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Wood Nanobattery Could Be Green Option For Large-Scale Energy Storage
cylonlover writes "Li-ion batteries may be ok for your smartphone, but when it comes to large-scale energy storage, the priorities suddenly shift from compactness and cycling performance (at which Li-ion batteries excel) to low cost and environmental feasibility (in which Li-ion batteries still have much room for improvement). A new 'wood battery' could allow the emerging sodium-ion battery technology to fit the bill as a long-lasting, efficient and environmentally friendly battery for large-scale energy storage."
Now when your battery catastrophically fails (like Li-Ion), you have the added benefit of instant campfire!
Now your laptop can be infested with termites and attract hungry chimps.
The rest of us call it charcoal...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Which has absolutely nothing to do with the subject. The article is well worth reading. What's kept NA-ion batteries away is that their anodes only last 20 cycles. They solved the problem with wood fibers covered with carbon nanotubes, and these can stand hundreds of cycles.
Again, TFA is worth reading.
Now waiting for the inevitable "that article gave me wood" joke...
Free Martian Whores!
FTR, use of the phrase "[object X] is/are (a) thing(s) of the past" kind of implies that the replacement technology is already here and adopted en masse...
That said, I'm not seeing a whole lot of graphene supercaps for sale on Amazon these days; hopefully soon.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
The use of wood is minimal and is only used as a flexible inner core for what is primarily a carbon nanotube anode. The majority of the battery is still inorganic materials.
(But, hey, one can't expect the first post to have actually read the fine article.)
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Shit that article not only gave me wood but made it swell 420% over normal capacity!
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
You know, it seems fairly simple to conceive of some kind of storage medium for solar energy that is cheap, easy, and environmentally sound. If only there were a way to gather up immense amounts of solar energy and store it in some medium that had a reasonably high energy density, was easy to store and cheap to maintain in storage, and where it was quite easy to extract the stored energy, that could even be stored as solid fuel. If only there were a way to easily manufacture such a fuel locally, at or near the point of consumption, and even better, without the use of harsh chemicals and boatloads of energy.
It's too bad nothing even remotely like that exists today.
Alas, the vengeful ghost of Sadie Carnot is sitting on your woodpile and whispering dark mockery of the efficiency of any heat engine small enough to fit in the places where we want electricity...
I will admit, that with a good steam engine and a few Stout Irish as stokers, my Analytical Engine does me good service; but spilling my cellphone's boiler down my collar last week was most painful.
Just ask the Romans how environmentally friendly sodium is. The citizens of Carthage would be able to tell you, if they were not all killed.
sudo make me a sandwich
Much like Nickel-Zinc batteries, this is a great alternative for environmentally-unfriendly power storage.
Now I have to wonder, could this be easily recycled and refreshed to a new state?
If so, despite the lower power density, I'd buy electronics using this battery without any hesitation.
What is the output voltage of such a cell and how much power drain can it withstand without going stupid?
If it can withstand high drains and provides at LEAST 1.4V per cell, I'd be happy.
the wood-nanotube anode is the main part that would need to be replaced -- so the real question is: "what is the energy input and what are the waste products associated with creating this wood-nanotube composite anode?"
'All' we have to do is increase their energy density by a factor of 10, get rid of leakage, and come up with a giood way to keep them from discharging all at once without exploding or degrading their performance too badly.
They may well get there one day, but not today.
Shit that article not only gave me wood but made it swell 420% over normal capacity!
Pity that your tube was so nano to begin with...
Ezekiel 23:20
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-ion_battery
I'm wondering how useful this technology would be for large-scale energy storage. Say you have a wind farm, and you want to grab all the power when the wind is blowing, and store it for later.
400 charge/discharge cycles seems like each battery might last a year. Then the battery is swapped out for a new one. How expensive is that part?
How much will it cost to take a wood battery and recover the sodium and tin? Would it be cheaper to dispose of the sodium and just build a new battery? How do you dispose of sodium anyway... mix it with chlorine to make salt, or just dump it in the ocean, or bury it, or what?
Hmm. I did a Google search on "refine sodium" and it looks as if, much like aluminum, you use an electric process to purify sodium. If so, then refining sodium can be viewed as another way to use excess power. Perhaps it would make sense to have a facility to recycle old sodium ion batteries co-located with a major wind farm or other large-scale variable power source?
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080514052937AAu27e4
And how does this compare with other well-understood technologies for energy storage? For example: using excess power to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.
P.S. Another article:
http://www.kurzweilai.net/a-battery-made-of-wood-long-lasting-efficient-environmentally-friendly
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
This "wood battery" is an interesting concept, but this problem has already been solved by a team at MIT. They've been developing the technology over the last several years, and are now in the process of commercializing it. The first "commercial" prototypes are expected early next year. The details are in this video lecture by the inventor, Donald Sadoway.
This technology has great potential to revolutionize the way we produce and use energy. Worth a look...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Well, Amazon has graphene and they have supercaps, so just buy them together for a nifty savings. Also, given the clever and unexpected ways UPS can mangle a package, odds are good that eventually they would arrive fused into a workable single item.
Stop. You had me at Nanoscale Fusion Reactors. You lost me at fucking tools but at least I was right there with you for a moment.
If I wasn't the person whose comment you're responding to, I would give you my last mod point.
Also, given the clever and unexpected ways UPS can mangle a package, odds are good that eventually they would arrive fused into a workable single item.
Unfortunately, we'll never know because they delivered it to the wrong address.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I keep reading it as, "Natalie Wood Battery"
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
What a clever jerk, come on. This green battery stuff is just more buffoonery.
I suspect that the 'green' angle is overstated, as it usually is; but exploiting naturally produced small-scale structures, when they can be made to suit our purposes, is hardly a scam. Biology is extremely good at building microscale features, in bulk, for peanuts. When we can make that work to our advantage, we gain the benefit of what would otherwise require some rather tricky and expensive fabrication.
Why bother with any kind of expensive, complex, and non-servicable battery? Pumped hydro is proven on a large scale, doesn't need DC/AC conversion, gets 70%+ efficiencies, and more if you seal it to stop evaporation, and is much simpler and cheaper, since it's just a high/low tank, a pump and generator.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity
If you're anywhere remotely near an existing dam, it's extremely inexpensive to just add pumped hydro storage capabilities to it. Otherwise, just find the nearest mountain, and excavate a lake at the top, as well as one at the bottom, and a few lines between them to turn the generators.
The only place massive batteries make sense is on tiny (off-grid) scales, where you can't afford to have even one person around, monitoring the systems. Maybe this will work for off-grid homes with solar or wind power. Or maybe it'll see some use in large UPSes for cell towers, data centers, etc. But it would be pointless for a grid-tied deployment, where the power company can install a central pumped-hydro peaking/leveling system when renewables begin to supply a significant percentage of base load.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant