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Metal-Free 'Rhubarb' Battery Could Store Renewable Grid Energy
sciencehabit writes "A molecule nearly identical to one in rhubarb may hold the key to the future of renewable energy. Researchers have used the compound to create a high-performance 'flow' battery, a leading contender for storing renewable power in the electric utility grid. If the battery prototype can be scaled up, it could help utilities deliver renewable energy when the wind is calm and the sun isn't shining."
Abstract.
"Wow - a rhubarb pie? For me? Let me carve out a slice right now!"
"BZZZZERK!"
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
If I lost 100 lbs and got $100k in plastic surgery I could maybe be a model too!
...a model what?
( *poof!* - you're now plastic and at 1/144th scale )
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
The summary implies that this technology could be used for large-scale power, but I wonder what the storage density is.
Specifically I wonder how this compares to liquid metal batteries. If everything Professor Sadoway says about the liquid metal batteries is true, those really will provide grid-level storage of power.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Of course any attempt to store NON-Renewable energy will invalidate the warranty,
Never rub another man's rhubarb.
Yeah, go read what your own post actually says.
Bart Korman is the sponsor of House Bill 44 (HB44). The bill would allow Missouri utilities – including Ameren, Kansas City Power & Light, and Empire Electric Company – to count ancient hydroelectric plants like the 83 year-old Bagnell Dam towards compliance with the RES.
Clue: Hydro Power IS Renewable Power. Its perfectly appropriate.
In addition, HB44 would allow these utilities to purchase “renewable energy credits” from hydropower from anywhere in the world, of any size. If HB44 goes into law, utilities will change nothing about where their power comes from, and instead Missouri ratepayers would literally be subsidizing large hydropower from faraway places like the Hoover.
In the large picture, it doesn't matter where the power enters the GRID. We've been "wheeling" power for close to a hundred years.
There isn't wind power everywhere, so getting those areas that do have it to put it on the grid makes sense. If there is nobody living
in a a windy area, there would be little reason to build a wind farm there unless you could find remote purchasers.
Your example is seriously flawed. Your understanding of power generation is seriously lacking.
But I gotta say, your tinfoil hat is bright and shiny.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
EETimes has a more useful article. This is more like a reversible fuel cell. The working fluid is pumped through the cell, where a chemical reaction occurs. The process is reversible. So there's a "charged" fuel tank, a "discharged" fuel tank, pumps, and plumbing. No info yet on the energy density of the "charged" fuel tank, which is the big question.
In the galvanic direction, peak power densities were 0.246Wcm2 and 0.600W cm2 at these same SOCs, respectively (Fig. 1c). To avoid significant water splitting in the electrolytic direction, we used a cut-off voltage of 1.5V, at which point the current densities observed at 10% and 90% SOCs were 2.25 A cm2 and 0.95Acm2, respectively, with corresponding power densities of 3.342Wcm2 and 1.414Wcm2. ...
The galvanic discharge capacity retention (that is, the number of coulombs extracted in one cycle divided by the number of coulombs extracted in the previous cycle) is above 99%, indicating the battery is capable of operating with minimal capacity fade and suggesting that current efficiencies are actually closer to 99%. ...
AQDS has an aqueous solubility greater than 1M at pH 0, and the quinone solution can thus be stored at relatively high energy density—volumetric and gravimetric energy densities exceed 50Whl1 and 50Whkg1, respectively. ...
As shown in Fig. 2, current efficiency starts at about 92% and climbs to about 95% over ~15 standard cycles. Note that these measurements are done near viable operating current densities for a battery of this kind. Because of this, we believe this number places an upper bound on the irreversible losses in the cell. In any case, 95% is comparable to values seen for other battery systems.
I'm not an expert in any applicable field, but as I have institutional access to the original paper, I scanned it to find what looked to me like relevant numbers. As I interpret the above:
It generates about 0.5W cm^-2 of membrane, so you'd need 2m^2 to get 1 kW output. (But presumably this can be in some compact folded/layered configuration.)
It can charge much faster than it discharges: that 2m^2 of membrane would let you charge at about 4kW.
The storage capacity of the battery fades at less than 1% per charge/discharge cycle.
