Energy Storage That's Finger Lickin' Good!

The renewable energy revolution is, without any question or doubt, a great and wonderful thing for the health of both mankind and our planet. Renewable energy capacity grew by 50% in 2023 over the previous year and should continue to skyrocket, provided a certain presidential candidate doesn't get his way. 

Credit: Mohan Reddy Pallavolu

But as with so many good things, too much energy presents unique problems. For example, rooftop solar panels can create so much energy that the supply exceeds demand, triggering negative energy prices, which is exactly what it sounds like: The power plants have to pay you to take their energy. And of course we can't have that, the nerve for even suggesting the power company owe us money every once in a while. 

So, since we can't get paid for using our own energy, another solution for all the excess electricity is necessary, and that solution is storage. But that's easier said than done, as storing energy is a lot more difficult than producing it. Obviously, rechargeable batteries exist, but they're both expensive and rather messy, environmentally speaking. And this is where a team of Korean researchers come in, with a plan utilizing everyone's favorite Kentucky-fried bird.

It all comes down to carbon nano-onions (their term, not mine); concentric rings of carbon atoms which are electrically conductive and can hold energy. Again, normally these compounds (graphene is an example) are messy to produce, but the researchers found a way to extract carbon nano-onions from chicken fat. And it's not even a particularly complicated process either; first the fat is rendered down and liquefied, the liquid fat is burned into soot, and the soot is mixed into a solution of thiourea, a sulfur-containing organic molecule.

Of course, all that work would be pointless if our chicken fat battery didn't do a good job of storing electricity, but the combined nano-onion–thiourea solution did an excellent job. They were even able to charge up a batch and use that battery to light up LEDs, no outside power source required. 

The researchers were quick to caution that actual practical application of this new chicken battery is a long way off, but still, this is great news for those of us with rooftop solar panels and dreams of powering appliances by plugging those solar panels into a bucket of KFC's finest chicken. Doesn't work like that? Come on, with how processed that stuff is, are you telling me it doesn't come preloaded with all the carbon nano-onions you could ever need? 

Carbon nano-onion is definitely my new favorite word of the day. And it's certainly the closest fried chicken will ever get to being healthy. Ah well, we don't crave the stuff for its place in a well-balanced diet.