Fermion@mander.xyz
on 10 May 2024 22:46
nextcollapse
Even just getting above the boiling temp of liquid nitrogen is a really big deal. Liquid helium is something we will eventually run out of and is largely dependent on fossil fuel extraction to be collected. Helium can’t be recaptured after it escapes an open loop cooling system.
LN2 is so much cheaper to run and it’s sustainable. We’ll never run out of Nitrogen so long as there’s power to cool it. LN2 is cheaper than craft beer.
I wonder if progress will be slow and steady until we finally get there or if it will be a huge jump past the finish line like there was in the 80s. Either way, I don’t expect to see practical applications outside of the lab in my lifetime…but it’s really fun to watch the science advanced, even if it is all over my head
You are right, however, it’s worth noting most of these materials are highly complex and contain exotic elements. Basically these compounds are not suitable for any real life application in long range energy transfer
There was one team fairly recently that thought they had developed one that got a lot of press, but it turned out to not be true.
But that was only for that one specific case, it didn’t prove that room temperature superconductors can’t exist in general, there are still other teams working on developing them, and theoretically they could be possible, we just haven’t quite worked out what materials will exhibit superconductivity at room temperature, under what circumstances, and how to make them.
And we have some materials that come pretty damn close, Lanthanum decahydride can exhibit superconductivity at temperatures just a few degrees colder than some home freezers can manage (although at very high pressures)
That’s why we name our ages after the materials within. Material science is the foundation for almost all other physical sciences.
Alexstarfire@lemmy.world
on 10 May 2024 05:12
nextcollapse
How do you account for Space age and Information age?
9bananas@lemmy.world
on 10 May 2024 09:00
nextcollapse
the information age is easy: the silicon age!
not sure about the space age…maybe titanium age? that’s about the time we figured out how to machine titanium on large scales, and for highly specialized, extreme applications (talking about the SR-71 here, mostly). could also call it the alloy age, since a number of important alloys were discovered around that time
WalnutLum@lemmy.ml
on 10 May 2024 10:07
nextcollapse
I thought it was atomic age and information age…
Or was that just empire earth…
Brokkr@lemmy.world
on 10 May 2024 11:24
nextcollapse
We’re currently in the information age, which is due to silicon. In a few hundred years, this time may reasonably be called the silicon age. Society has only recently transferred to the silicon age from the previous iron age. If we don’t cause a total collapse of our society, then we will be in the silicon age for a few hundred more years, and that will likely include space colonization.
The space age you’re referring to is likely the 60s, when space exploration was beginning. A decade or two isn’t long enough to be considered an age.
Gigasser@lemmy.world
on 11 May 2024 00:14
collapse
There’s the industrial age too. Which I guess you could also call “The Age of Steam” or “The Age of Coal” or some other thing.
But capacitors aren’t batteries. Batteries store chemical energy. Capacitors store electrical potential energy. Electronically they behave much differently.
adespoton@lemmy.ca
on 10 May 2024 02:55
nextcollapse
Yes they do… including not holding a charge when the differential drops too far.
The real wins are in battery-backed capacitors. Charge the caps fast, then let them keep the batteries topped up.
SoylentBlake@lemm.ee
on 10 May 2024 03:15
collapse
That’s what I do being off-grid. I have my battery bank then a series of Supercaps to essentially act as an on/off ramp//drawbridge and temper quick demands. Kinda like an inverse soft starter so this is suuuuper interesting to me.
delirious_owl@discuss.online
on 10 May 2024 15:39
collapse
Do you have a link to a guide on his to set this up?
WaterWaiver@aussie.zone
on 10 May 2024 04:36
collapse
Only for certain types of capacitors. In practice they can overlap quite a bit, especially with common aluminium electrolytic capacitors (these form & dissolve complex aluminium oxide & hydroxide layers on the plates).
Headline is not dumb. There are reasons to make a distinction between the two, the most salient one being that capacitors are several orders of magnitude faster to charge and discharge.
However the galvanic potential of lithium is as large as is practically possible. The galvanic potential is what really matters for a battery. Capacitors are nowhere near the joules per weight/volume.
KillerTofu@lemmy.world
on 10 May 2024 01:37
nextcollapse
It’s not what the article says. Still interesting application of mixed 2D/3D technologies. Always hopeful that these energy developments leave the lab though.
