Sustainable, Biodegradable Battery Made From Crab Shells Might Be the Future for Renewable Energy

Battery made from shellfish might become the future for electric cars. Scientists from the University of Maryland in the US discovered a unique compound in crustaceans, like crabs, lobsters, and shrimps, that can be used to create a sustainable battery, Newsweek reported.

The chemical is called chitosan, which is a derivative product of chitin that is found in the exoskeleton of crustaceans. Lead researcher Professor Liangbing Hu said that the biodegradability and performance of batteries are important to consider in terms of their ability to be commercialized.

Biodegradable Electrolyte Holds the Key to High Demand Renewable Energy

The sustainable battery is described in the study, titled "A Sustainable Chitosan-Zinc Electrolyte for High-Rate Zinc-Metal Batteries," published in the journal Matter.

Researchers said that the chitin-based electrolyte in the zinc battery is the key to satisfying the growing demand for renewable energy in the motor industry. The biodegradable electrolyte chitin is extracted from crab shells to make the battery sustainable.

Chitin is an abundant material found in many sources, such as the cell wall of fungi, exoskeletons of crustaceans, and squid pens. But the most abundant source is the shells of crustaceans, which can be easily obtained from seafood waste. Chitin is a natural compound called biopolymer that is commonly used in medicines, pesticides, fertilizers, and as an edible film on some foods.

Electrolytes in batteries ferry ions back and forth to positive and negative terminals. They could come in liquid, paste, or gel, which are all flammable and highly corrosive. The chitin electrolyte in the zinc battery is comprised of chitosan, which is a derivative o chitin.

The chitosan electrolyte is a biodegradable electrolyte that crumbles completely within five months, leaving behind the zinc component that can be recycled instead of lead or lithium in non-biodegradable batteries.

Hu noted that zinc is abundant on Earth's crust and well-developed zinc batteries are often cheaper and safer. According to a press release that the new battery has an energy efficiency of 99.7% after 1,000 batter cycles and can even store energy generated by large-scale wind and solar energy to be transferred to power grids.

He added that their team hopes all batteries in the future will be biodegradable not only in the material used in its production but also in the production process of biomaterials as well.

Environmental Effects of Batteries

Hu said that the vast quantities of batteries currently being produced and consumed raise environmental problems. One example is how long it takes for polypropylene and polycarbonate in the widely-used Lithium-ion batteries to degrade, which is thousands of years that only adds to the environmental burden.

Furthermore, Greenly reports that there are two types of batteries and neither one of them are environmentally friendly. The first one is the lead-acid battery that consists of two electrodes immersed in a sulphuric acid solution. The higher the proportion of pure lead it contains, the higher its quality is.

A 2011 study showed that some communities in China's and India's 583 lead battery factories are getting poisoned. Lead poisoning not only causes memory loss but also damages the cardiovascular system and causes miscarriages.

The second type is the lithium-ion battery, based on the reversible exchange of lithium-ion between a positive and negative electrode. Although it has massive benefits, especially in electronics and electric cars, its environmental impact is also not a joke.

Aside from the issues of its polypropylene and polycarbonate components, National Geographic also highlighted in its February 2019 edition its environmental impacts in Bolivia where 17% of lithium is located, wherein mines are proliferating in defiance of all forms of regulation or respect for nature.

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