{"id":19230,"date":"2016-02-19T14:40:34","date_gmt":"2016-02-19T19:40:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress-367309-1145705.cloudwaysapps.com\/?p=19230"},"modified":"2016-02-19T15:48:54","modified_gmt":"2016-02-19T20:48:54","slug":"running-car-apple-peels-sodium-ion-battery-harness-food-waste","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/running-car-apple-peels-sodium-ion-battery-harness-food-waste\/","title":{"rendered":"Running Your Car On Apple Peels? The Sodium-Ion Battery That Harnesses Food Waste"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"apple<\/a><\/p>\n

The notion of turning food waste into energy<\/a> isn’t new to us here at sustainablog… but it almost always involves the production of biogas through anaerobic digestion. Tina Casey at sister site Cleantechnica<\/em> has come across a different approach to harnessing the waste from food processing<\/a>: harnessing the electrochemical properties of apple peels for a sodium-ion battery.<\/p>\n

Take a look at Tina’s post – which we’ve republished in full – and then let us know what you think of this development…<\/p>\n

New Apple Peel Battery Could Compete With Tesla’s Lithium-Ion Batteries<\/h3>\n

By Tina Casey<\/strong><\/p>\n

Researchers at Germany’s Karlsruhe Institute of Technology have come up with an energy storage solution that could make good use of waste from the country’s apple processing industry. They have found that leftover apple waste has “excellent” electrochemical properties for use in sodium-ion batteries, when reduced to a carbon material.<\/p>\n

Sodium-ion technology is beginning to emerge as an alternative to the lithium-ion batteries used by Tesla and many other EV manufacturers as well as stationary energy storage companies (that would include Tesla, too) so let’s take a look under the hood and see what’s cooking.<\/p>\n

\"energy<\/a><\/p>\n

From Apples To Energy Storage<\/h3>\n

You can find the new energy storage study in the journal Advanced Energy Materials<\/a><\/em> under the title “Layered Na-Ion Cathodes with Outstanding Performance Resulting from the Synergetic Effect of Mixed P- and O-type Phases.”<\/p>\n

For those of you on the go, the Karlsruhe press material breaks it down in plain language, leading off with, “A carbon-based active material produced from apple leftovers and a material of layered oxides might help reduce the costs of future energy storage systems<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

If that sounds a little off the rails, consider that here in the US, researchers have found that bee pollen and pollen from cattails<\/a> can also yield excellent results. Here’s the rundown from Karlsruhe:<\/p>\n

For the negative electrode, a carbon-based material was developed, which can be produced from the leftovers of apples and possesses excellent electrochemical properties. So far, more than 1000 charge and discharge cycles of high cyclic stability and high capacity have been demonstrated.<\/em><\/p>\n

The research team also points out that the sodium oxides used on the positive electrode are non-hazardous, abundant, and inexpensive. The lab results indicate that the energy storage properties — capacity, voltage, and stability — are the same as that of a lithium-ion battery with cobalt.<\/p>\n