BigMikeInAustin@lemmy.world
on 10 May 2024 02:07
collapse
Ha, exactly. We’ve seen the “start of the end” of batteries for decades now.
someguy3@lemmy.world
on 10 May 2024 02:36
nextcollapse
It’s only a few years away!
afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
on 10 Jun 05:20
collapse
I remember reading about this in a textbook back in uni. Might as well have been in the telegraph era
gibmiser@lemmy.world
on 10 May 2024 02:10
nextcollapse
WaterWaiver@aussie.zone
on 10 May 2024 04:46
nextcollapse
There have been constant news articles coming out over the past few years claiming the next big thing in supercapacitor and battery technologies. Very few actually turn out to work practically.
The most exciting things to happen in the last few years (from an average citizen’s perspective) are the wider availability of sodium ion batteries (I believe some power tools ship with them now?), the continued testing of liquid flow batteries (endless trials starting with the claim that they might be more economic) and the reduction in costs of lithium-ion solid state batteries (probably due to the economics of electric car demand).
FWIW the distinction between capacitors and batteries gets blurred in the supercapacitor realm. Many of the items sold or researched are blends of chemical (“battery”) and electrostatic (“capacitor”) energy storage. The headline of this particular pushes the misconception that these concepts can’t mix.
My university login no longer works so I can’t get a copy of the paper itself :( But from the abstract it looks first stage, far from getting excited about:
This precise control over relaxation time holds promise for a wide array of applications and has the potential to accelerate the development of highly efficient energy storage systems.
“holds promise” and “has the potential” are not miscible with “May Be the Beginning of the End for Batteries”.
Yup. How long have we been waiting for graphene batteries to revolutionize technology? About a decade now?
NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml
on 10 May 2024 19:17
collapse
…and the same obstacle that faced graphene a decade ago is the same seemingly insurmountable obstacle facing it today.
qupada@kbin.social
on 10 May 2024 06:12
nextcollapse
I've been seeing a lot about Sodium-ion just in the past week.
While they seem to have a huge advantage in being able to charge and discharge at some fairly eye-watering rates, the miserable energy density would seem to limit them to stationary applications, at least for now.
Perfect for backup power, load shifting, and other power-grid-tied applications though.
Liz@midwest.social
on 10 May 2024 15:49
nextcollapse
They’ve also got much better lifespans, being able to cycle many more times with less capacity loss. As they currently stand, they’re much better choices for stationary storage applications. However, I have seen them implemented in power tools and cars for their discharge rates, but it doesn’t hurt that they will stay healthy for longer.
I mean, I wouldn’t mind a car with “only” 200km range, but that can charge up to full in just 5 minutes. I use my car just for work 99% of the time anyway, the times I need to go somewhere further away I can easily stop midway to charge, get a coffee in the meantime and then be on my way.
Unfortunately what's shipping today seems it would offer maybe half that.
For the batteries that were announced this past week, a larger-than-refrigerator-sized cabinet held a capacity of around 15kWh.
Around half the energy density by mass of Lithium batteries, and in the order of a sixth of the density by volume.
Now if only we could come up with a system where your car could be charged while stopped at traffic lights, we might be onto a winner (:
Considering however that the price of sodium is around 1-2% that of lithium, I expect we will see significant R&D and those numbers quickly start to improve.
1111@lemmy.world
on 10 May 2024 06:01
nextcollapse
|My university login no longer works so I can’t get a copy of the paper itself :(
Scihub my brother 🙏
WaterWaiver@aussie.zone
on 10 May 2024 08:22
nextcollapse
I wouldn’t know, but it’s totally not on there, or so I’ve been told.
smpl@discuss.tchncs.de
on 10 May 2024 09:38
nextcollapse
Sadly Sci-Hub has not received updated articles in several years. Alexandra is waiting for the outcome of the trial in India. I don’t think it depends on what the outcome is, just that the trial needs to be over.
delirious_owl@discuss.online
on 10 May 2024 15:37
nextcollapse
Just email one of the researchers and ask them to send you a copy
We have the internet man, just bug another human and wait a few days to hear back from them.
Like I know that’s what you are “supposed” to do. But public money public knowledge, I refuse to accept that this is somehow an acceptable state of things.
someacnt_@lemmy.world
on 11 May 2024 01:59
collapse
Are these papers not listed on arxiv?
