Scientists at Graz University of Technology in Styria, Austria have figured out a way to replace elements in liquid batteries made from heavy and rare earth metals with vanillin, the ingredient that gives baked foods their aroma.
Liquid batteries could be used to making renewable energy sources like wind and solar a more viable option. Liquid- or flow-batteries, can be made big enough to store sufficient electricity to act as a backup. The problem is that many rely on vanadium, a rare and expensive metal which is also toxic. If vanadium batteries become more common as a way to store electricity, experts worry that prices would rise which makes finding a cheaper, less toxic alternative an important area of research.
In a find to make a more eco-friendly alternative, the team at TU Graz found that toxic and expensive metals could be replaced with vanillin, an ingredient you are more likely to find in the kitchen than in a lab. It is the main ingredient of vanilla extract which gives cakes, biscuits.
“On the one hand, we can buy it in the supermarket, but on the other hand we can also split off lignin with the help of a simple reaction, which in turn occurs in large quantities as waste in paper production,” says a researcher. Turning waste from paper production into vanillin only takes mild, green chemistry using common household chemicals according to the team. This means that the production of the eco-friendly batteries could easily be scaled up without the use of expensive, environmentally damaging metals.
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