R. Kristof
Amidon,
United States
Keywords: Non-battery energy storage Cementitious materials Carbon-integrated concrete Structural supercapacitors (exploratory) Electromagnetic attenuation Infrastructure resilience Coupled multi-physics systems Conductive concrete Grid-adjacent energy storage Materials-based energy systems
Summary:
CarbonCrete is a multifunctional cementitious materials platform developed by Amidon Labs to explore non-battery energy storage, electromagnetic attenuation, and mechanical energy dissipation within a single, load-bearing structural system. Rather than proposing a finished energy storage product, CarbonCrete is intentionally positioned as a controlled, construction-compatible testbed designed to investigate emergent behaviors that arise when engineered carbon microstructures are embedded within conventional Portland cement concrete. Modern energy and infrastructure systems increasingly demand solutions that integrate storage, resilience, and safety without introducing new operational risks. CarbonCrete addresses this challenge by embedding surface-activated, waste-derived carbon into hydrated cement matrices, enabling simultaneous study of electrical conductivity, early-stage capacitive response, mechanical damping, and electromagnetic interaction in a form factor already ubiquitous in grid-adjacent infrastructure. The core hypothesis guiding this work is that controlled carbon microstructures, once mineralized within a cementitious matrix, can form distributed internal networks that exhibit coupled behaviors not observable in isolated laboratory specimens. These behaviors are governed by percolation-driven conductivity, electric double-layer capacitance potential within pore structures, and mechanically mediated transport phenomena influenced by hydration state, cracking, and loading. CarbonCrete provides a practical platform to explore how these mechanisms manifest at scales relevant to real infrastructure rather than idealized coupons. From a non-battery storage perspective, CarbonCrete offers a fundamentally different approach to energy storage integration. Energy-related functionality is not packaged as a discrete asset but is instead embedded directly into structural materials that already provide mass, security, and durability. This architecture eliminates many failure modes associated with conventional electrochemical systems, including thermal runaway and catastrophic release, while enabling passive safety by design. Any capacitive or energy-dissipative behavior is inherently distributed, mechanically constrained, and environmentally stable. In parallel, the internal conductive network formed by the embedded carbon has relevance for electromagnetic attenuation and grounding behavior, offering a pathway to study EM energy absorption rather than reflection within structural envelopes. Mechanically, carbon-modified microstructures influence crack propagation and internal friction, contributing to shock and vibration damping that is directly applicable to hardened energy and grid infrastructure. CarbonCrete also permanently mineralizes waste-derived carbon within a cementitious matrix, providing long-duration carbon lock-in while preserving compatibility with existing construction processes, including cast-in-place, precast, and modular systems. This enables simultaneous investigation of durability, environmental exposure, and functional performance over infrastructure lifetimes. This work is exploratory by design. Amidon Labs does not assert realized energy storage performance or deployment readiness. Instead, CarbonCrete is presented as a rare opportunity to study coupled electrical, mechanical, and electromagnetic phenomena in a field-relevant, non-battery material system. Ongoing research focuses on identifying limits, failure modes, scaling constraints, and measurement methodologies necessary to determine whether structural materials can meaningfully contribute to future energy storage and resilience architectures.