TheBat@lemmy.world
on 10 May 2024 07:00
nextcollapse
There have been constant news articles coming out over the past few years claiming the next big thing in supercapacitor and battery technologies.
More like decades. Anyone remembers buckyballs and buckytubes? What happened to that?
davidgro@lemmy.world
on 10 May 2024 09:16
collapse
Nanotubes are still a thing, but most of the hype now seems to be around ‘buckysheets’ (graphene)
mriguy@lemmy.world
on 10 May 2024 13:03
nextcollapse
There’s an old saying: “Graphene is so versatile it can do anything except leave the laboratory”.
GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
on 10 May 2024 23:20
collapse
To paraphrase one of society’s less brilliant thinkers, “Who would have thought heathcare advanced materials science could be so hard?”
someacnt_@lemmy.world
on 11 May 2024 02:01
collapse
I heard that nanotubes are being used in strengthening various materials. But yeah, not world-changing
MeowZedong@lemmygrad.ml
on 11 May 2024 00:39
collapse
For anyone looking for an alternative to Sci-Hub (the GOAT), you can make a free account on RG and send a request to the authors for a copy of their paper (about two clicks to perform).
Most researchers will send you a copy within a day, maybe two. If you copy the title or the DOI link into a search with “ResearchGate” it usually shows up in most search engines.
itsnicodegallo@lemm.ee
on 10 May 2024 06:49
nextcollapse
Serious question:
How is this different than all the other sensationalized headlines about some technology that’s gonna change everything, and then you later hear nothing about it?
TeddE@lemmy.world
on 10 May 2024 07:15
nextcollapse
This one features the number 19.
itsnicodegallo@lemm.ee
on 10 May 2024 07:17
collapse
So specific.
LarkinDePark@lemmygrad.ml
on 10 May 2024 07:19
collapse
It’s just two years away!!
stringere@leminal.space
on 10 May 2024 13:24
collapse
So it will get here with fusion, flying cars, hydrogen cars, and jetpacks?
Reawake9179@lemmy.kde.social
on 10 May 2024 09:27
nextcollapse
They are all calling for investors just to figure out it doesn’t scale.
That’s my assumption at least
realitista@lemm.ee
on 10 May 2024 20:12
nextcollapse
You are reading about it in Popular Mechanics, so it’s definitely a sensationalized headline, we know that at a minimum.
GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
on 10 May 2024 23:16
collapse
I had a little discussion with a guy complaining about sodium batteries and how you keep hearing these wild claims and then nothing. I did a quick search and saw an article about a $2 billion partnership agreement to work on a pilot plant for sodium batteries. He claimed it was yet another sensational headline and doubted anything would happen from it. Less than a week later I saw an article about a plant in America being announced.
This stuff is hard. It’s not like Master of Orion where you throw money at a specific research and get access upon completion. Different groups around the world are researching a multitude of different ideas, some related, and after a while a bunch of these ideas are combined and associated and researched, and all of a sudden you have a new product that’s significantly different from what was available before. And then you see incremental improvements for decades, not unlike the internal combustion engine or rechargeable lithium batteries.
pingveno@lemmy.ml
on 10 May 2024 23:55
nextcollapse
It’s the same with many infrastructure problems. You hear about some interesting infrastructure project that’s going to transform regional travel, improve transit, make biking/walking safer, or prepare for future natural disasters. Then it takes forever for them to go into place because it takes a long time to plan, do the legal work, and build. But then the infrastructure goes into place and no one thinks twice about the long process behind it.
Tryptaminev@lemm.ee
on 11 May 2024 08:32
nextcollapse
And we should also consider the longevity of these infrastructures. Cities that built their subways in the 19th century are still running them today and are vastly superior in terms of transit abilities than car cities. The population densities of today are unimaginable without central sewers and water infrastructure. Having continent spanning electricity grids are gigantic achievements. All these have shaped our lives for decades and sometimes centuries already and they are set to do so for centuries to come.
afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
on 10 Jun 05:14
collapse
Then it takes forever for them to go into place b
I have an item that costs me 40 to buy. I sell you the item for 200. I get a hundred now and a hundred when you get the item. If I fill the order now I get my 100. However if I wait a year I get an interest free loan on the 40 bucks. Maybe I push you off for 10 years. I not only get the 100 you owe me I also doubled that 40. If I am a big company I can pull this off, if I am a one man operation I can’t. Guess who gets hired for these projects. Hint it isnt Jeff’s gutter repair.
