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New Material Can Store Vast Amounts of Energy
ElectricSteve writes "Using super-high pressures similar to those found deep in the Earth or on a giant planet, researchers from Washington State University (WSU) have created a compact, never-before-seen material capable of storing vast amounts of energy. Described by one of the researchers as 'the most condensed form of energy storage outside of nuclear energy,' the material holds potential for creating a new class of energetic materials or fuels, an energy storage device, super-oxidizing materials for destroying chemical and biological agents, and high temperature superconductors."
They can store, but how do one extract the energy ?
Why do people always consider the mobile devices first??? Think big first:
...and finally after all other things bigger have been made to run on this you start creating the smaller versions.
- Energy storage for renewable to allow baseline operation
- Car fuel that only needs to be refilled monthly
- Backup generators that don't require huge fuel tanks
You never want to start small with new technology. Remember the problem with exploding Nokia's? I would not let a higher energy density version near my head until it's been tested in practice for years, no need to nuke my own head off...
Hahaha.. this so reminds me of this.
Folks, what they've done is make Xenon Octa-fluoride, which is an order of magnitude harder than the previously created Xenon Tera-fluoride.
As cool as it is that some chemists have managed to make a new compound that had only been theorized before, it's not enough for the drooling media. So they try to explain why it is remotely relevant and interesting, and the media replies with this sort of gross stupidity.
Science reporting at its finest.
How we know is more important than what we know.
This isn't going to find its way into any consumer products. 70 GPa? No federal agency would certify such a device to be sold into the hands of Joe Schmoe. The more meaningful consequence of this research is the demonstration of storing mechanical energy into chemical energy. In 20 years this may lead to innovations in energy storage on a massive scale, like in solar or wind power plants.
Yes, I feel perfectly safe. The energy is just as dangerous as the vast amounts of nuclear energy stored in the atomic nuclei of the apple sitting on my desk.
I was thinking, how much energy is needed to create this material ? Because if you need 1000000x the energy to store a little it's probably not as useful.
The pressure is used in a plant to create the material, the safety very much depends on how they apply that pressure. Also you could put it in the desert somewhere if that would make you feel safe.
New things are always on the horizon
Actually, it can still be very useful. The advantage of a battery is not only that it can store energy, but also makes it transportable. This would be very useful to move an energy source to a location where power generation is not (easily) possible.
Consider how solar cells, even though they might cost more energy to make than they will ever supply during their lifetime are still very useful powering a communication satellite. In the same way, this material might be interesting to send to outer space, or as power supply in other very remote locations.
Dunno... If you need 1000000x the energy, but the result can be detonated and actually release more energy per kilo than a nuke (and a cloud of atomic fluoride is just icing on the cake too), the military would drool all over it. In fact, someone probably already came in his pants reading this news.
To put it into perspective, the Manhattan Project has cost the equivalent of 20 billion 1996 dollars. (Or about 30 billion in todays dollars.) The power used by the Oak Ridge facility alone to separate the uranium that went into one of the bombs (the other was plutonium) used 10% of the total electricity produced in the USA at the time.
Compared to the modest yield of the first nukes, they genuinely pumped orders of magnitude more energy in, than they got out.
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