Based on a fundamental chemical discovery by scientists at Oregon State University, it appears that trees may soon play a major role in making high-tech energy storage devices.
OSU chemists have found that cellulose -- the most abundant organic polymer on Earth and a key component of trees -- can be heated in a furnace in the presence of ammonia, and turned into the building blocks for supercapacitors.
These supercapacitors are extraordinary, high-power energy devices with a wide range of industrial applications, in everything from electronics to automobiles and aviation. But widespread use of them has been held back primarily by cost and the difficulty of producing high-quality carbon electrodes.
The new approach just discovered at Oregon State can produce nitrogen-doped, nanoporous carbon membranes -- the electrodes of a supercapacitor -- at low cost, quickly, in an environmentally benign process. The only byproduct is methane, which could be used immediately as a fuel or for other purposes.
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