thank you Robert , I find it truly amazing sometimes on how efficient they can train people to be so in-efficient.

Robert, Thank you very much for the expertise shown to us in this informative review. Seems the Devil is in the details of MITs announcement. Much about nearly nothing is the take away. A curiosity demonstration by MIT, at best with little real World application upon your learned peer review. Nice work,Sir. Nice work as always. : )

Bravo I like the way you put this into a real review. I really learn a great deal from your videos you are a invaluable resource.

"Now, I am become practicality, the destroyer of dreams"

Well thought out and informative in language all can understand. Thanks Rob

Great break down and analysis; so much for concrete! Thank you :)

Thanks for the video!

Thank you for putting that into prospective.

Thanks for the video! It does remind of Mechanically Stabilized Earth which is used in construction and consists of stacking multiple layers of dirt/sand and basically paper on top of each other to make a strong and stable surface. Practical Engineering's channel has a great video about it.

Robert you are the man I love your videos and I've been working on a project with that blue Chinese hand crank generator using capacitors so the cranking wouldn't be so demanding would love to see what you would come up with. KEEP UP THAT AWESOME WORK

Thank you for sharing brother!😁👍🏼🙏🕊🔥

I think the idea with this was more about using cheap, abundant materials and infrastructure we already use and need in a way to help with the storage issue. My biggest fear with renewables is that we're just moving our damage to the planet to another problem like the pollution from lithium extraction. It may not be a silver bullet but it's encouraging to see there's other ways of looking at what we already use and getting a second use out of them.

Reminds me of the salesman offering farmers a secret recipe to feed livestock on sawdust. The buyers got sent an envelope with the secret recipe, which was 'Mix grain with the sawdust. The more grain the better'.

Thanks for covering this and saving me the time of reading the actual MIT paper to understand that they conflated results. I feel that they were just looking for a benefactor (munny,munny,munny)for actual research and were just hyping the findings to generate unwarranted interest having waded through the initial story.

I remember you talking about something related to supercapacitors where tiny granules effectively work as tiny little capacitors. I think it was about that australian ultracapacitor or ultrabattery or whatever. Perhaps one could generate such granules cheaply enough to act as building materials and then embed them in some conductive matrix that can acually get that charge out. Also because the granules reminded me, a video about making synthetic opal would be cool

Thanks, Robert. I find this quite interesting. Just this morning, I was thinking about energy capture; specifically electrostatic energy. We currently just send electrostatic to earth and don't even bother measuring it as a loss. Well, I think it's a significant loss! I think this would be a really interesting addition to helicopter landing pads at hospitals, as a partial-capture buffer for home lightning abatement systems and a plethora of other places where concrete is already in use anyway.

Perhaps that is a good thing. Many cities could probably stand to have less concrete as it disrupts the replenishment of groundwater and contributes to problems with runoff. It is good that people are still looking for more energy storage options though! Thank you for sharing your knowledge.

Great video as always. Thank you. The thumbnail looks very much like the Berlin Holocaust Memorial though. 😮

I love your sense of humor

Thank you for the clarity sir, I'm still interested in giving it a go for non structural application 🤔

Thunderfoot found a new friend! Thanks for the explain and additional knowledge.

As always, Thank you. What a reality check. Even a concrete highway is not all its cracked up to be.

Love your channel... some good ideas and practical thinking... iv been looking into using ceramic conductors like graphite which makes a great super capacitor... but won't hold the charge long due to it been a non polarised capacitor... to make it hold the charge it needs to be polarised so a second conductive material is needed... I was looking into making my own conductive material from concrete but also diamond and europium are of interest, even calcium is quite conductive but the objective been to have non corrosive conductor's... water and ash makes a good electrolyte with much lower corrosion rate than sodium chloride. Graphite and europium are superconductive which may yield some interesting results

Concrete-free "concrete super capacitors" are great 🤣 This is so funny, thank you, I really needed a good laugh.

makes piezoelectric theories of the pyramids maybe compressed by the possible action of lower chambers acting like a ram pump thumping away pumping water, which would make me think that in the ages when there was so much water erosion on the sphinx, perhaps they could have used them as power sources.

"A good headline" is 100% correct.

Sounds like a real Chicago tile moment.

