New Life for Packing Peanuts

Packing peanuts revolutionized the shipping industry by offering the perfect solution for transporting just about anything. Unfortunately, only about ten percent of them get recycled, leaving the rest to take up lots of space in already packed landfills. But recently, researchers found a new use for the Styrofoam morsels – to create high-performance anodes for rechargeable lithium-ion batteries.

The process is straightforward, inexpensive, and environmentally benign and has the potential for large-scale manufacturing. Basically, the peanuts are heated to a high temperature in a furnace under an inert atmosphere. Depending on whether they are made of starch-based materials or polystyrene, a transition metal salt catalyst may also be added. The result is a thin, porous microsheet which may be turned into anodes that outperform traditional graphite electrodes.

Because they are about ten times thinner, the peanut-derived anodes have a lower electrical resistance, which means faster charge/discharge times. Long term stability is also improved with no significant loss of capacity even after 300 charge/discharge cycles.