Billions of glassful bottles end up in landfill sites each year . It also happens that barrage fire are notoriously remand behind other battleground of technology .
So , putting two and two together , scientists at University of California , Riverside , are turning chicken feed bottle into in high spirits - storage batteries to use in galvanic vehicles , smartphones , and other electronic equipment . Their study was lately published in the Nature journalScientific Reports .
“ We start with a thriftlessness Cartesian product that was steer for the landfill and created batteries that stored more energy , charge faster , and were more unchanging than commercial coin cell batteries , " conduct writer Changling Li , a graduate educatee in material science and engineering , said in astatement . “Hence , we have very bright candidates for next - contemporaries lithium - ion battery . "
The researchers utilized the silicon dioxide found in waste glass bottle to provide silicon nanoparticles for use in the lithium - ion batteries . This was used to make the anodes of the barrage , thenegative electrode where electrons fall out towards the residue of the circuit .
Waste glass bottles are turned into nanosilicon anode using a low - price chemical process . University of California , Riverside
To produce it , they simply lead off by grinding the bottleful into a sugary powder . It then got a little more complicated by using magnesiothermic diminution to transform the silicon dioxide into nanostructured silicon . They finished off by coating the nanoparticles with carbon to enhance their vigour - storing properties .
Just one glass bottle provides enough nanosilicon to do this for anodes of century of coin cell barrage fire or up to five pouch cell bombardment . proficient of all , they store almost four meter more DOE than schematic graphite anode .
The university behind the labor has also filed a patent app for their inventions . So , who knows , perhaps in the nigh futurity your smartphone battery could be utilizing the power of crushed - up glass nursing bottle , all while lasting a few hours longer .