Nice review. I was thinking of how to solve some of these problems. Conductivity - add conductive filaments. The extra tensile strength gained by added filaments would allow you to increase your carbon-to-concrete ratio. The extra conductivity would allow for a much larger distance between current collectors. Conductive epoxy on the exterior acts as one pole. Conducting rods set into the mix act as the other pole. Set the power control circuitry into the mix while pouring - that is an easy installation. But you would still need thousands of cubic meters to really do anything. Interesting support technology for parking garages and the like...

Well, we know one more thing not to waste our time trying. Thanks Robert

Think I'll just bed super capacitors underneath the foundation, with the wires poking through, to upset everybody

I've been thinking a lot about testing wet cement Ca(OH)2 as a seperator layer and electrolyte in an zinc iodine battery. Something semi crystaline to block dendrites in the cell, and act like flowerpot to isolate the half cells.

How about using the carbon added cement as underfloor heating due to it's resistantance? Perhaps as a 1" thick screed to withstand expansion and contration. It would need expansion joints and a dpc below it to allow expansion movement. But it could work.

It's only the start, so let's give it time

Hi Rob, I was wondering when you will be making video on MIT cement super cap and you didnt disappoint 😊. Thank you for the video. As per the article I read it says a cube of 3.5 meter across holds 10 KW hours of energy. More carbon black will increase the super cap capacity (for non structural setup). I may be wrong but that means a cement +carbon black cap of 1 feet cube will hold atleast 500 watt hours to 750 watt hours may be?. Hope you make one video with the small prototype and test?😊. Thank you once again.

When describing the MIT concrete as "highly conductive," they were no doubt comparing it to non-treated concrete. Since pot is legal in Massachusetts, perhaps they were "highly high." 😆

Rebar connects 😊

What is up, with those new channels of yours? I would had loved an appointment. Even Thunderfood mentions VoT from time to time🤔

Just a start

MIT has been degrading in value as a real research institute for over forty years. The real research is being done in barns and garages around the world.

Thank you for a very interesting review of MIT Concrete Super Capacitors. Agreed, storing Electrical Energy has challenges but I would like to know if storing Thermal Energy in concrete would be a better option.

👍 Excellent breakdown of the inevitable! 😁

Thanks for 'Translating' that into something we can understand. In the old days we would have called that concrete super capacitor a 'Bin job', good idea though.

I think you nailed it Rob. Sure, the active ingredients in cement have their place in energy storage or conversion - I've read calcium sulfate can make a good permeable membrane/separator - but the idea of your house footings being used as a capacitor or battery is ludicrous. Using them as gravity batteries or thermal storage on the other hand, well, that's a whole different kettle of fish.

Bravo! 👏👏😊

Congrats! Made my face hurt from smiling.

If they need to stay wet and salty, perhaps you could chuck them into the ocean.

In an article I saw about this there was reference made to concrete roads constructed or under construction in Holland that will be able to charge vehicles using them. What is the science story behind this story?

Cool! I was just thinking about the concrete battery this morning

Sounds insane for them to publish that kind of information as potential lol

Pick it up n drop it rob... Energy is made to seem difficult for a reason. Keep making your art

On the prairies in Canada, concrete foundations need to be used for basements (freezes deep) so may work but ....

They used to make them from red brick back before the induced amnecia

Thanks for the video, did you use the Berlin Holocaust memorial as your thumbnail?!

Hahahahah you're hilarious!! I caught your "come down on you like a ton of bricks" joke ('cuz 1000 kilos of concrete is literally a "tonne of bricks") 🤣🤣

Could we make it easier for the lifting of the weight with water (Archimedes style stuff) and then drop it and use the energy generated for whatever ? Could this concrete tech be used on our buildings and houses to save up ?

At first, I thought that this was the same principle as graphene batteries I heard about ages ago, only this seems silly and complicated AF 😅 Cheers for this bizarre bit of news fella.

Thanks for the video! I was just about to make one.. you save me a lot of time, money, and disappointment.

