Scientists say that cigarette filters could be used as a high performance battery to power your computer
Irritating litter…or high performance battery?
(Pic: arbyreed/Flickr)
By Sophie Yeo
It’s rare that smoking receives some good press, but South Korean scientists say they have found an unlikely benefit to cigarettes: used butts can be converted into powerful batteries for storing renewable energy.
According to a paper published in the journal Nanotechnology, cigarette filters can be transformed into a high-performing carbon-based material that is perfectly suited to storing energy.
The difficulty of storage is one of the drawbacks of renewable energy, since, unlike fossil fuels, wind and solar only generate electricity intermittently.
Recycling old cigarette butts has the dual advantage of offering a new solution to the energy storage issue, while recycling the filters that otherwise end up polluting the environment.
“Our study has shown that used-cigarette filters can be transformed into a high-performing carbon-based material using a simple one step process, which simultaneously offers a green solution to meeting the energy demands of society,” said Professor Jongheop Yi, from Seoul National University, and co-author of the study.
“Numerous countries are developing strict regulations to avoid the trillions of toxic and non-biodegradable used-cigarette filters that are disposed of into the environment each year—our method is just one way of achieving this.”
Waste headache
Around 5.6 trillion used cigarettes are dumped into the environment each year, and are the most common item found in beach clean-ups. They contain cancer-causing chemicals, pesticides and nicotine.
Once burned, these cigarettes turn into a material containing a number of tiny pores, which gives it the high surface area that makes it capable of storing large amounts of energy.
This can be used to coat the electrodes of supercapacitors – electrochemical components used to store large amounts of electrical energy – creating a super-efficient battery that could be integrated into computers, mobile phones and electric vehicles.
The butt-based approach could also help to bring down production costs.
After testing the idea, scientists found that the material stored more electrical energy than commercially available alternatives.
Solar spray
Scientists at Sheffield have made another leap forward in the realms of renewable energy with the development of spray-on, highly efficient solar cells.
The researchers have discovered a way to spray perovskite, a promising new solar technology that combines high efficiency with low production costs.
Spray painting this material is a new development that means very little is wasted, and can be scaled up to high volume manufacturing, like spraying paint onto a car.
“There is a lot of excitement around perovskite based photovoltaics,” said lead researcher Professor David Lidzey.
“Perovskite cells now have efficiencies of up to 19 per cent. This is not so far behind that of silicon at 25 per cent – the material that dominates the world-wide solar market.”