But there must be a way to make an Fe ion which is still magnetic as there are different types of Fe ions.
This would be a revolutionary invention if happens.
Revolutionary indeed, because it would be a Perpetuum mobile.
Given that magnetic ions exist (they do) the force needed to pull the magnet away would be bigger than the gain you get out of the recombination. Just think that the electrons and ions are also held together by an electromagnetic field, You would have to overcome this force with your magnet and that means there is no gain.
@@TheSpecio It would be a recharging method and not necessarily for more energy.
Although I would say putting a magnet next to a cell and removing it wouldnt need as much energy as the amount of electricity could be produced from all those ions moved to another side of the membrane.
@@drpk6514 Well, you just invented the Perpetuum mobile, congratulations!
@@TheSpecio Thank haha
How about using the roof tiles? They are of a similar original material. They are interchangeable and if you crazy enough, put a solar cell on them to charge it!
Now you know how they used the pyramids. They also scaled it up big time. Good show today!
For me it raises questions, retro fitting to existing, the electrical connections between the bricks (unless the mortar is doctored.) and the use of wall ties.
Wonder if the wall would be hot to the touch
No insulation to speak of
Unfortunately they don't build out of bricks where I live, because brick buildings are unnecessarily deadly in an earthquake.
Maybe you could build a nuclear plant as they did in Japan.
The brick buildings in earthquake prone areas are made safe with reinforcing bars. They won't collapse as easily as unreinforced buildings.
Wow, thank you so much for that image of a capacitor in action. It makes so much more sense now!
Yes!
Very creative people who are very technical, are the most productively minded people in this world!!!!
We need to support them even when they fail!!!
Some may have extremely advanced properties...
pointless when you consider the cost of a separator film in a normal cap that produces much better results. A brick sized super cap would power that emergency lighting for weeks.
That was the real world comparison I was hoping for. I'd guess that a standard supercap array the size of a brick would hold more than 16 square metres of these and be cheaper. But the obvious comparison was not made. So we're in the realm of wishful thinking.
Good point. I think the idea here is that for a slightly more expensive brick you can get your building and power bank in one. Lifetime of the brick may be something to consider if this gets going.
Considering the discharge rate of capacitors they would likely turn the power cabling into a very exciting and short lived lighting device.
Normally, I would be on the same track as you here. But this is just a prove of concept and thus, the capacity cannot be compared to long developed tech.
I am pretty sure though, that this can only be an option for niche applications - but having one more option is generally a good thing.
would be more interesting if the bricks also generated the power. That's what I was expecting from the title.
On the same plane, we could use a quartz brick under a load bearing wall.. if calculated correctly the ambient energy of the weight of the house could generate atleast some amount of energy.
As an alternative, bond a thermocouple hot junction to the outside of each brick (that the sun warms) then with the dissimilar metal cold junction say bonded to an earth stake, harvest the power created by the thermocouple effect.
The thing you're most likely to hear in a research lab is not "eureka", but "that's wasn't supposed to happen".....
So glad Dave's being playful while he shows off his chemistry vocabulary!! Could you repeat that, Dave?
that was hilarious i rewatched it many times
Not without more practice!! LOL :-)
Interested to see if the researchers will adapt & optimise the brick "recipe" to optimise energy capacity while they at the product phase of it's life. Just think, you could get a double brick house & get a government grant to subsidise some of your wall cost to build it.
If it neds subsidiaries it's a worthless idea.
@@TheSpecio like oil or modern agriculture? Almost every major industry is subsidized in some way, until we remove most of the old subsidies it isn't really accurate to claim that something isn't viable because it needs to be subsidized. Saying a new energy technology is a "worthless idea" because it would need subsidies is analogous to saying a kid is too slow because he can't win a race without a bicycle after everyone else has already been given bicycles.
No, I would not have thought the idea crazy. You can convert pressure (and implicitly, motion) to energy, and in reverse, convert energy into motion, using various piezoelectric substances. And just as you can have permanent magnets, you can have permanent electric charges, known as electrets. I once had a pair of Pioneer headphones that used plastic sheets that were piezoelectric. They sounded pretty good.
And of course, for stationary energy storage you usually aren't too concerned about weight.
That said, I'm not sure there's much practical value into power packs made of bricks. Also, FWIW I'm not a real fan of brick as a building material, but of course some of that involves taste as well as practical criteria.
Thank you for explaining how capaterurs are working, and the basics about Super-capaseturs.