And that is just fixed priced contracts. You can imagine the horrorshow of open ended ones.
mysteryname101@lemmy.world
on 11 May 2024 08:06
collapse
Sodium batteries look great. They also can use the same manufacturing equipment as lithium batteries. Reducing the capital costs for the product.
Safipok@lemmy.ml
on 10 May 2024 10:17
nextcollapse
I wonder why I even read these articles. If these do turn out to be useful it will eventually make its way into technologies I use or buy near me. I don’t have to hunt them out.
nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 10 May 2024 14:06
collapse
I mean the application isn’t exactly arduous but they use capacitors in solar powered watches instead of batteries. They claim you can still get 80% of max voltage after 20 years use.
ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de
on 10 May 2024 11:29
nextcollapse
Electrolytic capacitors are closer to batteries than to non-polarized capacitors. Lithium-ion cells in capacitor housings also exist, presumably to evade tariffs and restrictions involved in shipping batteries.
<img alt="Super Li-ion battery NSC1015 high ratio Li-ion rechargeable battery 80mah 3C MAX current 10150 1015mm 1pcs" src="https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/S64993155113341c4b5d0f240aa30ffabu/Super-Li-ion-battery-NSC1015-high-ratio-3-7v-Li-ion-rechargeable-battery-80mah-3C-MAX.jpg">
Hugin@lemmy.world
on 10 May 2024 11:47
nextcollapse
Electrolytic capacitors use the chemistry to make a very high dielectric allowing the plates to get very close and increase the capacitance and decrease the size.
A cell in a battery is a capacitor then converts the charge on the plates into chemical energy and vice versa allowing much more energy storage and a flat operating range as the plates charge is replenished by the chemical reaction.
This article doesn’t go into details but it sounds like the breakthrough is a much better dialectic then storing energy in a chemical reaction.
ConstantPain@lemmy.world
on 10 May 2024 17:12
collapse
Yerbouti@lemmy.ml
on 10 May 2024 12:11
nextcollapse
Upvoted because this is true. I knew that information so I can confirm it. I swear I did.
RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works
on 10 May 2024 15:19
collapse
This somehow makes me less trusting of the previous comment.
mysteryname101@lemmy.world
on 11 May 2024 08:04
collapse
They’re more of a hybrid technology. They have some great applications.
Like temporary storage when using regen from a car. They can buffer the energy and help with a rapid acceleration.
Dash cam in a car. They can charge the cap and in the event in a malfunction / event. The camera can continue to record.
Solar lamps. Charge during the day. Release energy during the night.
They’re poor at long term storage. Great at fast and temp storage.
Ptsf@lemmy.world
on 10 May 2024 14:03
nextcollapse
Although we don’t see it, all of these developments do actually eventually make their way into battery tech. The batteries of today are not the batteries of 2014.
If you remember what battery powertools were like in early 2010s, it’s super obvious how far we’ve come. The higher end things like battery powered lawn mowers didn’t exist, and if you wanted real power, you needed a cord.
odelik@lemmy.today
on 10 May 2024 19:46
nextcollapse
I just wish it was an either/or situation.
I don’t always need my lawn mower/blower/weed trimmer on batteries. I wish I could easily plug them in when doing light dut work close to the house. But then they couldn’t tie me into their battery ecosystem as easily.
I’ve seen a Makita eletric brush cutter with an adapter to plug straight into a standard outlet. The person who bought the machine told me it was more expensive than a battery pack but at least it made the machine usable for longer periods of time when energy is available.
GenosseFlosse@lemmy.nz
on 11 May 2024 01:37
nextcollapse
I still remember that in the 90s till the 2000s you would get maybe 60 to 90 minutes of battery life out of a new laptop. Then it jumped to 4 or more hours thanks to better batteries, more energy efficient CPUs and displays.
jose1324@lemmy.world
on 11 May 2024 08:54
collapse
Laptops is a bad example. The improvements are moreso the chips and efficient hardware, not the battery
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world
on 11 May 2024 14:56
nextcollapse
Cord mowing has a long established tradition.
sexual_tomato@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 11 May 2024 20:35
collapse
I mowed my grass with a corded mower for a decade until the motor bearing finally disintegrated. Cost me $100 and one blade replacement. No small gas engine was ever that reliable for me
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world
on 11 May 2024 21:37
collapse
Did you ever mow your power cord though?
