- Scientists have found that brewery waste can produce materials for energy storage systems
- The advantage is that we find spent grains almost everywhere and in a fairly large quantity.
- Energy storage systems are becoming essential, especially with the rise of wind and solar power.
What if consuming beer contributed (very) indirectly to saving the climate? In any case, scientists from the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena in Germany, accompanied by Spanish researchers, have just made a very promising advance by using waste from a local brewery.
An abundant raw material
Concretely, they used spent grains as a bio-source with the idea of producing materials for electrochemical energy storage systems. And according to Techxplore, it was a good surprise, because they were able to produce carbon, which serves as an electrode for batteries, as well as an activated carbon which can act as an electrode for supercapacitors. This guarantees satisfactory efficiency and high energy density.
Using such a material has real advantages. Indeed, as the scientists explain, spent grains are available in large quantities in the European Union. The breweries are also rather well distributed over the territory, thus facilitating access to these raw materials.
Quoted by our colleagues, Andrea Balducci of the University of Jena is optimistic for the future: “We will work on other projects to better understand the benefits and limitations of using this abundant material, so that it can be used more widely in the production of sustainable energy storage. »
The storage puzzle
While renewable energies are becoming more and more important in our energy mixes, the issue of storage is becoming glaring. Indeed, the latter are intermittent, and the preservation of the electricity produced is imperative, otherwise decarbonization efforts could be reduced to nothing.
In this field, initiatives are multiplying in Europe, like the Pillswood project that we told you about recently. This center located in the depths of England will make it possible to conserve up to 196 Mwh of electricity.
This is only a drop in the bucket compared to the needs, because it is estimated that within the European Union, the storage needs are at 200 GW by 2030 and 600 GW by 2050 .
Note that some companies have also smelled the vein, and this is particularly the case of Tesla and its Powerwall. This is a battery that stores the excess energy produced by the solar panels. It backs up the main power grid in case the battery runs out due to prolonged periods of bad weather.
