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-====Supercapacitors Made of Dead Pc Batteries====
+====Home-Made Supercapacitors from Dead PC Batteries====
-This project was developed in collaboration with [[http://www.zprod.org|Paul Granjon]].
+This page reports the wonderful citizen science R&D workshop we had at FoAM with my dear friend [[http://www.zprod.org|Paul Granjon]], a world-reknown artist specialized in human-machine co-evolution and [[http://vimeo.com/30187028|participatory upcycling workshops]].
+During three day, we tried to upcycle dead PC batteries into working supercapacitors, originally to feed a self-watering system on [[michka/know-hows/bioproductive_balcony|FoAM's bioproductive balcony]].
+We ended up being deeply involved with our upcycled supercapacitors manufacturing research and did not proceed to build the rest of the self-watering system.
+During the workshop, our interest slided from **trying to reproduce a design from [[http://www.youtube.com/user/RobertMurraySmith|Robert Murray-Smith]] based on upcycled batteries and cuttlefish bone graphene** to **make a 100% upcycled supercapacitors out of dead PC batteries**.
+We ended the workshop having no functional supercapacitor, but  we still obtained some interesting results.
+===Best design===
+Our best design was very simple. It was a sandwich design, which means that it was just a stack of dry material layers we taped all together. It contained three layers:
+   * An insulating material (plastic film) layer from a dead Toshiba battery - given away by [[http://hackerspace.be/|Hackerspace Brussels]], covered with graphene, a black powdery (or sometimes flaky) material
+   * A cleaned up insulating material layer from the same dead Toshiba battery
+   * A copper layer from the same dead Toshiba battery
+This design had the following characteristics:
+   * It charged instantaneously - no change on current value was visible on the power source when charging.
+   * It displayed a quite stable 0.5 V after charging. FIY, our design had a surface area of approximately 20x5 cm2.
+   * When we put four in series, we could bleakly light up a small red LED, showing that there was some charge but not that much.
+These characteristics are not outstanding, but still interesting for a 100 % upcycled design.
+===How to build the best design ?===
+==Step 1 - Find at least one dead computer battery==
+We ended up opening three of them:
+   * One Apple Macbook Pro 15' battery
+   * One Toshiba battery
+   * Another Toshiba battery, made of Panasonic round batteries
+To open them, use a hacksaw and/or a cutter, and make sure that you are not damaging the internal material. All three designs where made of more or less round rolls of:
+   * A lithium layer
+   * An insulating material layer
+   * A copper layer
+   * Intercalated layers of graphene between each couple of these three.
+The Toshiba-non-Panasonic battery ended up being the easiest to manipulate. Graphene was easy to clean up from copper & insulating layers, whereas the Apple battery graphene was a nightmare to remove. Robert Murray Smith advises to let it dry for as long as possible before trying to remove it. Ease of manipulation varies with battery design & the kind of damage it overcame, which explains why you may want to start with several dead batteries to go through the process with the easiest to manipulate.
+This step of the process is, in my opinion, the most hazardous. If the battery is still a little bit charged, you will end up with heat and sparks. Gloves could be useful. Even when it is not, you will have a strange smell coming out: this is the electrolyte evaporating. As we do not really know what the electrolyte is made of, it may be smart to wear a mask.
+==Step 2 - Clean up the graphene from the copper layers & some insulating layers==
+Scrap with your nails or whatever soft tools which will not make holes in the plastic or copper layer.
+==Step 3 - Assemble the layers==
+   * Put the layer of insulating material coated with graphene at the bottom, with the graphene-coated side facing you.
+   * Tape a layer of cleaned-up insulating material on top of this one.
+   * Tape a layer of cleaned-up copper on top of the second one, making sure to avoid any copper to graphene contact.
+==Step 4 - Measure the initial voltage==
+Measure the voltage between the copper layer and the graphene layer. There was an initial voltage every time we assembled such a sandwich. This step allows you to see what the polarity of the design is and charge it adequately. Our negative pole was the graphene layer.
+==Step 5 - Charge it==
+Put the + of the power source on your + pole, and - on -. Check the current flow on your power source screen. We used small voltage to charge, from 1 V to 5 V. Start small.
+==Step 6 - Measure the charge==
+Once the current is back to 0 A and stable, measure the voltage between the copper layer and the graphene layer.
+==Step 7 - Test it==
+You can tape several of these and connect them in series by soldering contacts from one to another. For graphene contacts, we used a small bit of copper that we taped and tried to maintain with pressure against graphene.
+Once you reach a sufficiently interesting voltage, try to connect a LED and see what happens.
+====Information Sources====
+   * [[https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertMurraySmith|Robert Murray Smith's Youtube Channel]]
+   * [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWHpc53759c|neatpete45 video of home-made supercapacitor]]
+   * Robert Murray Smith - Supercapacitor 101 - A home Inventor's Handbook (ebook)