mushrooms have so many creative uses

Athanassia Athanassiou, a materials scientist at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa, has been using fungi to develop new types of bandage for treating chronic wounds. But she has also discovered it is possible to tune the qualities of the mycelium material by altering what it has to digest. The harder a substance is for the fungi to digest – such as wood chips rather than potato peelings – the stiffer the resulting mycelium material is, for example. It raises the prospect of using fungi for more robust purposes. California-based MycoWorks have been developing ways of turning mushrooms into building materials. By fusing wood together with mycelium, they have been able to create bricks that are fire-retardant and tougher than conventional concrete. Tien Huynh, a biotechnologist at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia, has been leading a project to create similar fungal brick by combining mycelium from Trametes versicolor with rice hulls and crushed waste glass. She says they not only provide a cheap and environmentally friendly building material, but they also help to solve another problem facing many homes in Australia and around the world – termites. The silica content of the rice and the glass makes the material less appetising to termites, which cause billions of dollars in damage to homes every year. “In our research, we have also used the fungi to produce enzymes and new biostructures for different properties including sound absorption, strength and flexibility,” says Huynh. Her team is also working on using fungi to produce chitin – a substance used to thicken foods and in many cosmetics. “Usually chitin is processed from shellfish, which has hypoallergenic properties,” she says. “The fungal chitin does not. We will have more fungal-based products later in the year but it is certainly a fascinating resource underutilised.” Fungi can also be used in combination with traditional building materials to create a “smart concrete” that can heal itself as the fungi grows into any cracks that form, secreting fresh calcium carbonate – the key raw material in concrete – to repair the damage. “The possibilities for what we might use mycelium for are endless,” says Gitartha Kalita, a bioengineer at Assam Engineering College and Assam Don Bosco University in Guwahati, India. He and his colleagues have been using fungi and hay waste to create an alternative to wood for building. “Everything that we now call agricultural waste is actually an incredible resource that mushrooms can grow on. We have already degraded our environment and so if we can replace the current materials with something that is going to hold up in some sustainable way. They can take our waste and turn it into something which is really valuable for us.” http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190314-the-unexpected-magic-of-mushrooms

How To Make A SuperCapacitor - Step By Step

Graphene Supercapacitors Are About To Change The World - Here's How | An...

Ultracapacitor battery hybrid with 30 year life?

Zap&Go’s new Carbon-Ion or C-Ion battery is the result of years of research at the prestigious University of Oxford that is currently in its 3rd generation, according to Voller. “It’s a supercapacitor that performs like a battery,” Voller said. “The conventional supercapacitor is great at charging really fast but doesn’t hold onto its energy for very long.” The breakthrough came when Zap&Go used carbon nanotube technology to combine the fast charging benefits of supercapacitors with the energy storage characteristics of a battery. The result is an extremely fast-charging battery that is built without the need for any rare earth metals or toxic chemicals like the cobalt that underpins many of today’s lithium-ion battery chemistries. In Zap&Go’s Carbon-Ion battery, “the principle material is carbon, which is readily available in many forms,” Voller said. For now, Zap&Go is using carbon sourced from coconut shells, but Voller noted that he expected the source to change over time as demand grows. In addition to ultra-fast charging, Zap&Go’s new Carbon-Ion battery is poised to change the energy storage game because of its impressive lifespan expectations. “We last a long time,” Voller said. “It would be a 30-year useful life or 30-year warranty,” which is a far cry from the 10- to 15-year lifespans expected from today’s lithium-ion batteries. read more, here, https://cleantechnica.com/2019/02/01/zapgos-carbon-ion-battery-delivers-ultra-fast-charging-zero-degradation/ and their website, here; https://www.zapgo.com/technology/