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Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries?

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Re: Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries?

#231

Post by samstave »

ggm wrote: post #8

Oh god, another Erlich/Simons bet is needed: what's low is the level of rare earth exploration and exploitation not absolute supply. Is there a supply chain problem? Yes. Are we approaching a mad-max hell war for the last vestiges of humanities wonder mineral? Alas.. no. The ten years meme is based in a false premise. The article even says Australian known sources are only utilised at 14% and yet predicts a long term…

Humans are inherently irresponsible with their given resources.

I personally find our waste, specifically with batteries, pretty disgusting.

What would be interesting would be for batteries to be treated as a national resource, where you basically check them out and need to return them when they are finished.

I also think it would be interesting to require that certain products, specifically everything related to connecting a device to the power grid, should all be standardized and regulated.

The amount of waste in batteries, power cords, USB cords etc - just seems unsustainable. I am sure most would disagree with me, but I find all this product/design/resource waste to be evidence of lazy and disturbingly poor engineering.

I look at a particular video of Apple's as a true marker of the level of their engineering prowess (lack of):

There is a video showing the ridiculously complex method for battery replacement in the iPhoneX - requiring a many stepped procedure and a battery-tamping-device that was obviously contract manufactured by a small-ish shop for their genius' use.

I just find that with the amount of time, effort and resources put into the design development and production of all apple products (just as a singular example among many many companies) to illustrate their lack of full competence in sustainability in their products. Sure, they may reduce waste in many areas as compared to the old way, or others, but there is still a CRAP ton of waste across the board.

/rant

Re: Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries?

#232

Post by ben_w »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #228
gepi79 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Where weight and size do not matter, more choices for batteries are possible. E.g. redox flow batteries. https://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/fuel-cells/its-big-and-... In the near future, atmospheric CO2 will be recycled to create organic fuel. http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2017/09/18/solar-fuel-system-recyc... https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2017/Q2/instantly-r... Solid state batteries are also intere…

> In the near future, atmospheric CO2 will be recycled to create organic fuel. If you have unlimited free energy in this near future, then maybe you can do what yoj say (or maybe electrolysis to produce hydrogen is better/more profitable). Otherwise no, this won't happen.

PV is growing at 30-40% per year for many years now. This year’s end-of-year forecast is 0.5 TW, extrapolating that trend gives 11.5-28.3 TW in December 2030.

Re: Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries?

#233

Post by dredmorbius »

ajross wrote: post #104
l_camacho84 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australia is not utilising only 14% of their resources, they have only 14% of the known world resources. More than 50% is based on Congo were the work is performed in miserable conditions. We are all happy that we still don’t reach peak oil, but if we don’t change the way we think about progress and economic growth, in a world with finite resources will have severe consequences.

Unlike petroleum, batteries are almost 100% recyclable. Our "peak battery" is bounded at the product of "peak population" and per-capita battery need, both of which are fairly constrained. Not really the right analysis.

The most-recycled material in the US presently is a battery electrolyte: lead.

Reuse rate is only 68%.

That's a 32% reduction in stock per generation.

High rates of recycling are possible in theory, yes, but have not been demonstrated in practice. The loss rate over n generations for a recovery rate r (percent/100) is r^n. At a 90% recovery rate, you've lost 50% of initial stock in 7 generations.

https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/recycle/

https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/recycle/my...

Re: Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries?

#234

Post by gepi79 »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #228
gepi79 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Where weight and size do not matter, more choices for batteries are possible. E.g. redox flow batteries. https://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/fuel-cells/its-big-and-... In the near future, atmospheric CO2 will be recycled to create organic fuel. http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2017/09/18/solar-fuel-system-recyc... https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2017/Q2/instantly-r... Solid state batteries are also intere…

> In the near future, atmospheric CO2 will be recycled to create organic fuel. If you have unlimited free energy in this near future, then maybe you can do what yoj say (or maybe electrolysis to produce hydrogen is better/more profitable). Otherwise no, this won't happen.

IMO liquid or solid fuel at normal pressure and temperature is much cheaper and easier and safer to store than hydrogen.

Besides:

http://carbonengineering.com

http://www.climeworks.com

From https://lustysociety.org/ethics.html#climate:

Annual global fossil fuel subsidies amounting to $5.3 trillion in 2015 (6.5% of global GDP).

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X1...

According to the Global Carbon Atlas: 36 183 million metric tons of CO2 emissions in 2016.

According to estimates in 2018 by Carbon Engineering and Climeworks: The cost of capturing 1 metric ton CO2 from the air costs $ 600 in 2018 and could fall under $ 100 in 5 - 10 years. A plant could make a liter fuel for a dollar.

At a cost of $ 600 per metric ton of CO2, the capture of the emissions of 2016 (36 183 million metric tons) costs $ 21 710 billion or $ 21.7 trillion.

At a cost of $ 100 per metric ton of CO2, the capture of the emissions of 2016 (36 183 million metric tons) costs $ 3 618 billion or $ 3.6 trillion.

The organic fuel should be used with batteries and fuel cells and not with combustion engines.

In order to decrease the CO2 concentration in the environment, the waste products must be contained and recycled later without release into the atmosphere.

Re: Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries?

#235

Post by cestith »

gadders wrote: post #109

As I heard an economist say once: "The best cure for high prices is high prices."

