Everyone seems to like this junk

The junk battery story has legs. I guess people are pretty excited about it. I had access to the source paper and it's a good read. Certainly techy enough to give you a great number of details on exactly what it takes to make the battery.

You can read in a number of stories from a number of outlets (https://www.google.com/#tbm=nws&q=scrap+battery) that give a good overview of what the researchers did. But no one that wrote a story about the battery actually tried to make one. I won't be able to either. So can it really be made by a DIY?

Let's take a look at a couple statements that have me tending to believe that perhaps this could be a small business venture, but probably above the ability of most handymen.

First, it isn't just scrapped metal that is involved. From the paper:

To individually assess the electrochemical performance of each electrode, we performed electrochemical measurements in a three-electrode configuration with the anodized scrap steel and brass as the working electrodes against a platinum or gold counter with a SCE reference (see the methods, Supporting Information).

Gold and platinum aren't easy to come by. However, I imagine that any non-ferrous metal could be used? Typically batteries use carbon as a counter. So if I understand correctly, platinum or gold are used to maximize performance when a lesser metal would work.

Then again, I could be wrong about this.

And here is a curious statement from an anodizing FAQ:

CAN PARTS WITH BRASS OR STEEL HARDWARE BE ANODIZED?

No. The part being anodized must only be aluminum. Anything else will be destroyed in the process.

 I'm sure this is only true under certain conditions. But anodizing brass and steel doesn't seem to be a common practice. And I'd be willing to bet that if anyone had tried this chemistry before they would have used anodizing to increase the surface area of the plates and to get an oxidized surface.

So perhaps this battery really is worth pursuing. Perhaps some enterprising DIY can put up a Youtube video and show us how it is done. If I get the time and money I'll try it myself.

It would seem with this much press the idea could get some traction.