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Researchers Working on Liquid Battery That Could Last For Over 10 Years (engadget.com)
Jon Fingas, writing for Engadget: If Harvard researchers have their way, you may not have to worry about replacing power backs quite so often. They've developed a flow battery (that is, a battery that stores energy in liquid solutions) which should last for over a decade. The trick was to modify the molecules in the electrolytes, ferrocene and viologen, so that they're stable, water-soluble and resistant to degradation. When they're dissolved in neutral water, the resulting solution only loses 1 percent of its capacity every 1,000 cycles. It could be several years before you even notice a slight dropoff in performance. The use of water is also great news for both the environment and your bank account. As it's not corrosive or toxic, you don't have to worry about wrecking your home if the battery leaks -- you might just need a mop.
He said Canada, not USA.
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That's curious. Viologens tend to be substantially toxic. An example of a viologen is the herbicide paraquat. of which, it only takes 25mg/Kg to kill the average dog.
This is a flow battery. The cathode and anode are dissolved in the electrolyte on opposite sides of a membrane. Current can then flow across the membrane to produce electricity. Their attraction is that because the cathode and anode are in a liquid state, you can "recharge" a battery simply by pumping out the old fluid and pumping in new fluid - just like with gasoline. No need to develop specialized machinery to remove, move around, and insert heavy block batteries. The drawback is that energy density is a lot lower than for solid batteries, consigning them (thus far) to fixed energy storage systems (e.g. battery backup for a building).
They've developed an electrolyte which doesn't degrade as readily and can last a decade. The battery does not last that long. Its cathode and anode still need to be replenished to recharge it.
> In the 90s and 00s we'd get monthly articles about a new optical format that would store 1TB of data using holograms and fairy dust. None of them ever made it to market. Even now all we have is 100GB quad-layer Blu-rays.
They basically turned into the Archival Disc format, which has a first-generation capacity of 300GB per disc and a second generation capacity of 1TB per disc. The problem is that they keep delaying them: they were originally supposed to launch in 2015.
In the mean time, Sony went ahead and used BDXL for their Optical Disc Archive cartridge format, which stores up to 1.5TB per cartridge by sticking a bunch of BDXL discs into the cartridge. Those have been shipping for years. Once the 300GB discs are finally available, they're expected to use them to refresh their cartridges with capacities of 3.6 TB. They're meant to compete with tape. IIRC they cost a bit more but have much better random access times, and they're still much cheaper than hard disks.