Wonderful! Thank you for this. I’ve done a quick POC of my own. Attached a brick to my iPhone 11. It weighs a bit more than I’d like. 😉
thx for reminding me.... some of 1st commercial cell phones were called bricks :)
I'm building a power station myself, at it can use bricks, or actually anything, it stores power in suspended masses, similar to how clock weights work. The masses only store power though, the power in my case comes from wind and beaver dams
I wonder what would happen if a house built of these things got struck by lightning...
I don't think the bricks would explode. But I imagine that a single lightning strike will be enough to induce dielectric breakdown. I think that you may need to replace them all afterwards as they don't self heal and there may be a conductive channel creating a permanent short from the resulting damage.
still amazes me that new built homes in the UK dont have solar panels as standard. What are governments doing!.
Exactly I agree it’s business as usual nobody does anything until it’s to late and it probably is to late looking at the Arctic.
@Danny Timms or we start with Universal basic income so people have actual money to be more sustainable.
@Danny Timms You realize that solar panels eventually pay for themselves, right?
@Danny Timms most of the cost of a house in the UK is land and house builder profit. The cost of solar could easily be built into the building process without adding to the cost. There a number of ways we could reduce the cost of housing if necessary, we've chosen to design our economy around not doing so.
100% agree!
One thing you got wrong is the charge in a capacitor is actually stored in the dielectric . This can be proven with a simple experiment with a plate capacitor. You can charge it up disassemble it and short the plates. Upon reassembly it will have about the same charge as it had to begin with. There will be minor losses from handling the dielectric.
A fairly common building material round here is a dual wall, with brick on the outside, n timber frame on the inside. well, it was in the 70's. now we generally go with double brick. probably a better formula would be frame on the outside with bulk insulation, and thermal mass on the inside
ceramic tiles that are low grade solar collectors, bricks that are low grade storage. cheap to use, simple to install, tech we're already proficient in (how long have we been using muddy blocks to build with?)
somewhat challenging to retrofit, but if you were doing a whole housing estate? that could be a serious player.
My first thought about battery bricks: That's going to be one hell of a fire for the first house to catch it with those bricks.
This section of wall stores as much energy as half a stick of dynamite. Watch what happens when this unsuspecting handyman uses a hammer drill with a masonry bit to install some shelf brackets. ...
It makes up hot bath tub yu dreamed after a long working day
Next. Pig nose powers handdrill.
@Ichbin Janichblöd I find it hard to believe that firefighters would reuse to work on a house that had solar panels. Non conductive fire retardants are readily available.
@Ichbin Janichblöd the part of a panel that used to be at risk from fire was the backing plastic film, which now are fire retardant. Apart from that, the materials used to make a solar panel are glass silicon, copper and aluminium. The junction box is plastic.
Please explain how unstoppable fires develope using these materials.
the bricks- and anything of high density mass- can provide heat and coolth- that is the essence of a "passive solar" house. strategically placed inside- best done at the design phase- can provide 1/2 your heating and cooling load in cold/cool climates that get a lot of sun. but few architects/designers are aware/take advantage of this!
The latest revolutionary treatment, is spray on "Transparent" Solar film, onto your windows. Said to be able to give you more power than ordinary pv. panels.
This would seem to be better used on skyscrapers.
I await for the application on my spectacles.
Keep on finding all these new methods of finding electricity !
Stay safe !
Stu xx
i suggest a story about Passive Solar Home/Building Design! its a low tech solution for heating in winter and cooling in summer.
its just correct orientation (long side of building faces south) correct windown orientations (south) and added mass (stone, conc., brick, water containers, etc) its been studied and defined many years ago but little used. it works great (can easily save you 50% in heating cooling bills and can even go up to 80% if you prioritize it ) in sunny/cold locations.
Hi Mark. Agreed. Passivhaus in on the research schedule for the New Year :-)
Haven't heard any version of this story that makes me think this will ever have any significant effect on energy storage at a household level.
Indeed. The most practical solution i could imagine is building a brick shroud for a fire pit that can ignite the flame. Thats assuming you could generate at least 20 columbs of charge to create the spark.
You haven't heard how much energy is stored in a brick of methamphetamine. Thousands of tweakers vacuum all night on just a few kilos
great vid as always
Also this could work in a clad setting where you can still have structural walls that are highly efficient and require less load on appliances
Another useful invention I hope it gets to production.