One litre of reactants lets you store 50Wh of energy (i.e. 20kg for a kilowatt hour)
I think the last paragraph is saying that, neglecting pumping costs, it returns about 95% of the energy you put into it.
Note that we can expect these numbers to improve with further research, but whether there are big improvements to come or only minor ones I couldn't say.
Also: They use a two-reactant-tank set up rather than four tanks, so each tank holds a mixture of the 'charged' and 'discharged' forms of its reactants (e.g. one tank holds a mixture of Br2 and HBr.) I'd naively expected a four tank set up.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Right. Buckets of liquid bromine in a gizmo at home, what could possibly gone wrong?
I doubt the utilities would like this, but for the average home dweller with solar panels it would be useful.
Or we could use the battery in cars, so that while we charge our car in it's garage, when the sun goes down, it can power the house back the other way.
Which makes it really difficult to get to work the next morning.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
It's about storing a large amount of energy in a very large amount of electrolyte without similarly large plates and electrical connections. For power storage they are thinking in terms of batteries the size of buildings, perhaps built like current sewerage-treatment plants, to store energy in the electrolyte and move it along, bringing it back to the electrical assembly with pumps as needed. It can be considerably less energy-dense than current batteries in pounds per erg and still be far more practical for the kind of large-scale storage the tech is aimed at.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
For grid storage your battery will be a building. It can be as large as necessary; it's the price of the infrastructure and reactant to store and re-create enough energy to get the solar farm past a rainy day which are limits.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
I doubt it.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
In case you haven't noticed, you are not sitting around at night in a house illuminated by candles, kerosine, whale oil or burning gas. This is because inventing new useful technology is hard, and takes many trials over a extended period of time.
There are at least two startups with new technology battery systems installing units in the next year or so: Ambri and Aquion .
Anyone with $0.05 shouldn't give it to you because it would be a waste of resources. They should invest it in one of these companies (or competitors) and take a chance on making money and making the future more sustainable.
Why is Snark Required?
Edison said that, but Edison a mediocre inventor and a bad person. Inventing new useful technology isn't easy, but the best approach usually isn't to use the brute force technique.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Isn't anyone concerned that one of the reactants is a halogen?
To be fair, there is talk about scaling them up to run electric cars.
No, the issue today with large ultracapacitors is that 1. tend to be experimental and 2. very expensive.
The advantage of doing something city size is you don't need to spend the extra cash on what ultracacitors are good at - small size and rapid discharge.
I used to be a big advocate of the idea of having big batteries to store electricity from unreliable and "green" energy like wind and solar. That was until the cost of wind and solar power really sunk in. Wind power is on about par with peak energy generation like natural gas turbines, which is somewhere between 2x and 3x the cost of typical base load power like coal and nuclear. Solar power is so expensive, and variable (based on location, weather, usage, etc.) that it boggles my mind that any utility would even consider it. Then I recall all the subsidies from tax money spent on this nonsense that it starts to make sense to me again.
The cost of the wind and solar power is high enough that adding to the cost with storage has got to mean the total cost to the utility, and therefore the customer, would be something like 4x what coal and nuclear would cost. Then the size of these batteries would have to be astronomical.
One thing that concerns me is the environmental impact these batteries would have. The materials for the batteries would have to come from somewhere. I assume they would have to be mined out of the ground. These batteries would have to be manufactured, transported, etc. The carbon footprint of pouring the concrete pad these would most likely have to sit upon would have to be quite large.
Another question of environmental impact is, what if there is a leak? The stuff used in the batteries may have been derived from plant material but too much of anything can be bad. I grew up on a farm, I saw what too much water can do. I also saw what too much fertilizer can do, it burns the crops almost as if it was set on fire. What will the liquids in this battery do to crops and water supplies if there is an accidental release?
At least with nuclear power any radioactivity will decay away, with a chemical spill that stuff will always be there. I would much rather see someone come up with a technology to make the production of ammonia cheaper and not rely on natural gas. Ammonia is a fertilizer, a naturally occurring substance, and a fuel. An ammonia leak would still be an asphyxiation hazard, a fire hazard, could burn crops, and could pollute a water supply. However, ammonia is a gas that breaks down into nitrogen and water in the air. The stuff they use in this battery contains bromine and sulfur, what would that do to the water table?
