Industrial Hemp has a variety of uses. It can be used to make hempcrete, insulation and other building materials, it can be turned into biofuels, and it can be used to make paper without the need to cut down trees and more. It is also renewable because it grows fast enough to be replaced quickly instead of the generations it takes to regrow a forest. While when some think of hemp, they think of marijuana, industrial hemp doesn’t contain THC so it doesn’t get you high, but it does have all these uses and more. In fact, it may be a promising new supercapacitor on par with graphene at a fraction of cost.
After industrial hemp is processed for whatever material or product it is being used for, the stalks of the plant are leftover as waste, and that is where Professor David Mitlin has discovered a possible use as a supercapacitor for batteries. By heating the leftover material to cook away most of the fiber, a carbon cellulose layer is left behind. His research indicates that this layer of material can then work almost identical to graphene, at least as far as its supercapacitor abilities is concerned, which would make it an ideal component for batteries but at a fraction of the cost of graphene. If it pans out, we could have yet another amazing use for hemp that would help take our current battery technology to the next level.
No comments:
Post a Comment