Each year the U.S. produces hundreds of millions of tons of metal scrap like this (shown
here, the PSC Metals scrapyard in Nashville).
Credit: Daniel Dubois / Vanderbilt University
"The battery companies won't like this," Cary Pint told me.
Pint, an assistant professor in the department of mechanical engineering at Vanderbilt University, was talking about a high-performance, grid-scale battery he and his students made from metal scrap and common household chemicals, which they documented in a published article. Not only is the battery powerful and easy-to-build, it represents a new kind of approach to innovation because it bypasses industry and manufacturing altogether and goes directly to the people.
"We can do the hard work, we can do the development and then instead of communicating it to industry, we can communicate it to the public," Pint said. https://www.livescience.com/56748-junkyard-metal-turned-into-super-battery.html
