【科技】科学家如何利用水泥为你的房子发电？

【来源龙腾网】

正文原创翻译：

On a laboratory bench in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a stack of polished cylinders of black-coloured concrete sit bathed in liquid and entwined in cables. To a casual observer, they aren't doing much. But then Damian Stefaniuk flicks a switch. The blocks of human-made rock are wired up to an LED – and the bulb flickers into life.

在马萨诸塞州剑桥市的一个实验室工作台上，一堆抛光的黑色混凝土圆柱体浸泡在液体中，并缠绕着电缆。它们乍看起来用处不大，但当达米安·斯泰法尼乌克按下开关时，这些人造石块被电线连接到一只LED灯上，灯泡瞬间点亮了。

"At first I didn't believe it," says Stefaniuk, describing the first time the LED lit up. "I thought that I hadn't disconnected the external power source, and that was why the LED was on.

“起初我不相信”，斯泰法乌克在回忆LED灯被第一次点亮时说道，“我以为是自己没有断开外部电源，所以LED灯亮了”。

"It was a wonderful day. We invited students, and I invited professors to see, because at first they didn't believe that it worked either."

“那天真是太棒了，我们邀请了学生和教授前来参观，因为他们一开始也不相信这种事情”。

The reason for the excitement? This innocuous, dark lump of concrete could represent the future of energy storage.

心情激动的原因？这种无害的黑色混凝土块可能预示着能源存储的未来。

The promise of most renewable energy sources is that of endless clean power, bestowed on us by the Sun, wind and sea.

大多数可再生能源的前景是太阳、风、海洋赋予我们的用之不竭的清洁能源。

Yet the Sun isn't always shining, the wind isn't always blowing, and still waters do not, in megawatt terms, run deep. These are energy sources that are intermittent, which, in our energy-hungry modern world, poses a problem.

但阳光不会一直照耀，风不会一直吹拂，静水在兆瓦级发电能力上并不强劲。这些间歇性能源给我们这个能源需求旺盛的现代世界带来一个难题。

It means that we need to store that energy in batteries. But batteries rely on materials such as lithium, which is in far shorter supply than is likely to be needed to meet the demand created by the world's quest to decarbonise its energy and transport systems. There are 101 lithium mines in the world, and economic analysts are pessimistic about the ability of these mines to keep up with growing global demand. Environmental analysts note that lithium mining uses a lot of energy and water, which nibble away at the environmental benefits of switching to renewable energy sources in the first place. The processes involved in extracting lithium can also sometimes lead to toxic chemicals leaking into local water supplies.

这意味着我们需要将这些能源储存在蓄电池中。但蓄电池依赖于锂等材料，其供应量远远低于潜在需求，无法满足全球能源和运输系统的脱碳需要。全球有101座锂矿，经济分析师对它们能否满足日益增长的全球需求持悲观态度。环境分析师指出，锂矿开采消耗大量的能源和水，一开始就削弱了向可再生能源转型所获得的环境效益。锂的提取工艺有时产生有毒的化学物质，泄漏到当地水源中。

原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

Despite some new discoveries of lithium reserves, the finite supply of this material, the over-reliance on just a handful of mines around the world and its environmental impact have driven the search for alternative battery materials.

尽管发现了新的锂矿资源，但这种材料的有限供应，对全球少数几座锂矿的过度依赖，以及造成的环境影响促使人们寻找电池替代材料。

This is where Stefaniuk and his concrete come in. He and his colleagues at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have found a way of creating an energy storage device known as a supercapacitor from three basic, cheap materials – water, cement and a soot-like substance called carbon black.

这正是斯泰法乌克及其混凝土派上用场的地方。他和麻省理工学院的同事们研究出一种方法，利用三种便宜的基础材料——水、水泥、名为碳黑的烟灰状物质，制造出一种名为超级电容器的储能装置。

Supercapacitors are highly efficient at storing energy but differ from batteries in some important ways. They can charge much more quickly than a lithium ion battery and don't suffer from the same levels of degradation in performance. But supercapacitors also release the power they store rapidly, making them less useful in devices such as mobile phones, laptops or electric cars where a steady supply of energy is needed over an extended period of time.