No thanks, I'll take nuclear power instead.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
No doubt Hydro changes ecosystems, but unless you are damming very large rivers and endangering fish runs, the ecosystem changes are not significantly different than what was there, (larger lakes where smaller ones were).
The single most significant impact seems to be on certain species of ocean going fish.
As often as not fish and bird populations are improved by lakes forming upstream of dams.
The alleged damage is merely change, and not irreversible change, but some people won't accept any change.
They bitch long and loud about it while sitting in their houses built on huge tracts covering vast regions of prime farmland, prairies and forest.
In many regions, we are tearing out no longer needed dams:
Cool Video Condit Dam: http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/news/environment-news/us-condit-dam-breach-vin/
Time lapse Elwa Dam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUZE7kgXKJc
NYT Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/30/us/30dam.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Maine: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/12/us/maine-dam-removal-a-start-to-restoring-spawning-grounds.html
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Definitely. If he was scaled up he would be a fish.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
True. And snakes scale horizontally.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
Power companies are trying to op out of solar power subsidies.
Because the grid is not designed to handle significant amounts of unpredictable single phase power coming from residential customers, at inconvenient times of the day, and it is definitely not designed to pay retail rates for power from any source. Residential solar uptake in those areas is reaching the saturation point at which the grid simply cannot handle any more without a very serious overhaul, which includes pervasive bulk energy storage. They're fighting back against legislation that requires them to pay for power they cannot use, and increase the rates on the rest of their customers to compensate.
That's not false, but remember it's completely intentional. A well built network is overprovisioned, as /. readers know from personal experience, but the power grid is not currently well built because of Reaganista cost-cutting and profit-maximizing being prioritized over continual upgrade, expansion and maintenance. From 1988 to 1998 demand grew by 30%, while transmission grew by only 15%; from 1999 to 2009 demand grew by 20% and transmission by only 3%. My local energy provider stopped doing any line maintenance for five years straight - and only restarted two years ago because the annual cost of repairs from fallen limbs had significantly exceeded (by 2x according to their annual report) the cost of maintenance. The current business climate is intentionally shortchanging the future, because the consequences of this are easy to monetize. Energy shortages are a desired end goal, as demonstrated by the intentional bottlenecking of path 15 during the fake California energy crisis that everyone blames Enron for (in reality, that situation was created by a vortex of Democrat incompetence, Republican chicanery, and Big Business sociopathy, and Ken Lay was a sacrificial goat).
It's been empirically proven that adding residential solar increases the capacity and reliability of the grid, but only up to a point. Generation of power closer to points of use and across a distributed network decreases (but does not eliminate) the need for huge, costly transmission lines. Guerilla solar has existed for decades, of course, and you may be using power your next-door neighbor illegally placed on the grid right now. Modern non-islanding grid-tie inverters make this a safe and commonplace practice. Saturation is only really possible when you've discontinued hundred-year-old expansion and upkeep plans and defanged public watchdogs through electoral manipulation (such as secret campaign contributions) and political action (such as PAC funding).
It's cheaper and more profitable to break the system in order to maintain central control than it is to return to the days of utility expansionism and empower distributed production. It's the usual hoary old "socialize risk and privatize profits" strategy; the super-rich power producers inevitably win, just by failing to improve the grid in the name of cost management. Don't think Washington doesn't know this!
Yes. Although the need for the overhaul was exhaustively researched and documented before Jimmy Carter left office, the result of those analyses has been that power generators and service providers have vastly increased the resources they devote to political subornation and regulatory capture, in order to avoid building a system that is beneficial to the human race, because it would make their leadership part of the top 20% middle class instead of part of the top 1% jet set.
Exactly. They've built an excuse to do what is the worst possible thing for the human race and for our social and cultu
Stop spread FUD. The vast majority of solar cells are polycrystalline silicon. Nitrogen triflouride is only used for etching thin film solar cells, which requires only small amounts of the gas. In addition, flourine can be used directly, or the unused nitrogen triflouride can be captured.