Planeteers, unite!

If you’ve ever unpacked something fragile from a large box, odds are you’ve encountered packing peanuts. Those pesky little bits of foam that come flying from the box as soon as it’s opened, somehow seem end up everywhere and always manage to leave an annoying mess in their wake. Plus, they’re an ecological disaster. Not only are they notoriously difficult to recycle, but they also contain potentially harmful materials that seep into soil and water sources. Now, thanks to an innovative team of chemical engineers at Purdue University, these little nuisances may soon be a part of the power that charges your laptops and gadgets.

Vilas Pol and Vinodkumar Etacheri, chemical engineers at Purdue University, receive a lot of fragile lab equipment. Fragile lab equipment means a whole lot of packing peanuts; an overwhelming amount, Pol noticed. His team was dumping them by the thousands he says. He started considering the amount of space his packing peanuts alone were taking up in a landfill, and the harm they were doing to the environment. He thought, it doesn’t make sense to be researching green technologies while contributing to the problem itself with the peanuts. Even the packing peanuts made from biodegradable materials like cornstarch contained harmful chemicals that not only slow down the degrading process, but can actually contaminate ecosystems. So Pol and Etacheri developed a heating process that converts the peanuts into anodes made from carbon. By baking them at about 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit, the researchers were able to turn the puffy peanuts into thin microsheets of carbon which are often used in rechargeable batteries. These sheets serve as one of the layers between which charged lithium particles move when a battery is being depleted or charged, and the sheets made from peanuts actually hold lithium ions more effectively than other carbon lattices.

As far as the battery power that they’ll provide, researchers have been pleasantly surprised with the results of working with packing peanuts. Because of their crystal structure after being baked, they could lead to batteries which actually hold a charge for longer than batteries currently on the market and would recharge much faster as well. Their carbon anodes are only a tenth as thick as their commercially available counterparts, so they don’t produce nearly as much electrical resistance. The baking temperature of the peanuts is also much less than what is normally required to make carbon microsheets; using less energy helps to keep the process as environmentally friendly as possible. Overall the process is super practical – it’s cheap, simple and easy to implement on a large scale. Vilas Pol is optimistic that foam-based carbon microsheets and nanoparticles could be ready for commercial use in as little as two years. Think about it – how cool would it be to receive your next phone or laptop cased in packing peanuts, only to send them right back to be turned into batteries to charge your next device?