sexual_tomato@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 11 May 2024 22:45
collapse
Nah, just zig zag away from where you plugged it in and it’s never a problem.
afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
on 10 Jun 05:18
collapse
I mentally nicknamed them the twins. Two guys who worked together with their two drills. Each had a double sized DeWalt battery and another spare double sized. Last time I saw them was 2016. So yeah you got an acedotal backing you up.
buzz86us@lemmy.world
on 10 May 2024 19:57
nextcollapse
I really hope it leads to something no energy loss for regen would be GOAT
deaf_fish@lemm.ee
on 11 May 2024 00:19
nextcollapse
I wonder if we will get to a point where capacitor batteries will be too good.
Can you image a small issue leading to an entire instantaneous energy dump of a large capacity capacitor while on an airplane?
Make me wonder if we will limit how fast a capacitor can discharge in some consumer goods.
MeowZedong@lemmygrad.ml
on 11 May 2024 00:28
nextcollapse
I think we have more pressing issues in certain airplanes at the moment, but that’s a good point.
Yeah. Good thing we don’t fill up planes with flammable material today!
/s
SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip
on 11 May 2024 04:45
nextcollapse
I can’t wait to see this technology in motorcycles and micro mobility vehicles. It will be a mushroom in Mario Kart IRL. And imagine this tech on drag bikes/cars
reddithalation@sopuli.xyz
on 11 May 2024 07:06
nextcollapse
I wanna see some even more insane FPV drones. theres always some battery breakthrough though, so I don’t wanna get my hopes up.
antidote101@lemmy.world
on 11 May 2024 16:08
collapse
Unfortunately the technology will also be used for creating new weapons of war.
onlinepersona@programming.dev
on 11 May 2024 15:58
collapse
There are no absolute numbers in here. How much charge can it hold? How does that compare to an AAA battery? How long can it hold the charge and how does it compare? What dimensions would it need to have to store as much as a AAA battery? What’s the current projected price?
threaded - newest
Hell yeah that’s freaking awesome
I hope to see these become popular someday and with that kind of increase they’re likely to get a shit ton of funding
Material science has just been crushing it for a good long minute now.
There are materials possible that will completely change the world.
Theres probably a room temperature superconductor for example.
The number of possibilities is effectively infinite though, since its not just which atoms, but also how they’re arranged.
I thought that one was a no go? Did I miss more news?
I think they mean hypothetically.
As in, one probably exists but has not been discovered yet. Every year scientists get them running closer and closer to room temperature
Even just getting above the boiling temp of liquid nitrogen is a really big deal. Liquid helium is something we will eventually run out of and is largely dependent on fossil fuel extraction to be collected. Helium can’t be recaptured after it escapes an open loop cooling system.
LN2 is so much cheaper to run and it’s sustainable. We’ll never run out of Nitrogen so long as there’s power to cool it. LN2 is cheaper than craft beer.
I wonder if progress will be slow and steady until we finally get there or if it will be a huge jump past the finish line like there was in the 80s. Either way, I don’t expect to see practical applications outside of the lab in my lifetime…but it’s really fun to watch the science advanced, even if it is all over my head
You are right, however, it’s worth noting most of these materials are highly complex and contain exotic elements. Basically these compounds are not suitable for any real life application in long range energy transfer
There was one team fairly recently that thought they had developed one that got a lot of press, but it turned out to not be true.
But that was only for that one specific case, it didn’t prove that room temperature superconductors can’t exist in general, there are still other teams working on developing them, and theoretically they could be possible, we just haven’t quite worked out what materials will exhibit superconductivity at room temperature, under what circumstances, and how to make them.
And we have some materials that come pretty damn close, Lanthanum decahydride can exhibit superconductivity at temperatures just a few degrees colder than some home freezers can manage (although at very high pressures)
That’s why we name our ages after the materials within. Material science is the foundation for almost all other physical sciences.
How do you account for Space age and Information age?
the information age is easy: the silicon age!
not sure about the space age…maybe titanium age? that’s about the time we figured out how to machine titanium on large scales, and for highly specialized, extreme applications (talking about the SR-71 here, mostly). could also call it the alloy age, since a number of important alloys were discovered around that time
I thought it was atomic age and information age…
Or was that just empire earth…
We’re currently in the information age, which is due to silicon. In a few hundred years, this time may reasonably be called the silicon age. Society has only recently transferred to the silicon age from the previous iron age. If we don’t cause a total collapse of our society, then we will be in the silicon age for a few hundred more years, and that will likely include space colonization.
