The $5 billion race to build a better battery
Ron Czapala
Posts: 2,418
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/5-billion-race-build-better-040103658.html
EXCERPT
EXCERPT
Professor Donald Sadoway remembers chuckling at an e-mail in August 2009 from a woman claiming to represent Bill Gates. The world’s richest man had taken Sadoway’s Introduction to Solid State Chemistry online, the message explained. Gates wondered if he could meet the guy teaching the popular MIT course the next time the billionaire was in the Boston area, Bloomberg Markets magazine will report in its May issue. “I thought it was a student prank,” says Sadoway, who’s spent more than a decade melting metals in search of a cheap, long-life battery that might wean the world off dirty energy. He’d almost forgotten the note when Gates’s assistant wrote again to plead for a response.
A month later, Gates and Sadoway were swapping ideas on curbing climate change in the chemist’s second-story office on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus. They discussed progress on batteries to help solar and wind compete with fossil fuels. Gates said to call when Sadoway was ready to start a company. “He agreed to be an angel investor,” Sadoway says. “It would have been tough without that support.”
Sadoway is ready. He and a handful of scientists with young companies and big backers say they have a shot at solving a vexing problem: how to store and deliver power around the clock so sustainable energies can become viable alternatives to fossil fuels
Comments
Of course, you never know what might be discovered in the way of an exotic alloy of metals that might provide something beyond Lithium.
My gut feeling is fuel cells that take Hydrogen or Hydrocarbons and create electricity are where more innovation might be fruitful.
Just because Bill Gates wants to do something, doesn't really make it the wisest alternative. I tend to feel that some of these projects are inspired to improve Microsoft's public relations, without much concern for real feasibiity.
What we care about is the amount of energy we can store and recover easily. The mass of the thing is a secondary consideration.
This battery isn't for electric cars, it's for grid power. For grid power, KwH/$ and lifetime are the important metrics. This battery is three fluids (two metals, and a salt/intermetalic layer) poured into a steel and glass bottle. On the flip side, cell voltage is low, charge efficiency poor, and operating temperature is quite high. Even so, this battery is potentially revolutionary, and I've been watching progress for a while.
Marty
That said, aluminum-air cells have among the highest energy densities of all batteries, including I believe any lithium-based battery yet commercialized, so the base element/mineral has little to do with wallop per volume, and only indirectly with weight (surface area also matters, like the heretofore "impossible" 1 farad capacitors that were thought to require HUGE sizes in order to work). Chemistry isn't always so simple.
Ummm.... Heater,
Slow down and Think, think, think -- then try to offer something informative rather than just polarize the topic so you can debate on and on.
With a bit of chemical education, you might figure out that postion on the Periodic Table does play into getting outstanding power performance. Atomic weights do roughly indicate how heavy a battery will be in proportion to the power offered. About 2/3rd of the Periodic Table is metals, but not all are useful.
Nonetheless, we may be moving beyond traditional anode/cathode/electrolyte models with a greater focus on the microstructure of a battery. We might just discover ionic molecules that work exceedingly well together for charging and recharging without wearing out.
++++++++++++++++++
NOT your traditional battery.
The link in #1 does indeed propose a large scale high temperature battery for power grid storage... to be tested in Hawaii and Alaska. So this is nothing like your 'everyday battery application'. The inventor -Sadoway- is not saying what molten metals he is actually using... could be Lithium, Sodium, Potasium, or ??
Without any real focus of what the battery's real world role is, this topic may wander in any direction. Batteries are defined by their purpose - one design does NOT fit all.
Sooner or later, they are going to make big breakthroughs in this technology. There is a lot of research going on in this arena. Maybe it will be in the form of a 1MF - a 1 MegaFarad capacitor - hey hey! Again, as long as it does what we want, who cares what it's based on.
As long as the oil companies don't bury it
Depends on your definition of better and the application it is used in.
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1188429
Most of them never hit the market, or never became popular.
Personally, in real life I've seen only NiZN's (great idea but battery dies w.o protection circuit on overdischarge) and quick recharge sony cells (these work fine, my DELL has them, recharges to 75% in about 15 minutes or whatever)
These have a LOWER power density than lead acid, and a higher self disharge rate. But for a stationary application, such are a solar house or a power grid backup, they seem like a good idea.
Regarding the original project of Mr. Sadoway....
He seems to think that molten metal/molten salts, high temperature batteries are the way to go with storing for the power grid on a big scale. I can't help but wonder about heat losses. It would seem that a lot of energy input to the devices would be disapated as heat losses unless there is a lot of design consideration towards insulation.
element, lithium on the other hand is an extremely limited mineral resource (stars don't make it, its a remnant of
the big-bang). Al batteries don't burst into flames either as far as I know. Lets hope the technology lives up to
the promise, it could completely replace lead-acid.
Atomic number as mentioned above is everything(*) for energy mass density, this matters for transport and
portable appliances only.
(*)chemical energy is a few eV per atom at best, only the outer electrons contribute to chemical energy,
the core of the atom is essentially dead weight.
Heat losses in a molten salt battery scale as R^2, capacity as R^3, so they become relatively smaller for large
batteries - you can afford thicker insulation in larger batteries too, as a proportion of the cost.
Yes, Aluminum is extremely common on planet Earth. But I've read that Lithium is not so hard to acquire as well. The debate is not settled. Ironically, one of the other uses of lithium is in aluminum alloys for areo-space. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium-lithium_alloy
I do admit my initial statement about atomic weight was naive. I am always willing to admit I am wrong when so. I just wish that people would not feel the need to slam others that make mistakes. People come here to learn, not to be shamed. So I push back.
These particular batteries of Mr. Sadoway's are in the range of tens of tons and appear to have plans for even larger... quite large, and quite hot.
It is just a big departure from having batteries running optimally at ambient temperatures unless charging or discharging. I begin to wonder if merely pumping water into a column and later having that generate electricity might incur less losses. We will just have to wait and see. The advantages might outweigh the losses. For instance, having the facility generating enough heat to not cause the battery to underperform is a real attraction in Alaska. It an urban setting, the heat by-product might be useful for warm water, de-icing, and so on.