The future of electric cars: are hemp batteries stronger than lithium?

Hemp as a substitute for lithium

In the race against global warming and ongoing environmental pollution, sustainable energies are becoming increasingly important in industry. The automotive industry has been experiencing an ever-increasing switch to electromobility for several years, which requires high-performance batteries in particular. These batteries are mostly made from lithium. This represents the heart of the electric car and is therefore also referred to as “white gold”.

However, research has identified another utility that could form the basis of high performance batteries in the future. Studies suggest that batteries made from hemp are even more powerful than lithium and graphene batteries.

Hemp is a very versatile raw material that can be used in industry, for clothing and food and now also for batteries in electric cars.

More efficient and sustainable

An experiment by Robert Murray Smith, a scientist known for his YouTube channel, found that the value of the volt-ampere currents of the hemp battery was almost eight times higher than that of the conventional lithium battery.

Smith does not claim to have proved anything, the experiment only shows how much more efficiently the hemp cell works compared to the lithium cell, he explains in his video “Hemp Battery As Good As lithium-ion?”

However, this finding is nothing new, as early as 2014 researchers at Clarkson University in the US state of New York discovered that hemp waste products can be transformed into extremely efficient capacitors, which are ultimately better than graphene According to the study by Dr. David Mitlin. In addition, the hemp costs only one-thousandth of what graphene costs.

Motorcycle manufacturer starts developing the battery

In the course of the experiment, the research group led by Dr. Mitlin leftover bast fibers, i.e. the inner bark of the hemp plant. The process is called hydrothermal synthesis and in this case resulted in nanosheets of carbon.

These fibers are then processed into so-called supercapacitors, i.e. into electricity storage devices. While conventional batteries store a large amount of energy and release the energy drop by drop, with supercapacitors this happens rapidly in one fell swoop. Accordingly, the hemp batteries are ideal for machines that require strong energy pulses.

” operate in temperatures as low as zero degrees Celsius and have one of the best documented performance-power combinations of any carbonate,” Mitlin comments in the study.

In 2018, Texas motorcycle manufacturer Alternet joined Mitlin’s research to develop hemp-based batteries for the ReVolt series of electric motorcycles. However, further development processes are required before hemp batteries become mass-produced and a legitimate lithium substitute.

Henry Ely / Editor Finance. at