Yes - though doesn't the fact that concrete hydration self-organises the carbon into a fractal network make for the principle to be useful somewhere? e.g. at what minimum % concrete is there a maximum network? What if that is enhanced with graphene? There are other materials that set like concrete - e.g. plagioclase (granite) with extreme alkalai (Na/K.OH) + silica (sodium silicate), and other additives that might be used such as vermiculite, or organic material (such as mares tail/Equisetum) that would dissolve in the alkalai to create a secondary tubular network (which then makes the concrete act as a secondary diffusion matrix in a more permeable flow network - as can be found in fractured aquifers). Which then potentially makes it more like a flow battery . The general idea can be pushed in some quite interesting directions, which could be worthwhile if it has the same longevity as e.g. an Edison battery, and it's relatively inert and safe. Could we just shrink-wrap interlocking blocks to of this to make a whole building?

I recently seen a video about brick batteries, I think it was by Matt Farrell. Could you enlighten us a bit mire about these?

how about putting graphene in the concrete and the vibrating it at a pre calculated frequency to organise the graphene. ?

And they say that humour is dead ;o) One point though ..... the values! If you were making a "Supercapacitor" to say store hydroelectric output from a dam the measurement against weight becomes largely irrelevant. Similarly when you look at batteries for grid stabilisation .... the weight does not matter! What becomes important is the actual energy stored! Obviously if you are in a mobile situation it Does matter a great deal abut the power to weight ratio! Eather way I think you are bob on with both construction costs and practicalities for the "Concrete Cat"!

Great title

Over unity generator: 600v wind turbine generator motor 115v drive motor probably 1hp 200 amp rectifier 1000 watt inverter Ryobi SDS hammer drill as a starter motor x2 Gears 1 rubber belt Cardboard box to act as a spacer x2 zip ties Problem: Inverter always heats up and starts smoking Probably 600v is too much Possible Solutions: Get an MPPT wind turbine charge controller 12v car battery Then hookup to an inverter

In the world of academia the basic rule is publish or die (in other words, publish or find your funding reduced next year). As a result there are a lot of scientific papers published, with a catchy title and interesting synopsis, which when properly read, turn out to be less useful than the paper they were printed on (not that much ever makes it onto paper these days) was before it was covered in all that ink. And indeed if the right kind of ink was used, and the right patterns drawn with it you could probably make a better super capacitor using that paper than you could get with the odd ton of concrete super capacitor, but it's something new, and as long as the maths is correct, that's all you need to get it published.

That breakdown of their released statement was pure comedy gold, absolutely hilarious: “According to MIT’s released statement- A concrete super capacitor will have a capacity proportional to the carbon:cement ratio. As Carbon goes up or Cement goes down its capacity increases … 🧐 So what you’re actually saying is the best Concrete Super Capacitor is actually a capacitor with no cement in it?” GENIUS MIT IS A FREAKING POWERHOUSE OF THE OBVIOUS 😂 How about you use some of those research funds and build me super capacitive concrete highway for all those shiny new Tesla’s and EV’s roaming about … Say what? Your concrete won’t work like that?!! Then how about you do something useful and pour all your super concrete into filling POTHOLES, At least then you’ll save tires from an early death, traffic jams with their wasted gas consumption and massive quantities of lost productivity (This sounds like a much better solution for helping the energy crises🫡)

Well... the idea is nice. imagine if you would be able to build a home's entire energy storage requirement for off-grid living into the foundation? That'd be pretty cool... I am more interested in vibrational energy though... piezoelectrics... for passive energy generation, and I've seen some interesting analysis of the Great Pyramids, discussing their structure and stone selection, in that they have outstanding piezoelectric effects. Limestone on top of granite, no mortar between blocks... cutting them according to their resonance, and then using the motion of water flowing across stone below it from the Nile to generate power, which is stored in the blocks of the pyramid itself. Now, I have no idea if any of that is actually possible or if that's how the pyramids were meant to function, but the idea of using stone and the movement of water to generate power is very interesting.

I wonder if you couldn't just add graphene in solution to the mix? Might increase the conductivity and use aircrete instead of concrete... the porosity allows for the electrolyte to saturate the structure easier than regular concrete.? I saw this article as well and have been thinking of possible ways to improve it and make it more of a diy thing.

Energy for 1 m cubed concrete at 1 m height: mgh = 2400x9.8x1 = 23.5k joules

Makes heat as, if it sets. Dry out

The only application I imagine is to use in foundations but then how will that last over time? And would it be safe to walk on???

