Graphene Gel: The Future of Energy Storage?
For individuals living in 21st century society, most of our biggest concerns center around energy. With a population that now exceeds 7 billion people, our need for energy keeps growing. Today, our need is even more desperate, as many of the conventional ways of obtaining the natural resources that are needed for energy production lead to various environmental issues. Ultimately, how to solve our energy crisis is a question that plagues scientists, corporations, and, well, everyone.
A topic that goes hand in hand with the production of energy is the storage of energy; a budding scientific field. Recent research reveals that a combination of two inexpensive and easily attainable substances could revolutionize the way we store energy by giving us a system that not only keeps a charge twice as long as all other carbon based technologies, but can be fully recharged in seconds. Those two substances? Graphite and water. Say what?
Before we continue, graphite is an allotrope of carbon and is most commonly used in pencils. Thankfully, due to its stability, it can be used in thermochemistry as the standard state for defining the heat of formation of carbon compounds. Not only is it the most stable form of carbon, but it can also be used as an electrical conductor, which has led to the research that has now given us Graphene; what has been dubbed, by some, as a miracle material.
but, it's not without its problems, which you can read about here: http://
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