Here’s what I find interesting 🤔 in the last decade, we have seen amazing improvement in removing the ‘roadblocks’ to clean/sustainable energy production. I would love to know, what percentage of humans have been directly involved in this work, what percentage have been sitting on the sidelines cheering , what percentage are on the sidelines booing and what percentage are actively working against this movement (I guess I’m thinking that this whole challenge would be a ‘piece of cake’ if everyone got on board)....just havin’ a think....
Interesting point. I realize this is anecdotal but at the start of an inturnship I had recently I sat through a couple hours of ranting from a guy who was very anti wind, the funny part is I actually found some of his points compelling so I looked up pretty much everything he said and pretty much everything he said about the technology other than bird kill stopped being accurate by around the time I was 5. Based on the context it was very clear he was primarily citing a combination extreme political rhetoric and frustration. It wouldn't surprise me if a lot of the people who are anti renewable and especially anti wind are functionally stuck in a politically tied(thanks Al Gore) propaganda bubble that has had a lot of its talking heads conveniently funded by one particular industry.
A great idea. However, the construction industry are still not building homes with geothermal heating, solar panels, or battery storage. So an energy storing brick doesn't stand a chance.
I appreciate your joke about plugging an electrical device into the wall. It's brilliant!
60 bricks can run emergency lighting for 50 minutes. I wonder if that means like four 6 watt LED bulbs? If so, 60 bricks would have about 20 watt hours of capacity. If your home has around 6000 bricks, suddenly that 2kwh of capacity, which is actually pretty usable!
And I assume the capacity will only improve as they keep researching this tech.
This is old world tech. Look up mudflood or Tartaria
Just making the brick waterproof is good for the homeowner for maintenance cost although might not be for indoor air quality.
Now that is pretty cool. It would mean that you could keep a much smaller battery bank and use the brick walls as start up capacitors for all your large use items. Or if you had a large battery bank you could start really big loads. If you used the same idea to charge siding that was made of say Cement board made with charcoal aggregate. You could have any type of exterior on your structure.
At the power plant I sometimes work in they have lightbulbs taped to the structural I beams and they’re lit up from the general stray voltage
Standard super capacitor exchange (electrode separation) to gain (capacity). On the shelf super cap has breakdown voltage of 3V.
100% on " Brick Power" !!! I discovered this way back when "hiding" behind my brick from a "Microwave Oven". That is when I knew it "Absorb" Electrons. That was when I made a huge discovery about what brick does and what was in it. Basically, lots of "Lead/Metals" and that is how it actually store it, until full. YES, I have a video if anyone is interested in what I just wrote above.
Link please
1 amp hour=3600 farads. lithium batteries are about 1$ amp hour. Batteries voltage is somewhat constant,capacitors voltage is linear.
Super interesting! A little suggestion, please dont add the "like and subscribe" animation in the middle of the video, it makes it seem like the vid is ending (which is kinda scary for this quality content haha)! Keep up the good work, sir😄
Hi Vishank. I appreciate that feedback. Maybe I'll replace the ones at the very start with the animated version. I'll look at that for next week.
@@JustHaveaThink Thanks for considering that! Have a good one!😄
Unfortunely I dont think this idea can ever be made economical. Bricks are used in construction because they are dirt cheap. Just baked clay(literaly dirt). This requires they are treated with expensive chemicals and far far worse yet you would then need to assemble them as a capacitor in your wall. Complete with the seperator ,electrolite and conductive wire/plate. This massive increase in complexity will completely brake your budget. I am sure its possible to make the wall be a battery but it will absolutely 100% add more than 10-20k to the construction cost. For that kind of money you can buy several Tesla powerwalls. So unfortunetly this will remain a lab concept or at best a gimmick for rich people.
P.S. This is just my 2 cents as an architect that has to actually calculate how much each step in a construction project will cost.
I barely understand most of the technical stuff but the thing that comes to mind is, would such bricks tend to attract lightnings?
Still maybe some kind of leap in tech will happen because of this, you never know
Very interesting. Thank you for sharing with us.
Just having it be able to mitigate initial spikes in large appliances would be great.
Charge is not measured in Farads. Capacitance is measured in Farads. Charge is measured in Coulombs.
Can you increase electrical storage potential using a more porous brick (one loose enough to allow airflow right through it (like a aeration block in a fish tank but terra-cotta)), and force circulating the solution through it when prepping? Also does adding a form of glass insulator between bricks help isolate the charge and prevent it from bleeding out/grounding out?
This is some neat stuff!
beautiful introduction. I adore your presentation skill!
