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====Home-Made Supercapacitors from Dead PC Batteries==== | ====Home-Made Supercapacitors from Dead PC Batteries==== | ||
- | This project was developed in collaboration | + | This page reports the wonderful citizen science R&D workshop we had at FoAM with my dear friend |
+ | |||
+ | During three day, we tried to upcycle dead PC batteries into working supercapacitors, | ||
+ | |||
+ | 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. We also ended up having no functional supercapacitor made at the end of our four-days workshop, 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: | ||
+ | |||
+ | * A insulating material (plastic film) layer from a dead Toshiba battery - given away by [[http:// | ||
+ | * 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, | ||
+ | |||
+ | ===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. | ||
====Information Sources==== | ====Information Sources==== |