Creating eco-friendly electric batteries: this is the challenge set by researchers at the University of Maryland (United States).
They succeeded in making a battery that is much more easily biodegradable than the lithium-ion one.
For this, the scientists used… shells of crabs and lobsters, reports the
Guardian
relayed by
Le Point
.
They have indeed succeeded in creating an electrolyte (substance capable of circulating electricity) thanks to chitin, which is found in the walls of mushrooms or the exoskeletons of crustaceans.
Biodegradable and durable
This last source of chitin can be abundant if you dig into seafood waste. Some six to eight million tons of marine waste are produced each year, according to a 2015 study relayed by
Cnet
.
The battery created with chitin also largely degraded in just five months.
After this time, only a residue of zinc remained, a metal that can already be easily recycled.
In terms of performance, the battery gave complete satisfaction: it retained its efficiency at 99.37% after a thousand recharge cycles, far more than many existing (and polluting) batteries.
The researchers also noticed that the components used had made the battery non-flammable – a considerable improvement considering the number of accidents in the event of overheating.
"In the future, I hope that all the components of the batteries will be biodegradable", declared, optimistically, one of the researchers at the origin of the discovery.
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