This reminds me of the Edwardian tablecloth as portrayed by _Absolute History_ that was electrified, enabling the table to be lit by light fixtures that are stabbed into the tablecloth with sharp prongs that, if you're lucky, complete the circuit and energize the lamp. What could possibly go wrong? As if those things we use to skewer corn on the cob weren't diabolical enough... 😆
Wonderful as always :-) thank you very very much!
This sounds like a great way to slow highs at initial startup let the battery bank take the smooth middle and the loop continues
For future reference, the farad is actually a unit of capacitance. The unit for charge is the coulomb :)
Fair cop governor
I'm good with your explanation, thanks.
This tech could give the brick a fighting chance to 3d printing houses. Yet maybe the same tech can be added to the 3d printing slurry?
Thank you very much. Good on ya.
Very cool that they can make this work. But... Its not a very practical way to generate electricity. You'd have to connect all the bricks on the backside, and wire the wall to the home grid. But on the back side, there will be either another brick layer or insulating layers or both. Maybe you could make prefab brick walls with all the insulation and wiring in place, but it would be a lot of extra complexity for very little extra power.
3D patterning may be required to make these bricks actually useful in real world, so I don't expect it to be perfectly "one step and done" process to make these. On the upshot, this seems just perfect for low-tech industrial manufacturing... just like ordinary bricks are.
It's going to make bricklayer a high skill job, though!
,...and my invention was using old hand warmers (iron) in concrete to make it look like old rusted metal. I didn't realize that it could double as a porch light. 🤷
I've always considered making things to serve more than one purpose at the same time. It is fairly easy to embed a battery within a brick structure. Tesla did something similar with their solar roof tiles.
that is amazing!!! i really hope they succeed in this. World needs these types of innovation. Especially the underdeveloped countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia. I wish them all the very best.
Underdeveloped countries need CHEAP energy. They can't afford renewables.
Just have a look at Germany: Only 30% of the electricity is made with wind and solar, the storage problem is completely unsolved and yet Germany has the highest electricity price worldwide,
@@TheSpecio from what i understand already Offshore wind is cheaper than any fossil fuel alternatives and it is only getting more cheaper. Solar is also getting there.
@@Soothsayer210 A Power plant Providers Electrocity on demand, anytime.
How expensive is Wind geneated electricity PLUS storage utilities for a 24/7 Delivery?
I will Tell you: About 2 € per kWh.
@@TheSpecio i understand that, that is why we have so much curtailment of Solar and Wind power from California. They car giving free power to Texas to reduce shutting down the wind turbines.
The solution is ofcourse a combination of battery added to this like in Australia where Tesla has installed their batteries and solar panels. About 2# per kwh, i believe we have that already in North America.
@@Soothsayer210 Unfortunately you have no idea about numbers.
To store just enough electricity for two weeks, a country like Germany would need about 2000 of the biggest hydro pump storage facilities (these are by far the cheapest way to store electricity, batteries are 100 times more expensive!) Such a pump hydro costs 2-3 billion Euro, 2000 of them 4-6 trillion or per household 250.000 Euro in 30 years, the price of a comfortable house.
A household needs on average 4000 kWh/year, or 120.000 kWh in 30 years. So each kWh would have an additional cost of 2 Euro or 200 ECent or 235 USCent.
At present, electricity costs only 13 USCent/kWh in the USA. You still live with your parents, right? Otherwise you wouldn't talk such nonsense about the electricity price in North America.
And what happens when it rains? How do you keep them isolated from the ground to prevent a discharge?
It mentioned epoxy coating. Maybe that's where it is waterproofed. I can imagine the pioneer homes will have serious damp issues! Although maybe their intention is to build a further brick wall round the initial brick wall to protect it!
That sir, is an excellent question.
Obviously, the use of a standard brick is just a starting point for researching the extension of the supercapacitor concept into other materials. Nature is filled with all kindsa porous materials that might end up hosting charge storage. We're just getting started here, folks...
Agreed, I instantly went to the possibities of bricks interacting with the mortar in a chemical way as well.
that intro worked well, very funny and engaging
Thank you. I appreciate that :-)
03:34
"The _farad is the SI derived unit of electrical capacitance, the ability of a body to store an electrical charge._ It is named after the English physicist Michael Faraday." -wiki.
