In theory, batteries and capacitors are fairly simple. One stores energy chemically and the other stores energy in an electric field. In practice though, building an energy storage device that has a practical amount of energy density is delicate, complex work. But if you have access to a few chemical compounds it’s actually not too difficult to produce useful batteries and electrolytic capacitors with the use of ionic liquids.
Ionic liquids are conductive liquids with a few other important qualities. Almost all of the ones shown can be built with relatively common compounds, and most of the products have advantageous physical qualities, making them stable and relatively safe for use. With some equipment found in a chemistry lab it’s possible to produce a wide variety of these liquids without too much hassle (although one method outlined uses an inert gas chamber), and from there batteries and capacitors can be built by allowing the ionic liquids to be absorbed into the device.
The video below shows the production of several of these devices and then illustrates their effects by running a small LED light. While they’re probably not going to be used to create DIY electric cars anytime soon, the production and improvement of atypical energy storage devices will be the key to a large part of the energy needs of society now and into the future, especially aluminum batteries like these.
In a world where you can make a battery out of a potato and two coins…
Or if you’re “The Professor”… some coconuts and some metal strips… so you can keep the radio charged up for the other castaways on the island
“In theory, batteries and capacitors are fairly simple. One stores energy chemically and the other stores energy in an electric field.”
And then there’s inductors.
.. storing energy in a magnetic field, and let us not forget biodiesel, storing energy in a soybean field.
Zing!
Ionic liquids are such an amazing class of chemicals. You can tune them to have just about any property you want. I did research into building CO2 scrubbers with one. Because this particular liquid didn’t have a vapor pressure, we could just put it through a pressure/temperature swing to drive off the CO2 without losing any of our IL.
What particular liquid?
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Is there an instructibles page for this?