Hemp is an extremely versatile crop. While it is used for industrial purposes, food, clothing, and paper, yet new research suggests that hemp batteries are even more powerful than graphene and lithium.
The experiment was conducted by Robert Murray Smith and was then discussed on his relatively popular YouTube channel. Smith started by observing a Volts by Amps curve of both the hemp and lithium batteries. Shockingly, the power underneath the hemp cell was a value of 31 while that of the lithium cell had a value of only 4.
Smith does not claim to have proven anything. Instead, he says the results of the experiment merely show the performance of the hemp cell is “significantly better” than the lithium cell.
Watch the video below:
This discovery isn’t new. In 2014, researchers in the United States found that waste fibers — “shiv” — from hemp crops can be transformed into “ultrafast” supercapacitors which are “better than graphene.”Graphene is a unique synthetic carbon material lighter than foil, as well as bulletproof. The primary limit to using it is the feasibility. Luckily, hemp costs one-thousandth of the price of graphene.
In the 2014 experiment, the group, led by Dr. David Mitlin of Clarkson University, New York, “cooked” leftover bast fiber — the inner bark of the plant which typically ends up in landfills — into carbon nanosheets. The process is called hydrothermal synthesis.
Then the fibers were recycled into supercapacitors, or energy storage devices that have changed the way electronics are powered.
According to The Mind Unleashed, conventional batteries store large reservoirs of energy and drip-feed. On the other hand, supercapacitors rapidly discharge their whole load. Therefore, the latter is ideal in machines that require sharp bursts of power.
The Texas-based electric motorcycle company Alternet had announced in 2018 that it'd be joining forces with Mitlin to power motorbikes for its ReVolt Electric Motorbikes subsidiary.
Hemp is a valuable and versatile resource. As the crop is decriminalized, maybe other companies will follow suit and help transition our planet to run on sustainable energy.
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