We were aware of the edible oil as acommon byproduct of rice husks. It has been found recently that husks contain natural silicon nanoparticles that can easily be extracted and used in battery manufacture. A simple and low cost process of recovering the nanoparticles and using them in the lithium-ion batteries was published in the 29 May issue of Scientific Reports. 120 million tonnes of rice husks are produced as by-product of rice agriculture worldwide each year of which a significant amount of rice husks is produced in China and India. According to the Chinese scientist Yi Cui, who is Associate Professor at Stanford University, USA and co-author of the paper explained that "the novelty of this paper is the high-yield and low-cost recovery of nano-structured silicon from an agricultural by-product is ideal for direct application in high-energy lithium-ion batteries." This discovery could allow the farmers of this country to fetch good amount of money by selling their rice husks to a company that will produce silicon from the husks. However, more research needs to be performed before this method would be used on a broader scale.
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