By Mirza Rizwan
Brundtland report released in 1987 by the World Commission on Environment and Development, popularly known as ‘Our Common Future’ laid the strong foundation of the long-existing global sustainability concern and introduced the concept of sustainable development and global strategy to achieve them. The kick to such a report and subsequent global strategy across the discipline has been climate change impacting everything from geopolitics to economics to migration.
Green, clean and renewable energy has been construed as the first pressing solution to carry forward the agenda of economic development but not at the cost of climate change. Green energy comes from natural sources, such as the sun, clean energy does not release pollutants and renewable energy is self-replenished. Hydropower, wind power and solar energy are the classic examples of renewable energy but the tapping and storage of such energy have a real cost factor.
Nature Communications in its August 2020 issue reported that the conventional fired bricks or red bricks typically used for the construction and architectural aesthetics for more than 5000 years can be made to work like a capacitor or as an energy storing bricks, just like batteries. The proof-of-concept study shows a brick directly powering a green LED light and the series of 50 bricks would enable powering emergency lighting for five hours. The biggest advantage of the brick wall to serve as a supercapacitor is that it can be recharged hundreds of thousands of times within an hour. This will certainly turn out to be the biggest source of green energy solutions primarily for the retail consumption for the reason being the most economical energy storage and consumption system.
How Red Brick Store Energy To Be A Smart Brick
These fired bricks are commonly found in various red tones and mainly comprised of fused particles of silica, alumina and hematite. This hematite produces state-of-the-art energy storage materials. Further, the bricks have open microstructure or pores filled with acid vapour that dissolves the iron chemical compound or converts it to a reactive kind of iron that creates a chemical synthesis.
The mechanical robustness of the brick comfortably allows distinct gas to flow through the cavities and fill them with a sulphur-based material that reacts with iron. This chemical process leaves the pores coated with electrochemical PEDOT electrodes or stationary supercapacitors that readily stack into modules. PEDOT is a nanofibrillar coating of the conducting polymer having a mixture of two ionomers. Therefore, the porous network of the bricks and a very strong material are the keys of this remarkable innovation where the walls of the home will turn into batteries to store renewable energy.
Designer architect has brick design with its ability to absorb and store sunlight or heat but this innovation will certainly open doors for the bricks to have larger intrinsic value and uses. The walls of the buildings occupying large amounts of space could be better utilised for the additional purpose of electrical storage to be used for home appliances or sophisticated devices. The massive farm of the solar panels or the rooftop installations are an affordable source of clean energy but the challenges of storing the power when the sun is not shining could also be addressed through these smart bricks.
Future Impact
The first and foremost staggering impact of this red brick energy storage capacity could be the cent per cent transition of the global energy usage in renewable energy mode. This is more so in the region where sunlight is intense and in abundance. It will dramatically impact the global lifestyle as the combined effect of the Internet of Things on 5G technology with easy access to energy will give rise to newer technologies in almost everything from transportation to communication to production systems.
Global health will have incredible improvement due to fantastically reduced air pollution. Climate change causing floods will improve the climatic conditions to have fewer floods and drought. The world would be different as the sustainable energy source will define a new economic structure and how different it would be is tough to predict precisely. Think of the world before the advent of electricity or electrical energy and then think of the world after the better, convenient and in abundance green, clean and renewable source of the energy, keeping in mind the technological advances the world has witnessed in this perceived time gap.
About The Author
The writer is a US National award-winning serial innovator with 34 patents pending with US and India patent offices. Known for revolutionising education in the United States by developing and implementing courses to teach young kids to innovate. He is currently working as Chief Innovation Officer with Si2 Microsystem, where he is responsible for leading and managing global innovation teams to deliver high-tech solutions in the aerospace & defence industry.