超级电容器的储能效率很高，但在一些重要方面与蓄电池不同。超级电容器的充电速度远快于锂电池，并且性能衰减不像锂电池那样严重。不过超级电容器的放电速度也很快，所以它们在手机、笔记本电脑、电动汽车等设备中的用处不大，因为这些设备需要获得长时间和稳定的能量供应。

原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

Yet according to Stefaniuk, carbon-cement supercapacitors could make an important contribution to efforts to decarbonise the global economy. "If it can be scaled up, the technology can help solve an important issue – the storing of renewable energy," he says.

但斯泰法尼乌克表示，碳-水泥超级电容器可以为全球经济的脱碳事业做出重要贡献。他说：“如果能够扩大规模，这项技术有助于解决一大难题——储存可再生能源”。

He and his fellow researchers at MIT and Harvard University's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, envisage several applications for their supercapacitors.

他与麻省理工学院、哈佛大学怀斯生物启发工程研究所的同事研究员们，设想了他们的超级电容器的多种用途。

One might be to create roads that store solar energy and then release it to recharge electric cars wirelessly as they drive along a road. The rapid release of energy from the carbon-cement supercapacitor would allow vehicles to get a rapid boost to their batteries. Another would be as energy-storing foundations of houses – "to have walls, or foundations, or columns, that are active not only in supporting a structure, but also in that energy is stored inside them", says Stefaniuk.

一种用途是建造能够储存太阳能的公路，通过释放太阳能为沿途行驶的车辆进行无线充电。碳-水泥超级电容器的快速放电可以使车辆的蓄电池快速充电。另一种用途是作为房屋的储能基础——“墙体、地基、柱子不仅起到支撑房屋的作用，还能将能量储存在里面”，斯泰法尼乌克说道。

But it is still early days. For now, the concrete supercapacitor can store a little under 300 watt-hours per cubic metre – enough to power a 10-watt LED lightbulb for 30 hours.

但现在为时尚早。目前，这种混凝土超级电容器每立方米的储能略低于300瓦时，足以为一只10瓦的LED灯泡供电30小时。

The power output "may seem low compared to conventional batteries, [but] a foundation with 30-40 cubic metres (1,060-1,410 cubic feet) of concrete could be sufficient to meet the daily energy needs of a residential house", says Stefaniuk. "Given the widespread use of concrete globally, this material has the potential to be highly competitive and useful in energy storage."

它的输出功率“可能低于传统蓄电池，但30-40 立方米（1060-1410 立方英尺）的混凝土地基足以满足一户住宅的日常能源需求”，斯泰法尼乌克说道。“考虑到全球广泛使用混凝土，这种材料在储能方面可能具有很高的竞争力和实用价值”。

Stefaniuk and his colleagues at MIT initially proved the concept by creating cent-sized 1V supercapacitors from the material before connecting together in series to power a 3V LED. They have since scaled this up to produce a 12V supercapacitor. Stefaniuk has also been able to use larger versions of the supercapacitor to power a handheld games console.

斯泰法尼乌克和他在麻省理工学院的同事初步证明了这一概念，他们利用这种材料制造了多个美分硬币大小的1V超级电容器，将它们串联起来为一只3V LED灯泡供电。他们随后提升了性能，制造出12V的超级电容器。斯泰法尼乌克还能够利用更大的超级电容器为掌上游戏机供电。

And the research team are now planning to build larger versions, including one up to 45 cubic metres (1,590 cubic feet) in size that would be able store around 10kWh of energy needed to power to power a house for a day.

目前，研究团队正打算制造更大的超级电容器，包括一个体积达45立方米（约 1590立方英尺）的电容器，能够储存大约10千瓦时的能源，足以为一座房屋供电一天。

The supercapacitor works due to an unusual property of carbon black – it is highly conductive. This means that when carbon black is combined with cement powder and water, it makes for a kind of concrete that is full of networks of conductive material, taking a form that resembles ever-branching, tiny roots.