The space age you’re referring to is likely the 60s, when space exploration was beginning. A decade or two isn’t long enough to be considered an age.
There’s the industrial age too. Which I guess you could also call “The Age of Steam” or “The Age of Coal” or some other thing.
.
Headline is dumb. If capacitors are better at being batteries than batteries are, they just become the next generation of batteries.
But capacitors aren’t batteries. Batteries store chemical energy. Capacitors store electrical potential energy. Electronically they behave much differently.
Yes they do… including not holding a charge when the differential drops too far.
The real wins are in battery-backed capacitors. Charge the caps fast, then let them keep the batteries topped up.
That’s what I do being off-grid. I have my battery bank then a series of Supercaps to essentially act as an on/off ramp//drawbridge and temper quick demands. Kinda like an inverse soft starter so this is suuuuper interesting to me.
Do you have a link to a guide on his to set this up?
Only for certain types of capacitors. In practice they can overlap quite a bit, especially with common aluminium electrolytic capacitors (these form & dissolve complex aluminium oxide & hydroxide layers on the plates).
Headline is not dumb. There are reasons to make a distinction between the two, the most salient one being that capacitors are several orders of magnitude faster to charge and discharge.
Capacitors can theoretically charge MUCH faster.
However the galvanic potential of lithium is as large as is practically possible. The galvanic potential is what really matters for a battery. Capacitors are nowhere near the joules per weight/volume.
It’s not what the article says. Still interesting application of mixed 2D/3D technologies. Always hopeful that these energy developments leave the lab though.
Ha, exactly. We’ve seen the “start of the end” of batteries for decades now.
It’s only a few years away!
I remember reading about this in a textbook back in uni. Might as well have been in the telegraph era
Boom?
Shakalaka
…when the walls fell.
I took it more of an Apache Indian thing.
Close enough lol
There have been constant news articles coming out over the past few years claiming the next big thing in supercapacitor and battery technologies. Very few actually turn out to work practically.
The most exciting things to happen in the last few years (from an average citizen’s perspective) are the wider availability of sodium ion batteries (I believe some power tools ship with them now?), the continued testing of liquid flow batteries (endless trials starting with the claim that they might be more economic) and the reduction in costs of lithium-ion solid state batteries (probably due to the economics of electric car demand).
FWIW the distinction between capacitors and batteries gets blurred in the supercapacitor realm. Many of the items sold or researched are blends of chemical (“battery”) and electrostatic (“capacitor”) energy storage. The headline of this particular pushes the misconception that these concepts can’t mix.
My university login no longer works so I can’t get a copy of the paper itself :( But from the abstract it looks first stage, far from getting excited about:
“holds promise” and “has the potential” are not miscible with “May Be the Beginning of the End for Batteries”.
Yup. How long have we been waiting for graphene batteries to revolutionize technology? About a decade now?
…and the same obstacle that faced graphene a decade ago is the same seemingly insurmountable obstacle facing it today.
I've been seeing a lot about Sodium-ion just in the past week.
While they seem to have a huge advantage in being able to charge and discharge at some fairly eye-watering rates, the miserable energy density would seem to limit them to stationary applications, at least for now.
Perfect for backup power, load shifting, and other power-grid-tied applications though.
There are already cars with this technology (one of the cheap Chinese ones)
I’m doing research on high energy density Na-ion batteries. We’ll get there eventually
I thought one of the main advantages of sodium-ion batteries was price? Great for the applications you listed
And environmentally way better than Li-Ion.
They’ve also got much better lifespans, being able to cycle many more times with less capacity loss. As they currently stand, they’re much better choices for stationary storage applications. However, I have seen them implemented in power tools and cars for their discharge rates, but it doesn’t hurt that they will stay healthy for longer.
I mean, I wouldn’t mind a car with “only” 200km range, but that can charge up to full in just 5 minutes. I use my car just for work 99% of the time anyway, the times I need to go somewhere further away I can easily stop midway to charge, get a coffee in the meantime and then be on my way.
Unfortunately what's shipping today seems it would offer maybe half that.
For the batteries that were announced this past week, a larger-than-refrigerator-sized cabinet held a capacity of around 15kWh.
