Lithium-Ion Battery Inventor Invents New Tech for Fast-Charging, Noncombustible Batteries

I read about this a few days ago. It sounds promising, but the real question is whether it can be made economically manufacturable. Li-Ion batteries (and Li-Poly) should be able to replace lead-acid batteries completely (higher cycle life, higher operating temperatures, higher specific energy, higher energy density, greater efficiency) yet for all these advantages (in some cases as much as 4x), we still use lead-acid for bulk storage applications where weight is not a significant limiting factor. Why? Because lead-acid is 1/10th - 1/5th the cost to acquire and maintain, thus more than offsetting any advantages that the lithium-based technologies might offer.

If this performs as advertised and can be produced at similar costs to current lithium technologies, we should finally be able to completely get rid of lead-acid. There are still questions around recyclability that should be addressed, however. Most people don't realize it, but we are capable of recycling upwards of 80% of the materials in a lead-acid battery, and upwards of 90% of all lead-acid batteries get recycled at the end of their useful life. While Li-Ion batteries are not nearly as toxic to the environment as lead-acid, the extraction processes required to produce the raw lithium ARE toxic, so recycling would help minimize that impact.
 
Naturally energy storage will be key to making Solar and Wind viable 24/7 .
Is anyone getting close to "Massive" energy storage that could see us though a long, busy and productive night?
 
[quote="ThunderRd, post:

Here's a little article about the 94-year old inventor, often projected to win a Nobel:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/opinion/sunday/to-be-a-genius-think-like-a-94-year-old.html?_r=2[/quote]
With regards to late bloomers...

I think and please tell me if I'm wrong ., But I think that Zukerman's ideas on age would be dismissed as youthful folly almost anywhere or when in our past. While I think it perfectly true that:

"Age and experience should fear youth and energy"

It is only true when youth avails itself of what Age and experience have to offer. Like everyone alive today we stand upon the shoulders of history.

I have a hunch, an intuition that almost nothing invented in my life time is really new. But rather a progression of things humanity has long labored at.

All of Youth, in all times and places is completely beholden to those who came before,

The Aged that have matured and lived to regret folly and in their mighty ascendancy over their own failings brought them forth a new generation into the world. This is as true socially and intellectually as it is biologically.

To see this as "Age vs, youth" is the folly of youth or the embittered grumblings of disappointed age.

We are brought forth. In most cases eagerly sought, nurtured and cultivated or we , in most cases, would have perished in our youth, or been reduced to unthinking slaves to our raw survival, and only so very seldom would we ever rise above our environment.
One can see these things at work in the world today.

Youth and age are but Father and Son.Mother and Daughter. All that the Mother and father does is directed toward and enshrined in their Sons and daughters..

When the
father falls
it falls to his son to take the next step and help tired bones to stand and walk on.

For they are tried bones that have spent their years learning where to go, how to get there.
If the son were to try and lead he would only go astray, the younger this happens the further afield he or she is likely to go.

When a parent refuses to let a child go astray, refuses to let them repeat the parent's own past mistakes, we call this discipline, we call this progress.

We know this is love that seeks to elevate the child above the parent.

Youth and age cannot really do without one another. When we forget this, nations fall.

Here's a bitter nut in the fire. If one is stupid in youth, one will almost always be stupid in old age.

But between stupid youth and stupid age, go with the aged. Experience has likely taught them to slow their roll and follow when in doubt, what has gone before.
To my younger friends:

Youth is but old age (that's not) waiting to happen":O}


"To the Superior man it does not matter weather death comes early or late. He does his duty and awaits his alloted time thus secures his fate."

The one advantage of a long life lies in having more time to get your shit together.
Alas far to many use extended days only to further damn themselves.

"Youth is no more a barrier to wisdom than age is a guaranty of it."

We must drink as deeply as we can. It's often along walk to the next well.

To my older friends
Be nice, soon or later they are going be be bigger than you think are.LOL

We spent our youth to be here now, our days are growing shorter and we have more yet to do or we wouldn't be here now. Now is always a good time to strengthen our resolve!

When you tire of my co-opting every thread with the dimness of my insights and the feebleness of my assertions, say something and I'll practice a bit more restrain in where I post.

I'd fix my dim feebleness, but that is the trouble with dim feebleness, it becomes very hard to strike a match!

Blessings ":O}
 
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Or as a very good chief engineer, sadly departed, put it, "oh look, a graduate! Quick, employ him while he still knows everything!"

Gizmo said:
If this performs as advertised and can be produced at similar costs to current lithium technologies, we should finally be able to completely get rid of lead-acid.
Click to expand...
I would expect it to be significantly cheaper - at least, once the patent has expired. It depends on what metals are used to dope the glass to make it capable of transporting ions across the glass matrix.

If they're particularly rare or tough to produce, then the glass could be the limiting (and toxic) factor. Or the cathode.

If the cathode is similarly cheap and non-toxic, then glass being fused sand, sodium reacting down to its chlorides and carbonates without fuss, and the cathode hopefully becoming an equally harmless salt, we might not even need to worry about recycling them, beyond the copper contacts and plastic shell...

... and that really would be revolutionary.
 
Kaitain said:
If the cathode is similarly cheap and non-toxic, then glass being fused sand, sodium reacting down to its chlorides and carbonates without fuss, and the cathode hopefully becoming an equally harmless salt, we might not even need to worry about recycling them, beyond the copper contacts and plastic shell...

... and that really would be revolutionary.
Click to expand...

In principle, yes. In practice, even relatively benign materials can become a problem when you are talking about large quantities. We're much better off to design with recycling in mind from the get-go than to try to shoehorn it in later.
 
Gizmo said:
In principle, yes. In practice, even relatively benign materials can become a problem when you are talking about large quantities. We're much better off to design with recycling in mind from the get-go than to try to shoehorn it in later.
Click to expand...
We now have 5 plastic islands afloat in our oceans. I was shaken and afraid when we only had one! They are the size of States

Plastic, I never liked it. always found myself wishing what ever I was looking at was made of something else. Now our beaches are going plastic tiny bits of everything we've made then threw away without a though to where it would land mixing with the sand.... My God! Talk about change on a global scale!
 
"oh look, a graduate! Quick, employ him while he still knows everything!"

Oh, I like that one! ":O}
 
Gizmo said:
In principle, yes. In practice, even relatively benign materials can become a problem when you are talking about large quantities. We're much better off to design with recycling in mind from the get-go than to try to shoehorn it in later.
Click to expand...
Indeed. Although sodium is about the fourth most abundant element on Earth's crust, a couple of orders of magnitude more abundant than carbon. And it's reactive enough that it doesn't exist in elemental form for long. So if life had a problem with sodium... life simply wouldn't exist.

But I agree with the general principle, especially when it comes to the case, the contacts and (depending on what it's made from), the cathode.
 
See what happens when we stay on topic! We run out of things we need to correct!

So I reached in to my "Run out of things to say?" bag and snagged this one:

"29 spokes has the wheel
But it is the empty hub, that makes it useful."

Lao Tsu
 
Kaitain said:
Indeed. Although sodium is about the fourth most abundant element on Earth's crust, a couple of orders of magnitude more abundant than carbon. And it's reactive enough that it doesn't exist in elemental form for long. So if life had a problem with sodium... life simply wouldn't exist.
Click to expand...

Tell you what. Let me salt your yard. :)
 
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