Please don't quote me but I just heard Nobel Prize Committee has awarded MIT a crate of Dynamite to celebrate their achievement.

Good fer a giggle 😂

You are correct, seems this is misleading. I read the article and it is cool on the mechanism of storage. But I agree with you, isn't it curious that they do not give normalized power reference.

Why not combine charging a sliced concrete supercapacitor with raising it and dropping it in a gravity battery?

Knowing your general disposition toward hypothetical concepts, in that if something has any feasibility whatsoever, we should explore the practicality thoroughly, I think that any reasonable person can rest absolutely assured in the unfeasibility of anything that you essentially classify as such.

Concrete Supercapacitor is a primitive version of the ones near the pyramids in Egypt. They used black granite and it also has a nuclear property to that material so I have heard. How it worked, well, no one knows. They still think the pyramids were build to toss a body into it, no body has been found, likely never will be and also they think it was built by moving blocks which it wasn't. It was poured as it was Egyptian concrete that has over the thousands of years, been breaking down. There is also basalt around the pyramid and could be under it as it acts like insulator. However, you will make more power by dropping a concrete block than it's ability to hold energy; that I agree on. It offers more energy in kinetic by dropping it than it's ability to hold it. It's really a poor media for supercapacitors. And bulky as well.

Hey you should build a concrete super capacitor using concrete canvas

Robert, do you have the link to the original strange capacitor video?

Wouldn't you have to replace the concrete if it's like a battery? Also, what happens to the battery when it absorbs water? Just imagine the static shock you'll receive when you rub your feet back and forth.

There was nothing wrong with the experiment or publishing the paper. It helps getting people thinking in a different direction. Maybe some other materials, running wires through the floor like in heated floors etc. It is a thought and an experiment.

So buildings in a city could actually store a lot of energy. Sidewalks, roads and such. It's not about how little it stores. It matters for a dual purpose.

Could those massive mounds called pyramids by some hold the key to superconductivity technology?

In summary, I think the giant Serapeum sarcophagi were used to generate electric charges with pressure built inside by CO2 gas. The pressure put on the quartz crystals created electric charges on the surface of the sarcophagi. Those charges were then dispersed from underground toward the ground surface. The released charges would have ionized the air above Saqqara, causing the air to glow.

Seems like it might be well integrated into the printed houses cement tech. It would be really interesting to use the house itself as energy storage.

He laughed hard after he thought about saying what they said & how stupid they sounded stating such nonsense. I Loved this! Particularly thee' subtle sarcasm.. Thank You!

could this change the potential difference of the building and attract lightning strikes or galvanic reactions in the rebar ?

I did see some programs about 3D printing buildings for Mars in layers. Might not be the winner of any energy density prize, but could do a small top-up. For keeping it hydrated, you could wrap it in something resistant to the Martian atmosphere and use a small pump to circulate it within that layer (covering the Turkey for self-basting). It's definitely a good Curiosity piece for Roving the mindscape though... 😏

But stack a bunch of these blocks up in a pyramid shape and hook them together boom power plant.

Thanks for the hard maths. Misleading article indeed. This seems like a greenwashing campaign for the continuation of concrete production without slowing down. "Carbon credit" b.s. Thanks for sharing Rob! 👍

I keep running into the misconception that batteries " store" electricity. Batteries generate electrical energy. Acid dissolving lead creates current. Charging just clears oxide from the plates so the acid can reach fresh lead and make more electricity.

Have you seen,"undecided with matt farrel"

A more logical approach would be to make the battery or capacitor in the form of wallpaper and apply it to the entire house.

If they could make this work in high way foundations linked to fast charge stations along the road the sum of all might be worth it.

While this is currently not exactly practical it is exciting to see that this is just an engineering problem and perhaps it will become something practical one day

Add 3d printing a house

People will come down like a ton of bricks... 🤣🤣🤣 Very punny.

I have something similar... a 10w 0.01Ohm resistor encased in cement lol

Also not calculated: the cost in carbon or pennies of the concrete. I'd prefer your magnesium oxide/chloride ceramo-plastic. Good video! Thanks.

Not to mention possible self-discharge issues. Ever notice how quickly a lead-acid battery can discharge if set on concrete?

Do it with tarmac, roads sorted😮