Around half the energy density by mass of Lithium batteries, and in the order of a sixth of the density by volume.
Now if only we could come up with a system where your car could be charged while stopped at traffic lights, we might be onto a winner (:
Considering however that the price of sodium is around 1-2% that of lithium, I expect we will see significant R&D and those numbers quickly start to improve.
|My university login no longer works so I can’t get a copy of the paper itself :(
Scihub my brother 🙏
I wouldn’t know, but it’s totally not on there, or so I’ve been told.
Sadly Sci-Hub has not received updated articles in several years. Alexandra is waiting for the outcome of the trial in India. I don’t think it depends on what the outcome is, just that the trial needs to be over.
Just email one of the researchers and ask them to send you a copy
We have the internet man, just bug another human and wait a few days to hear back from them.
Like I know that’s what you are “supposed” to do. But public money public knowledge, I refuse to accept that this is somehow an acceptable state of things.
Are these papers not listed on arxiv?
More like decades. Anyone remembers buckyballs and buckytubes? What happened to that?
Nanotubes are still a thing, but most of the hype now seems to be around ‘buckysheets’ (graphene)
There’s an old saying: “Graphene is so versatile it can do anything except leave the laboratory”.
To paraphrase one of society’s less brilliant thinkers, “Who would have thought
heathcareadvanced materials science could be so hard?”I heard that nanotubes are being used in strengthening various materials. But yeah, not world-changing
The article is listed on ResearchGate.
For anyone looking for an alternative to Sci-Hub (the GOAT), you can make a free account on RG and send a request to the authors for a copy of their paper (about two clicks to perform).
Most researchers will send you a copy within a day, maybe two. If you copy the title or the DOI link into a search with “ResearchGate” it usually shows up in most search engines.
Serious question: How is this different than all the other sensationalized headlines about some technology that’s gonna change everything, and then you later hear nothing about it?
This one features the number 19.
So specific.
It’s just two years away!!
So it will get here with fusion, flying cars, hydrogen cars, and jetpacks?
They are all calling for investors just to figure out it doesn’t scale.
That’s my assumption at least
You are reading about it in Popular Mechanics, so it’s definitely a sensationalized headline, we know that at a minimum.
I had a little discussion with a guy complaining about sodium batteries and how you keep hearing these wild claims and then nothing. I did a quick search and saw an article about a $2 billion partnership agreement to work on a pilot plant for sodium batteries. He claimed it was yet another sensational headline and doubted anything would happen from it. Less than a week later I saw an article about a plant in America being announced.
This stuff is hard. It’s not like Master of Orion where you throw money at a specific research and get access upon completion. Different groups around the world are researching a multitude of different ideas, some related, and after a while a bunch of these ideas are combined and associated and researched, and all of a sudden you have a new product that’s significantly different from what was available before. And then you see incremental improvements for decades, not unlike the internal combustion engine or rechargeable lithium batteries.
It’s the same with many infrastructure problems. You hear about some interesting infrastructure project that’s going to transform regional travel, improve transit, make biking/walking safer, or prepare for future natural disasters. Then it takes forever for them to go into place because it takes a long time to plan, do the legal work, and build. But then the infrastructure goes into place and no one thinks twice about the long process behind it.
And we should also consider the longevity of these infrastructures. Cities that built their subways in the 19th century are still running them today and are vastly superior in terms of transit abilities than car cities. The population densities of today are unimaginable without central sewers and water infrastructure. Having continent spanning electricity grids are gigantic achievements. All these have shaped our lives for decades and sometimes centuries already and they are set to do so for centuries to come.
I have an item that costs me 40 to buy. I sell you the item for 200. I get a hundred now and a hundred when you get the item. If I fill the order now I get my 100. However if I wait a year I get an interest free loan on the 40 bucks. Maybe I push you off for 10 years. I not only get the 100 you owe me I also doubled that 40. If I am a big company I can pull this off, if I am a one man operation I can’t. Guess who gets hired for these projects. Hint it isnt Jeff’s gutter repair.
And that is just fixed priced contracts. You can imagine the horrorshow of open ended ones.
Sodium batteries look great. They also can use the same manufacturing equipment as lithium batteries. Reducing the capital costs for the product.
I wonder why I even read these articles. If these do turn out to be useful it will eventually make its way into technologies I use or buy near me. I don’t have to hunt them out.
