Biowaste has been used for energy production for some time already (see this story about using coffee grounds in your tank!), but tapping into its potential for energy storage is quite a recent phenomenon. Particularly, two unusual tropical fruits have been standing out as attractive candidates to serve this purpose — the jackfruit and durian.
A team of researchers writing in the Journal of Energy Storage has managed to find a way to build ultracapacitors — extremely energy-dense storage devices — by heat-treating and then freeze-drying parts of the spongy, inedible cores of both fruits in such a way that they were able to reliably and repeatedly charge and discharge electricity.
While it’s unclear how this process could be scaled up, compared to the way we harness and store energy today, this novel approach gets high marks for creativity! Treating fruit cores and using them as batteries instead of the toxic ingredients used in current battery technology would undeniably be cleaner and more sustainable.
