Can durians charge smartphones and Tesla cars? Scientists say yes

Durians aren’t exactly enjoying widespread esteem anywhere outside of Asia, but researchers might soon have to brave the savoury stink to uncover a naturally efficient electric charger. 

Love it or hate it, the thorny fruit has been found to be really great energy stores for swift electric charging, capable of supercharging things from smartphones to electric cars. 

Vincent G. Gomes, an associate professor at the University of Sydney, co-authored a new scientific paper that details a process for extracting durian and jackfruit biowaste and turning them into supercapacitors with high energy density. 

"The structural precision of natural biomass with their hierarchical pores, developed over millions of years of biological evolution, affords an outstanding resource as a template for the synthesis of carbon-based materials," Gomes and his team wrote in their paper, published earlier this month in the Journal of Energy Storage. It’s the fibrous, fleshy portions of organic waste that makes it ideal, they explained — the sponge-like physical characteristics are likely to produce electrodes with high porosity. 

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But that’s not to say that you can start shoving USB cables into Mao Shan Wangs to charge your iPhone already. It would require some real intense prep work, including rinsing the inedible cores of the fruits with deionised water and conducting hydrothermal treatment of the wet samples. Then they'll be subject to freeze-drying, carbonisation in a furnace, before letting them cool overnight. You know, the usual. 

The researchers are hoping that this method could lead to wider adoption of inexpensive and sustainably-produced electrode materials. “Converting food wastes into value-added products will not only improve the overall economy but also reduce environmental pollution,” the scientists declared in their paper. 

Great news for the environment, but not so great for folks who can’t even stand the pungent smell of durians, which American food writer Richard Sterling once described as “pig-s**t, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock”. 

ilyas@asiaone.com