Useful article and overview of battery research efforts —
http://www.engineering.com/Electroni...Batteries.aspx
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Useful article and overview of battery research efforts —
http://www.engineering.com/Electroni...Batteries.aspx
Excellent :cool:
Some of those I knew about---many were new to me.
I will point out that many of those projects received Federal grants as seed money for their research. Something I support but you seem to rail against on a regular basis.
It should not be the governments job to fund R&D. That is the job for Free Enterprise. If Free Enterprise will not do it then maybe it should not be done.
I found it peculiar that no mention of graphene reasearch was mentioned. From other sources, I think graphene has the highest promise in batteries for its storage density. From what I read, one of the chief problems with graphene batteries is that while their capacity to store a charge is unexcelled, that so far acts as a capacitor rather than a battery and thus discharges all at once. Such a battery, if one could be made, would have the benefit of being exceptionally light in weight. Another problem with graphene is producing the stuff in commercial quantities. Would be perfect for vehicles though.
Another Exciting Battery Innovation Announced
Could this be "The One?"
"The innovation is the use of the Nobel prize-winning plastic-that-acts-like-a-metal, haologenated polyacetylene...
The battery, which is now patent-pending at the US and other patent offices, is expected to cost less than $100 per kWh (about one-fourth that of the best batteries today), to weigh less and therefore provide longer range to cars, to have a greater power density (power to weight ratio), have a faster charging time and much longer life. Another substantial positive is the material itself, made from common acetylene. There are no rare earths to mine and extract, no toxic residues. The halogen dopants are also common, cheap, and abundant..."
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/04/...omment-2186078
Here's another article on the persistent problem of build-up on the battery's electrode and a plausible solution —
http://newatlas.com/lithium-oxygen-a...default-widget
Below is another in the stream of prospective electricity storage devices. This one out of England uses polymers related to contact lenses to make capacitors with the potential to rapidly store energy "1,000 - 10,000" times as efficiently as current devices. If so, such capacity would far exceed energy density of even gasoline — the holy grail of energy storage. No word on how that energy could be cycled out of a capacitor in a trickle though.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...itter-business
Researchers at Harvard have announced what they term significant advances to "flow batteries," which would make them cheaper to construct and make them exceptionally long lasting. Flow batteries store their charge in large external tanks of liquid and are ideal for storing energy produced by windmills and solar for later use.
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_relea...-nlf020917.php
Here's another new battery teaser from the inventor of the lithium battery — a battery touted as having 3x the charge density of conventional batteries with other great features of lower cost and readily available materials and made from a glass-like composition. Incidentally, the fellow is 94 years old.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...enough-battery
I wonder if having 3X the charge density means it burns at 3X the temperature :rolleyes2: J/K !
Possibly more notable to me is that this gentleman is still productive at 94! That gives me another goal :pimpgrin:
Here is another device I read about recently in my rural electric cooperative magazine--which I find very interesting.
I'm not sure I buy that one--it might work in a river but in a small stream I think it would spend most of its time bouncing off the bottom.
However, I have a question---at one time there was a pretty popular concept of pumping water up into a reservoir when there was excess generation capacity and then reversing the pumps to turbines when power was needed by releasing the stored water.
I have seen no discussion of such a scenario in conjunction with managing the the output of solar and wind generation. Has anyone seen such a discussion?
Yes, I have seen quite a bit about that method of storing energy. The last article I read was from someone in Australia who said he was going to do it on his outback farm. A similar concept is one of the larger towns in Oregon or Washington has put turbines in the pipes which channel water from the mountains down to the town, so even better, no pumping up.
The pumped-storage concept is very efficient - somewhere in the 70-80% range, but obviously needs a lot of water, a reservoir and height, so not for everybody. Works best with an excess of solar/wind power, when not needed on the grid.
Incidentally, below is a very interesting article I ran across attempting to quantify the EROI (energy return on investment) between various energy sources, while acknowledging the difficulty and variability in doing so —
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/03/...t-is-the-cost/
They currently have submerged generators anchored in the Hudson River right off of Manhattan which run on the tidal currents.
I'm thinking that the reservoir concept might be hampered by land availability and zoning issues, dams have gained a bad image.
The tidal generators always seemed an elegant method, and I have wondered why it never really made the grade. Let the moon work for us!
I don't know why they have not had more play than they have. There are many places around the world with 40'+ tides, including the Bay of Fundy, Anchorage Alaska and Incheon Korea. That represents a tremendous amount of potential energy, 4x a day.
The Brits had large plans for tidal power, but something put the kibosh on them and last I heard those plans were cancelled. I don't know why. The Bay of Funday, as you suggest, has always seemed a natural. Have you heard anything about the success of the New York project?