I mean the application isn’t exactly arduous but they use capacitors in solar powered watches instead of batteries. They claim you can still get 80% of max voltage after 20 years use.
Electrolytic capacitors are closer to batteries than to non-polarized capacitors. Lithium-ion cells in capacitor housings also exist, presumably to evade tariffs and restrictions involved in shipping batteries.
<img alt="Super Li-ion battery NSC1015 high ratio Li-ion rechargeable battery 80mah 3C MAX current 10150 1015mm 1pcs" src="https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/S64993155113341c4b5d0f240aa30ffabu/Super-Li-ion-battery-NSC1015-high-ratio-3-7v-Li-ion-rechargeable-battery-80mah-3C-MAX.jpg">
Electrolytic capacitors use the chemistry to make a very high dielectric allowing the plates to get very close and increase the capacitance and decrease the size.
A cell in a battery is a capacitor then converts the charge on the plates into chemical energy and vice versa allowing much more energy storage and a flat operating range as the plates charge is replenished by the chemical reaction.
This article doesn’t go into details but it sounds like the breakthrough is a much better dialectic then storing energy in a chemical reaction.
Good comment, but check your uses of “then”.
Yeah should have that. Mornings are hard.
Upvoted because this is true. I knew that information so I can confirm it. I swear I did.
This somehow makes me less trusting of the previous comment.
They’re more of a hybrid technology. They have some great applications.
Like temporary storage when using regen from a car. They can buffer the energy and help with a rapid acceleration.
Dash cam in a car. They can charge the cap and in the event in a malfunction / event. The camera can continue to record.
Solar lamps. Charge during the day. Release energy during the night.
They’re poor at long term storage. Great at fast and temp storage.
Although we don’t see it, all of these developments do actually eventually make their way into battery tech. The batteries of today are not the batteries of 2014.
If you remember what battery powertools were like in early 2010s, it’s super obvious how far we’ve come. The higher end things like battery powered lawn mowers didn’t exist, and if you wanted real power, you needed a cord.
I just wish it was an either/or situation.
I don’t always need my lawn mower/blower/weed trimmer on batteries. I wish I could easily plug them in when doing light dut work close to the house. But then they couldn’t tie me into their battery ecosystem as easily.
I’ve seen a Makita eletric brush cutter with an adapter to plug straight into a standard outlet. The person who bought the machine told me it was more expensive than a battery pack but at least it made the machine usable for longer periods of time when energy is available.
I still remember that in the 90s till the 2000s you would get maybe 60 to 90 minutes of battery life out of a new laptop. Then it jumped to 4 or more hours thanks to better batteries, more energy efficient CPUs and displays.
Laptops is a bad example. The improvements are moreso the chips and efficient hardware, not the battery
Cord mowing has a long established tradition.
I mowed my grass with a corded mower for a decade until the motor bearing finally disintegrated. Cost me $100 and one blade replacement. No small gas engine was ever that reliable for me
Did you ever mow your power cord though?
Nah, just zig zag away from where you plugged it in and it’s never a problem.
I mentally nicknamed them the twins. Two guys who worked together with their two drills. Each had a double sized DeWalt battery and another spare double sized. Last time I saw them was 2016. So yeah you got an acedotal backing you up.
I really hope it leads to something no energy loss for regen would be GOAT
I wonder if we will get to a point where capacitor batteries will be too good.
Can you image a small issue leading to an entire instantaneous energy dump of a large capacity capacitor while on an airplane?
Make me wonder if we will limit how fast a capacitor can discharge in some consumer goods.
I think we have more pressing issues in certain airplanes at the moment, but that’s a good point.
Can’t blow up the plane if it falls apart first
We already do with resistors.
And fuses and breakers
Yeah. Good thing we don’t fill up planes with flammable material today!
/s
I can’t wait to see this technology in motorcycles and micro mobility vehicles. It will be a mushroom in Mario Kart IRL. And imagine this tech on drag bikes/cars
I wanna see some even more insane FPV drones. theres always some battery breakthrough though, so I don’t wanna get my hopes up.
Unfortunately the technology will also be used for creating new weapons of war.
There are no absolute numbers in here. How much charge can it hold? How does that compare to an AAA battery? How long can it hold the charge and how does it compare? What dimensions would it need to have to store as much as a AAA battery? What’s the current projected price?
Anti Commercial-AI license