Episode 7 – The Battery Outbreak

Loofah Image from Chi Paper This week on LASER, Emily and Cameron discuss batteries built by modified viruses, charge-dependent crystal changes of Lithium/Selenium-Sulfer Batteries, and Microbiological fuel cells built on natural loofah sponges. 1:15 we start on “ Better Batteries Through Biology? ” ( HERE is the full paper) 13:00 the three major metrics for battery performance 15:00 will these battery-building viruses cause the next zombie outbreak? hint: probably not. 20:25 we start on the second story: “(De)Lithiation Mechanism of Li/SeSx (x = 0–7) Batteries Determined by in Situ Synchrotron X-ray Diffraction and X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy ” 27:30 they realized that SeS7 electrodes have the highest charge capacity after 50 cycles, which is a hybrid of the Li-Se and Li-S electrodes. 30:00 the three areas of research that are being worked on to improve battery technologies 3X:XX After a sad attempt at a transition, our third and final story today is based on the paper: “ Nanostructured Macroporous Bioanode Based on Polyaniline-Modified Natural Loofah Sponge for High-Performance Microbial Fuel Cells ” 35:54 correction: the bacteria don’t “Create” electrons, they just take them off of the food when they’re eating, and they don’t need it. 44:37 For these microbial fuel cells they report a power density of 1090 mW/m^2 (or 1.09 Watts/m^2). For comparision a solar panel is about 170 W/m^2, but solar is the highest power density of the renewable energy technologies, vs 0.22W/m^2 for corn ethanol and 1000W/m^2 for fossil fuels, source home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~vsmil/pdf_pubs/oecd.pdf . 47:00 these icrobial fuel cells would not be for high current high power applications, like cars. They would be useful for slowly generating a constant stream of power to be stored in something like a battery. 52:20 we start the signoff for an unusually-short (but targeted length) episode of LASER! Emily picked the bumper music for this week, so there’s: Intro: Open – Crying ( Get Olde ) Beyond Electric Dreams – Bad Religion Electricity – NOFX Outro: Dreams are Maps – The Wild ( Dreams are Maps )

You can listen to Episode 7 – The Battery Outbreak online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Episode 7 – The Battery Outbreak is an episode from LASER: Materials Science Podcast by LASER: Materials Science Podcast.

This episode is 59:34 long.

This episode was published on Dec 18, 2013.

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