"The unit _faraday_ is sometimes used in electrochemistry. _1 faraday of charge is the magnitude of the charge of 1 mole of electrons_ i.e. 96485.33289(59) _Colombs_ ... _or_ 96.485 kJ per volt-gram-equivalent" -wiki
- Also, please do lookup: "the Nernst equation".
"Capacitors use static electricity, otherwise known as electrostatics instead of chemistry to store energy.
_They actually store electrical charge (which is measured in farads)_ , named after the british chemist and
physicist Michael Faraday" - Just have a think.
Capacitors do not store Farads. Their Capacity is measured in Farads, but what they store is Coulombs of electrical charge. The relationship is F=C/V, where F=Farads, C=Coulombs and V= Volts. So, as an example a 1 Farad Capacitor will have a 1Volt potential when charged with 1 Coulomb of static charge whereas a 1000uF (uF = micro-Farad) Capacitor will have a potential of 1000V when charged with 1 Coulomb. Easy Peasy!
Interesting!
Though, as for the temperature range, it would mainly be practical fro epople like me, living in northern euroe, as the inner shell of a double-shelled house.
Still - sounds like a wonderful option of marrying structure and function in yet another way.
Me likey.
Perfect idea to pair a solar power producing roof with power storage bricks.
The technology seems to be really cheap and simple. Rather than making something high-performance- they've instead made something low-performance that can be made cheaply in large quantity, and because the bricks are structural as well, it has multiple functions that doesn't take up any extra space.
Comment and like to appease the almighty algorithm
All Hail the Algorithm!
This is a comment for the mighty algorithm
Stop! Hammetite!
Why does the algorithm god want me to watch videos more than once?
@@julianshepherd2038 I heard it from some creator who did a video on this subject, that the algorithm only remembers the last 1000 videos you watched.
Gives new meaning to the word "power wall". Sounds like Therman stuff
This was a bit thin on details, but that's what the links to the original paper and related articles are for. Most interesting.
I've heard there is a brick factory just outside of Cambridge UK. The brick oven requires no power because the clay coming in contains enough natural gas to fire the oven. I lived nearby. On a calm morning, the world had a terrible stink. How's that for free energy?
Hematite is known as haematite (hiːmətʌɪt) in the UK.
I wonder if they could make a powder and spray or apply it to a fine rigid surface bake it the same way as powder-coated paint and then put the panels together as a solid state battery, might have a battery the size of a double-decker bus, just thinking out of the box probably impossible to achieve that
This is interesting, but how useful would it be in practice? First, it seems unlikely that this could be used on anything but new construction. You can add solar to a home, but I doubt anyone would have this done to the bricks in an existing home. Also, how would the cost and capacity of a home's capacitator bricks compare to that of a traditional super capacitator that could be installed in a home? I mean if a super capacitator was a useful addition to a home solar/power wall set up, presumably traditional super capacitator's could be designed and added to both new and existing homes. I see three reasons that the capacitator bricks might be useful. First, if the capacity of the bricks as a whole was much greater than say a traditional super-capacitator a bit bigger than a water heater. (I figure that could easily be fit into most homes.) Second, if the capacitator bricks were much safer than having a traditional super-capacitator in your home. Third, if a capacitator brick system was much cheaper than a traditional alternative. I have no idea the answers to these questions and the researchers might not know for sure yet either. It is definitely an interesting idea though. But I won't be taking advantage of it as I live in a co-op apartment building constructed about 90 years ago.
Do they comply with current building regulations? ;)
I would guess if makes them waterproof
Is it cheaper than when an ordinary supercap is simply glued up to the ordinary brick? At least there is no problem with a replacement of them. Try to remove just one faulty brick from a wall and you will understand my concern.
just trying to think of what short term power supply would be useful for rather than the infrequent demand of emergency lighting, how about boiling a kettle, could peak supply meet demand of 3000W for 2 minutes?
Imagine being surrounded by capacitors while you take a shower.
Electrobarbeque on the menu? Lol
Maybe you are only joking... maybe. But just in case: Since they only store Direct Current, there is no issue. Inside an electrically-conductive structure the electric charge is _always everywhere zero._
Many modern bricks are not solid but have several channels formed into them when they are molded from the raw clay, I guess to lighten them, pun intended. Wouldn’t this significantly increase the surface area available for storage, plus would it not be possible to tinker with the iron oxide chemistry at the raw brick stage, before firing, to reduce the time required for the HCl diffusion step. Ie look at the whole process of brick making and brick laying rather than focusing on the final brick, as I am sure there will not be many wishing to have HCl gas pumped into their existing brick houses