As a Houston resident who hears a lot of news about oil prices and demand for goods from the extraction support industries, there's evidence of this every day.

Not everyone grasps self-limiting cycles and feedback signals at first. I like to point them to this old proverb about the Mullah Nasrudin.

http://voetica.com/voetica.php?collection=4&poet=706&poem=34...

Re: Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries?

#236

Post by jp555 »

gepi79 wrote: post #183
ChuckMcM wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly right. But it makes for a catchy title doesn't it? And if you're research lab is working on anodes for batteries you need to pitch urgency to get the big funding, who wants to fund research for problems that are 50 years out? But cynicism aside, the key to making renewables a practical base load replacement for fossil fueled plants is a solid battery infrastructure. And those batteries aren't 'car batteries'…

I agree. Where weight and size do not matter, more choices for batteries are possible. E.g. redox flow batteries. https://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/fuel-cells/its-big-and-... In the near future, atmospheric CO2 will be recycled to create organic fuel. http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2017/09/18/solar-fuel-system-recyc... https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2017/Q2/instantly-r... Solid state batteries are also intere…

“In the near future, atmospheric CO2 will be recycled to create organic fuel”

That’s been around for quite a while already; you’re describing a tree.

Re: Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries?

#237

Post by scythe »

l_camacho84 wrote: post #50
ggm wrote: post #8

Oh god, another Erlich/Simons bet is needed: what's low is the level of rare earth exploration and exploitation not absolute supply. Is there a supply chain problem? Yes. Are we approaching a mad-max hell war for the last vestiges of humanities wonder mineral? Alas.. no. The ten years meme is based in a false premise. The article even says Australian known sources are only utilised at 14% and yet predicts a long term…

Australia is not utilising only 14% of their resources, they have only 14% of the known world resources. More than 50% is based on Congo were the work is performed in miserable conditions. We are all happy that we still don’t reach peak oil, but if we don’t change the way we think about progress and economic growth, in a world with finite resources will have severe consequences.

It seems like the implication is that poverty in the Congo is the result of cobalt extraction. This is not supported by my understanding of the history. During the Rwandan civil war of the early 90s, Tutsi rebels with Western weapons -- rebelling against a Hutu-led genocide of Tutsis -- followed defeated Hutu factions into the Congo, ostensibly to prevent their resurgence. The resulting cross-border conflict led to the near-collapse of the Congolese government and a prolonged civil war that continues to this day.

Other countries with large resource extraction industries, such as Chile and Norway, have been able to take advantage of the profits to build their economy, thanks to their political stability. The resource curse can clearly be lifted by a suitably durable politics.

Re: Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries?

#238

Post by dredmorbius »

_r1np wrote: post #145
officialjunk wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems possible to me the US may want to deplete others’ mines while saving their mines to become the last ones remaining.

There are roughly 85,000 mines in the U.S. Of those, 62,000 are outright abandoned. Rest are either nonproducing, temporarily idled, sealed, or intermittently active. Only about 6,300 are currently active. It's not a limited resource problem but a profitability problem. Think the main article's point is that you probably want to research diversifying now before a resource squeeze forces you to catch-up.

There was a specific policy of discouraging mining in the U.S. sometime mid-century or earlier.

The history of mining in the West can be pieced together from hundreds of different online sources. The BLM spins the story that all the old mines have all been worked out and that is why they were abandoned, which is believable, but certainly not the case, although some mines have been worked out.

http://www.miningartifacts.org/Mining-Photo-Index.html has a brief history of mining by state.

Executive Order 6102 made it illegal for a U.S. Citizens to hold or own more than $100 in gold; coins, bullion or otherwise. It allowed the Federal government to seize gold and required citizens to turn in all of their gold, at the face value of $20.67 per ounce, or face up to 10 years in Prison and or a $10,000 fine.

Later Executive order L-208 essentially banned all non-essential mining operations. Gold and Silver mines being paramount on that list. Later expensive bonds were required before a new mine could be cut, which limited new mining to well funded mining companies. All of these contributed to the end of most small scale mining.

Source: https://plus.google.com/+NationalbureauofminesOrg1/posts/fDh...

Re: Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries?

#239

Post by basicplus2 »

bdamm wrote: post #171
vanderZwan wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah is radioactive but you can build a bed out of it and sleep on it so its not radioactive in any practical sense. Eh, you're technically correct in the sense that you can also make a bed out of asbestos and sleep on it and be fine, as long as it doesn't become airborne. Sure, you won't get thorium in your system as quickly but it's still a material that you probably don't want in your household or in the environ…

> those scanners we installed at all airports in the last decade will also cause more incidences of cancer, but you hardly ever hear anyone about that. Right; because compared to the radiation dose you get during the flight itself, it's nothing.

That is a different form of radiation

Re: Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries?

#240

Post by hn2017 »

Jweb_Guru wrote: post #52
ed_balls wrote: post #44

When I was in school - 15 years ago - I remember reading that we will run of oil in 2030. Seems like a similar wrong estimate.

The fact that we haven't run out of oil yet doesn't really change anything about the fact that oil-based industry is not sustainable. I don't see why this isn't a similar situation.

This is what people don't get. It's simply not sustainable and of course we need to invest in battery research. And the sooner the better.
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