New Technology Could Turn Red Bricks Into Blue Batteries

Step aside science fiction! We may be turning your brick-faced house into an electric storage facility!

As first reported in the journal Nature Communications, a research team at Washington University in St Louis, U.S., found a way to use nanotechnology to fill the pores in a standard red fired house brick with plastic that can conduct electricity and store a charge. That turns the brick into a kind of super capacitor, which can charge and discharge electricity faster than a standard lithium ion battery.

At the moment, a brick could only store about 1% of the electricity of a traditional battery, but as the technology improves, it is expected to become more efficient & cheaper. Eventually the bricks used today in building facades could be a cheap & effective way to store the energy created by solar panels, reducing the necessity for fossil fuels.Turning the bricks into energy storage units reduces their load-bearing capacity, meaning they would not be able to be used to create entire buildings. It would also have an aesthetic impact - the chemical reaction that occurs when they are charged turns red bricks blue.