I only occasionally see something on the news, and now that I have gone to learn more I find I might have been wrong about the Hudson since I do not see anything on that. What I did find was on the East River----which is not really a river, rather it is a link between western Long Island Sound and the ocean. As such it has relatively high currents induced by tidal change.
I did take a few minutes to see what I could find and I have to say at this point this technology remains a "potential" contributor.
Below are three links, two on the Manhattan project (pun intended) and the third on a project in the Bay of Fundy:
Hydrokinetic power from NY State.
The East River Project.
The Bay of Funday
I'll throw this one on the pile and see if it turns up later — something from the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies called the Fraunhofer Battery, oddly enough.
http://newatlas.com/battery-stacking...ic-cars/49324/
Reports of longevity-capacity innovation for the devilish anode side of batteries promising to replace graphite with silicon —
https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/20/1...y-polyrotaxane
Problem: expensive production costs for now.
Man's scientific progress is unrelenting---and exciting :clap::clap::clap:
Graphene -- again —
https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile...ene-ball-news/
Tiny crumpled graphene balls coated with lithium offer promise for new battery technology —
https://newatlas.com/crumpled-graphe...tteries/53047/
Very interesting---thank you :clap:
One of these days - I hope soon - one or more of these technologies are going to hit with something dense, light & cheap and we will have the batteries we need. That is why I keep posting these projects, so when it happens, I can say I told you so.
My philosophy: If you can’t do it, take credit for it.
It isn't a matter of if, only of when----but I beleive that will not come as a "revelation" but rather a progression. I would also expect that once viable commercialization takes hold as part of the power grid the advances will speed up.
Joe, this one is close enough to your 'hood to allow you to indulge in some nostalgia, and put your money where your mouth is all with one rather substantial check...:zoom:...Ben
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7vTCK9ywBA
Flat out exciting!
OK, this one is not a battery, but in many ways is more exciting. It is a fluid that directly absorbs sunlight, which changes its chemical composition thereby storing the energy long-term and can give back that energy in the form of heat when passed back through a catalyst. Apparently, the system is in its redimentary stages, but there is great promise. No mention of costs in the article though.
https://www.sciencealert.com/scienti...p-sun-s-energy
Aluminum-air Batteries
https://www.techspot.com/news/77357-...ive-times.html
The next step, a stand alone home charger not dependent on the grid.
Forgive me if I missed it or just don't understand. $100 per kilowatt hour! It is referred to as a battery pack at one point that will cost the $100. That is good why? How many batteries will it take to power a car, what does a kilowatt hour cost now and what does that give us that we don't already have. Dave's point that was mentioned in the article about charging, will the system even support that. Cali has brown outs on hot days, add a few million cars charging......We'll need stand alone chargers, solar? Way to many questions that need to be answered before we can sell our cars.
Battery power would be a good idea, only drawback is weight of battery, the length of charge time as well as the run time of battery, including the life cycle of the charge/recharge limit. The drawback to batteries has always been those things. With lithium, it was heat and the battery having a meltdown. I had a buddy I work with that had his phone melt while he was sitting in his chair and his pants leg. Burned his leg before he could get it off.
I had another friend that bought a small solar panel and mounted it to the roof of his UTV to keep his battery charged during the time he was not using it.
Slaying the gas car, passing the threshold? I guess I'm just looking at it wrong, sounds like a used car salesman. The other articles give MPG, size, the weight of the batteries etc...I'll look at it tomorrow and maybe it will make sense.:dontgetit:
The latest promised “breakthrough” in battery technology —
https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-t...-to-700-miles/
Interesting---and once again we see that using today's technology to project tomorrow's limits is a fools game.
MIT joins the list of “promising battery technology” on improving lithium cells —
https://newatlas.com/materials/mits-...-breakthrough/
And now for something old with a new twist: stored renewable energy for the grid. Sorry, no batteries here.:shrug:
https://www.fastcompany.com/90261233...iggest-problem
They get extra credit from me for the fun graphic.Quote:
Energy Vault, based in California and Switzerland, took inspiration from the way that some dams store energy–hydro plants pump water uphill when energy demand is low, and then produce energy by turning turbines as the water flows back down. The system works, but only in places where dams can physically be built; dams also harm fish, force people to relocate, and can burst and flood villages.
Like dams, the new solution–a massive tower, roughly the height of a 35-story building–relies on gravity. But it doesn’t require water. When a wind or solar farm makes more energy than the grid needs, an automatic crane on the battery uses the extra electricity to lift a giant brick, weighing 35 metric tons, up to the top of the tower. “When that tower’s stacked, that’s all potential energy,” says Piconi. When the grid needs power, the crane automatically lowers a brick, using the kinetic energy to charge a generator.