Mark MacLachlan, of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, has found a new way to produce batteries: the discarded shells of shellfish. Specifically, by using chitin, the substance that gives certain animals their iridescence (think the luster of the interior of an oyster shell).

As reported by Hakai Magazine, Chitin can already be used for a variety of purposes, both medical and industrial. It can be used as biodegradable surgical thread, meaning sutures eventually disappear on their own. It's can also be used to form a version of biodegradable plastic.

But what interests MacLachlan is what happens when you heat chitin to to 900° C (1,652° F) in a chamber filled with nitrogen. This turns the chitin in a nitrogen-infused carbon—a material well-suited to creating electrodes for batteries.

The process right now remains far too expensive for commercial use, and it's likely that chitin-based biodegradable plastics hit the market long before any battery formed from a crab shell. Regardless, working for MacLachlan as a grad student sounds like a great gig. While one student has found a restaurant to supply discarded shells, others are simply eating as much lobster, crab, and shrimp as possible and bringing in the shells afterward. There are worse sacrifices to make for science.

Source: Hakai Magazine

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