超级电容器的工作原理是基于碳黑的一个独特特性：高导电性。这意味着当碳黑、水泥粉、水混合时会形成一种混凝土，里面布满了由导电材料构成的网络，其形态类似于不断分叉的微小根系。

原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

Capacitors are formed of two conductive plates with a membrane in between them. In this case, both plates are made of the carbon black cement, which were soaked in an electrolyte salt called potassium chloride.

电容器由两块导电板组成，中间有一层薄膜。超级电容器的两块导电板由碳黑水泥制成，并浸泡在一种名为氯化钾的电解质盐中。

When an electric current was applied to the salt-soaked plates, the positively-charged plates accumulated negatively charged ions from the potassium chloride. And because the membrane prevented charged ions from being exchanged between the plates, the separation of charges created an electric field.

当电解质盐中的导电板被施加电流时，氯化钾中的负离子会聚集到正极电板上，由于薄膜阻止了带电离子在电板之间交换，电荷的分离产生了电场。

As supercapacitors can accumulate large amounts of charge very quickly, it could make the devices useful for storing excess energy produced by intermittent renewable sources such as the wind and solar. This would take the pressure off the grid at times when the wind is not blowing, nor the Sun shining. As Stefaniuk says, "A simple example would be an off-grid house powered by solar panels: using solar energy directly during the day and the energy stored in, for example, the foundations during the night."

由于超级电容器能够快速地积累大量电荷，因此可用于储存风能和太阳能等间歇性可再生能源产生的过剩能量，从而在没有风或阳光的时候缓解电网的压力。正如斯泰法尼乌所言，“举一个简单的例子，由太阳能电池板供电的离网房屋：白天直接使用太阳能，晚上使用储存在地基中的能源”。

Supercapacitors are not perfect. Existing iterations discharge power quickly, and are not ideal for steady output, which would be needed to power a house throughout the day. Stefaniuk says he and his colleagues are working on a solution that would allow their carbon-cement version to be tuned by adjusting the mixture, but they will not disclose the details until they have finalised the tests and published a paper.

超级电容器并不完美。现有设计的放电速度很快，不适合房屋全天供电所需要的稳定输出。斯蒂芬尼乌克表示，他和同事们正在研究一种解决方案，通过调整混合物的配比来优化碳-水泥超级电容器，但他们在完成测试和发表论文之前不会透露细节。

There could be other issues to overcome too – adding more carbon black allows the resulting supercapacitor to store more energy, but it also makes the concrete slightly weaker too. The researchers say any uses that have a structural role to play as well as energy storage would need to find an optimum mix of carbon black.

可能还有其他问题有待于克服——增加炭黑可以使超级电容器储存更多能源，但也会使混凝土变得略微脆弱。研究人员表示，任何兼具结构支撑与储能的用途都需要找到炭黑的最佳配比。

And while carbon-cement supercapacitors could help to reduce our reliance on lithium, they come with their own environmental impact. Cement production is responsible for 5-8% of carbon dioxide emissions from human activity globally, and the carbon-cement needed for the supercapacitors would need to be freshly made rather than retrofitted in existing structures.

虽然碳-水泥超级电容器有助于我们减少对锂的依赖，但它也会对环境造成影响。水泥生产占全球人类活动二氧化碳排放量的5-8% ，超级电容器需要全新生产的碳-水泥，而不是对现有建筑的材料加以改良。

原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

Nevertheless, it seems to be a promising innovation, says Michael Short, who leads the Centre for Sustainable Engineering at Teesside University in the UK. The research "opens many interesting potential avenues around the use of the built environment itself as an energy storage medium", he says. "As the materials are also commonplace and the manufacture relatively straightforward, this gives a great indication that this approach should be investigated further and could potentially be a very useful part of the transition to a cleaner, more sustainable future."

尽管如此，这看起来是一项有前途的创新，英国蒂赛德大学可持续工程中心的负责人迈克尔·肖特说道。这项研究“对于如何利用建成环境作为储能介质开辟了许多有趣的潜在途径”，他说道。“由于这些材料都很常见，制造起来相对简单，这充分表明这种方法值得进一步研究，并且可能在向更清洁、更可持续的未来转型中发挥重要作用”。