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--- michka:research:supercapacitors [2014-07-01 13:59] – michka
+++ michka:research:supercapacitors [2014-07-01 14:11] – michka
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 ====Home-Made Supercapacitors from Dead PC Batteries====
-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 participatory upcycling workshops.
+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. We also ended up having no functional supercapacitor made at the end of our four-days workshop, but  we still obtained some interesting results.
+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===
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 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://hackerspace.be/|Hackerspace Brussels]], covered with graphene, a black powdery (or sometimes flaky) material
+   * 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
@@ Line 62: / Line 64: @@
 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.
+===Other dried designs===
+Except for our sandwich designs, we also had some sushi designs - which are nothing else than wrapped sandwiches. We also made some waffle designs, which are square sushis - not cylindrical.
+We tried alsmost every possible combination out of the available materials from our dead batteries. Here are a few examples:
+   * Copper-insulating (Toshiba)-copper
+   * Copper-graphene (Toshiba)-insulating (Toshiba)-graphene (Toshiba)-copper
+   * Copper-insulating (Toshiba)-lithium (MAC)
+   * Copper-graphene-insulating (MAC)-copper
+   * Copper-graphene-insulating (Toshiba)-copper
+   * Graphene (Toshiba)-insulating-lithium (Toshiba)
+   * ... and so on ...
+Most of the designs did not charge nor held voltage. Some held voltage poorly. In short, we described you in details the best design (by far) up on this page.
+We however encourage you to try anything, as it seems that every battery type is different, and even avery battery, as the damage they overcome makes each of them quite singular in behavior.
 ====Information Sources====