Ultrafast All-Polymer Paper-Based Batteries

Conducting polymers for battery applications have been subject to numerous investigations during the last two decades. However, the functional charging rates and the cycling stabilities have so far been found to be insufficient for practical applications. These shortcomings can, at least partially, be explained by the fact that thick layers of the conducting polymers have been used to obtain sufficient capacities of the batteries. In the present letter, we introduce a novel nanostructured high-surface area electrode material for energy storage applications composed of cellulose fibers of algal origin individually coated with a 50 nm thin layer of polypyrrole. Our results show the hitherto highest reported charge capacities and charging rates for an all polymer paper-based battery. The composite conductive paper material is shown to have a specific surface area of 80 m2 g-1 and batteries based on this material can be charged with currents as high as 600 mA cm-2 with only 6 % loss in capacity over 100 subsequent charge and discharge cycles. The aqueous-based batteries, which are entirely based on cellulose and polypyrrole and exhibit charge capacities between 25 and 33 mAh g-1 or 38-50 mAh g-1 per weight of the active material, open up new possibilities for the production of environmentally friendly, cost efficient, up-scalable and lightweight energy storage systems. There is currently a great interest in the development of thin, flexible, lightweight, and environmentally friendly batteries and supercapacitors.1 In this process, the preparation of novel redox polymer and electronically conducting polymer-base

RESTRAT, a decision-aiding methodology for restoration of radioactively contaminated sites

A methodology for evaluating and ranking restoration strategies for radioactively contaminated sites has been elaborated in a project (RESTRAT) under the Fourth Framework of the Nuclear Fission Safety Programme of the EU. The decision-aiding tool developed in this project was based on the principles of justification and optimisation of radiation protection. A multi-attribute utility (MAU) type of analysis was applied in order to be able to deal with social factors, next to radiological health and economic cost attributes. Potentially relevant restoration techniques were identified and their characteristics determined through a literature review. The decision-aiding tool developed has been illustrated by application to representative examples of different categories of contaminated sites. In this paper the results for a contaminated freshwater riverine site are shown