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Ditch the Batteries: Off-Grid Compressed Air Energy Storage

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Re: Ditch the Batteries: Off-Grid Compressed Air Energy Storage

#171

Post by vvanders »

dwyerm wrote: post #89
throwaway5752 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a video somewhere of a failing flywheel, it's a fairly energetic explosion. I follow the energy space, also, and ... while I didn't expect Li batteries to have grid scale roles, I didn't think flywheels were going to succeed there. They have properties more like ultracapacitors (discharge rate suitable for continuous backup, clean up messy grid sine waves). I thought pumped air/pumped water was more likely be…

> it's a fairly energetic explosion So is a lithium battery explosion. So is a gasoline explosion. So is a flour mill explosion. So is a wind turbine explosion. Energy is energy, and losing control of energy is never great, no matter where it comes from. So while I catch your meaning, it might be better to phrase it with respect to how controllable that energy is. From what I know of flywheel storage, the problem mos…

Ever seen a tire come off of a semi?

Assuming the flywheel keeps its integrity it's much harder to predict the "blast radius" of where that thing is going to go.

Re: Ditch the Batteries: Off-Grid Compressed Air Energy Storage

#172

Post by tambourine_man »

gnode wrote: post #53
tambourine_man wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My knowledge of physics is very basic and practical engineering is zero, but storing hydrogen in compressed tanks always seem very impractical to me. It's the most freaking volatile element in the universe. And atomic hydrogen reacts with pretty much anything. Leakage and corrosion. From my armchair perspective, storying it in chemical bonds (like nature does) makes a lot more sense.

> And atomic hydrogen reacts with pretty much anything. But we don't store atomic hydrogen; we store molecular hydrogen (H2).

But I would imagine a small percetage at least would break into Atomic Hydrogen, H+, H-, right? And those things are nasty.

Re: Ditch the Batteries: Off-Grid Compressed Air Energy Storage

#173

Post by reaperducer »

fleetside72 wrote: post #90

I worked for a company that had old underground mines and a power company used them to fill with compressed air when energy was cheap and then release and generate electricity when it is more expensive. My company got a cut.

I used to have friends in the oil industry in the 90's, and I remember them talking about the industry maybe using dried up wells the same way.

I don't know if it ever became anything, though.

As much as people consider the oil industry a bunch of evildoers, it is always at the forefront of the absolute latest in tech. Hard problems + money does that.

Re: Ditch the Batteries: Off-Grid Compressed Air Energy Storage

#174

Post by stcredzero »

johnbrodie wrote: post #123
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you could point them backwards for a little extra thrust ...

Modern supersports are pushing ~200hp, no need for the extra weight that would generate the thrust.

The Spitfire actually used the jet propulsion of the rearward facing exhaust for an extra few horsepower. Many piston engine aircraft do this.

Re: Ditch the Batteries: Off-Grid Compressed Air Energy Storage

#175

Post by wbl »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #129
microcolonel wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that's a bit easier to manage/less likely to cascade. What gives you that impression? Seems to me that it explodes if you contain it, and if you don't contain it, it can spout jets of thermal energy at virtually any angle. With flywheels you need to arrest it in bulk heavy objects that don't tend to sustain fire. That seems a lot simpler to me. The bigger problems with flywheels are cost of manufacture and (dependi…

What gives you that impression? Insulation is cheap, effective, and very compact. And it's easy to transfer heat quickly, also (either via injecting lots of cold extinguisher or flush lots of hot oxidizing gas)? Cool, thanks for the update on flywheels. I ... am not trying to create a false dilemna, here. Fuel cells for stranded methane deposits are great. Flywheels have outstanding responsiveness and energy density.…

Except we've had a carbon free baseload tech for decades now.

Re: Ditch the Batteries: Off-Grid Compressed Air Energy Storage

#176

Post by agumonkey »

jcranendonk wrote: post #146
agumonkey wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my english is flawed, I was trying to say that. Water is not pressurized but feel scarier than air for most people, so they go care free around compressed gases.

Water is pressurized. However, it is not compressed. That's an important distinction.

I'm fuzzy and since water is incompressible, "pressure" may not have the same meaning on water than on other substance

Re: Ditch the Batteries: Off-Grid Compressed Air Energy Storage

#178

Post by blevin »

dwyerm wrote: post #89
throwaway5752 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a video somewhere of a failing flywheel, it's a fairly energetic explosion. I follow the energy space, also, and ... while I didn't expect Li batteries to have grid scale roles, I didn't think flywheels were going to succeed there. They have properties more like ultracapacitors (discharge rate suitable for continuous backup, clean up messy grid sine waves). I thought pumped air/pumped water was more likely be…

> it's a fairly energetic explosion So is a lithium battery explosion. So is a gasoline explosion. So is a flour mill explosion. So is a wind turbine explosion. Energy is energy, and losing control of energy is never great, no matter where it comes from. So while I catch your meaning, it might be better to phrase it with respect to how controllable that energy is. From what I know of flywheel storage, the problem mos…

Are buried flywheels used in practice? Is the flywheel axis aligned with the Earth rotation axis? Do they pull a vacuum around it?

Re: Ditch the Batteries: Off-Grid Compressed Air Energy Storage

#179

Post by at-fates-hands »

Davertron wrote: post #105
linsomniac wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the late 1800s, city planners met to try to come up with some plan for dealing with "the manure problem". Large cities couldn't handle the amount of manure produced by the horses in the city. They ended the meeting early, because they couldn't come up with any sort of plan. Then cars came along and they were all like "Yay! The pollution problem is solved!" I too wonder what the impact of so many lithium batte…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9gnvZLkewg

Not economical to recycle Lithium right now.

Recycled lithium is as much as five times the cost of lithium produced from the least costly brine based process. It is not competitive for recycling companies to extract lithium from slag, or competitive for the OEMs to buy at higher price points from recycling companies. Though lithium is 100% recyclable, currently, recycled lithium reports to the slag and is currently used for non-automotive purposes, such as construction, or sold in the open-markets. However, with the increasing number of EVs entering the market in the future and with a significant supply crunch, recycling is expected to be an important factor for consideration in effective material supply for battery production.

Closed loop recycling, where the recycled materials are sold back to OEMs, is likely to help against potential price fluctuation of metals or compounds. EV battery recycling is expected to play a significant part of the value chain by 2016 when large quantities of EV batteries will come through the waste stream for recycling.

https://waste-management-world.com/a/1-the-lithium-battery-r...

Re: Ditch the Batteries: Off-Grid Compressed Air Energy Storage

#180

Post by gargravarr »

joncrane wrote: post #75
drizzle87 wrote: post #24

I was quite excited by compressed air storage when Lightsail came into the picture almost 5-7 years ago. Sadly, they could not make the economics work and ended up pivoting into a company that sells carbon fibre tanks for high-pressure storage. As someone who follows the energy space closely, Lithium ion batteries now have so much momentum and $$$ pumped into them via R&D work, it's going to be hard for competing ene…

Aren't flywheels used in datacenters to cover the split second between when the power goes out and the generators kick on?

Some DCs do, but the need to keep them spinning 24/7/365 is a big maintenance issue, so given the advances in battery tech, I'd assume batteries would supplant flywheels for cost and safety reasons.
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