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Oja: The power of carbon fibre batteries

Carbon fibre is ubiquitous in modern conveyance manufacture. Bicycle frames, cars, and airplanes all benefit from the remarkable properties this material possesses. These specific properties give it superior advantages over the normal materials generally used in conventional production. Carbon fibres have a high stiffness property, a very high tensile strength, low weight, are chemical and high temperature resistance, and have low thermal expansion.
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Carbon fibre is ubiquitous in modern conveyance manufacture. Bicycle frames, cars, and airplanes all benefit from the remarkable properties this material possesses. These specific properties give it superior advantages over the normal materials generally used in conventional production. Carbon fibres have a high stiffness property, a very high tensile strength, low weight, are chemical and high temperature resistance, and have low thermal expansion.

Contrary to what one would conclude from its more recent rise in the rhetoric of the media, carbon fibres have been around for quite some time. Invented in 1860 by Joseph Swan, an English physicist and chemist, carbon fibre was initially used as a filament in incandescent light bulbs. Since that time researchers and scientists around the world have developed a myriad of techniques for producing this material for numerous diverse purposes.

In 1968 Rolls Royce developed a jet engine that had carbon fibre compressor blades, while the Japanese invested in developing polyacrylonitrile (PAN) based carbon fibre materials. Since that time it has become a billion dollar industry with the largest demand coming from the aircraft, aerospace, automotive and alternate energy wind turbines. It is the automotive industry’s use of this material that has inspired researchers in Sweden.

Scientists at Chalmers University of Technology, in Gothenburg, have been investigating the electrode potential of carbon fiber in experimental batteries and the use of carbon fibre panels in vehicle construction, and marrying the two properties to produce a car body that would also serve as a battery. The beauty of their premise pertains to the need for light weight, high capacity batteries which would extend the range of electric vehicles (EV’s) while reducing the massive amounts of weight current battery technologies are burdened with.

Leif Asp, Professor at the division of Material and Computational Mechanics, Chalmers University and his team have been looking at the microstructures of the carbon fibre materials that provide the stiffness in vehicle applications and the carbon fibre materials used in energy storage which have a softer physical characteristic. What they have found is the potential for a kind of hybrid composite, which retains the structural stiffness so necessary for holding body shape and strength, and at the same time is able to store electrical energy.

The ramifications of this multifunctional material are enormous. With Sweden’s commitment to a move to electrical vehicles and aircraft, the carbon fibre composite would be a boon to manufacturers involved in those industries. Electric vehicles, as well as electric aircraft, both of which are becoming more common in mainstream rhetoric, and utilization, will benefit exponentially with the commercialization of this research.

The world is striving to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, daily the media informs us of the environmental complications petroleum use causes. Deny it if you will, but the worlds brightest minds are continually addressing the very issues which will move us forward in an ever increasing effort to transport us away from conventional hydrocarbon consumption. They are in the ongoing fight for environmental stability and preservation.