Concrete is perhaps the most commonly used building material in the world. With a bit of tweaking, it could help to power our homes too.
混凝土可能是世界上最常用的建筑材料。经过一些调整，它也可以帮助我们的家庭供电。
On a laboratory bench in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a stack of polished cylinders of black-coloured concrete sit bathed in liquid and entwined in cables. To a casual observer, they aren't doing much. But then Damian Stefaniuk flicks a switch. The blocks of human-made rock are wired up to an LED – and the bulb flickers into life. The reason for the excitement? This innocuous, dark lump of concrete could represent the future of energy storage. The promise of most renewable energy sources is that of endless clean power, bestowed on us by the Sun, wind and sea. Yet the Sun isn't always shining, the wind isn't always blowing, and still waters do not, in megawatt terms, run deep. These are energy sources that are intermittent, which, in our energy-hungry modern world, poses a problem.
在马萨诸塞州剑桥市的一个实验室工作台上，一堆抛光的黑色混凝土圆柱体浸入液体中并缠绕在电缆中。对于一个不经意的观察者来说，他们并没有做太多事情。但随后达米安·斯特凡纽克（Damian Stefaniuk）打开了开关。将人造岩石块固定在 LED 灯上，灯泡就会闪烁。惊奇的原因是什么？这种无害的黑色混凝土块可能代表能源存储的未来。大多数可再生能源的承诺是太阳、风和海洋为我们提供无穷无尽的清洁能源。然而，阳光并不总是照耀，风并不总是吹拂，静水并不总是流动。这些能源是间歇性的，这给我们这个能源匮乏的现代世界带来了一个问题。
It means that we need to store that energy in batteries. But batteries rely on materials such as lithium, which is in far shorter supply than is likely to be needed to meet the demand created by the world's quest to decarbonise its energy and transport systems. There are 101 lithium mines in the world, and economic analysts are pessimistic about the ability of these mines to keep up with growing global demand. Environmental analysts note that lithium mining uses a lot of energy and water, which nibble away at the environmental benefits of switching to renewable energy sources in the first place. The processes involved in extracting lithium can also sometimes lead to toxic chemicals leaking into local water supplies. Despite some new discoveries of lithium reserves, the finite supply of this material, the over-reliance on just a handful of mines around the world and its environmental impact have driven the search for alternative battery materials.
这意味着我们需要将能量存储在电池中。但电池依赖于锂等材料，而锂的供应量远低于满足世界能源和运输系统脱碳的需求所需的供应量。世界上有 101 个锂矿，经济分析师对这些矿满足全球不断增长的需求的能力感到悲观。环境分析师指出，锂开采消耗大量能源和水，这首先会蚕食改用可再生能源所带来的环境效益。提取锂的过程有时还会导致有毒化学物质泄漏到当地供水系统中。尽管锂储量有了一些新发现，但这种材料的供应有限、对世界各地少数矿山的过度依赖及其对环境的影响推动了对替代电池材料的寻找。
This is where Stefaniuk and his concrete come in. He and his colleagues at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have found a way of creating an energy storage device known as a supercapacitor from three basic, cheap materials – water, cement and a soot-like substance called carbon black.
这就是 Stefaniuk 和他的混凝土发挥作用的地方。他和他在麻省理工学院 (MIT) 的同事们找到了一种方法，用三种基本的廉价材料——水、水泥和烟灰——制造一种称为超级电容器的能量存储设备。像一种叫做炭黑的物质。
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