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Battery made of aluminum, sulfur and salt proves fast, safe and low-cost

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21–30 of 79 posts

Re: Battery made of aluminum, sulfur and salt proves fast, safe and low-cost

#21
At this point I strongly distrust any 'breakthrough' article about research at MIT. After hundreds of these, I'm fairly convinced that any time a grad student pours liquid into a beaker, MIT's marketing department is out publishing the fact that Flubber has just been invented and we're all going to be saved by bouncy flying automobiles.

I mean, congrats on the great marketing department. But it's tiring to be disappointed over and over by the hype.

Re: Battery made of aluminum, sulfur and salt proves fast, safe and low-cost

#22

No information about energy density and vague information about "..the new battery cells can withstand hundreds of charge cycles, and charge very quickly..." So it does not have enough density and thus useless in BEVs and if amount of charge cycles is not counted in thousands, then it is kind of useless for renewable storage as well. But at least it is cheap.

> useless for renewable storage as well

If it's cheap enough, it might still be useful in a some sort of hybrid setting. Use this one after a more durable battery is almost exhausted. This way you'd get less cycles overall, but still have power when it's really needed.

Other way to look at it is if this one is 10 times cheaper per kWh, then you might prefer this over a more durable battery.

Re: Battery made of aluminum, sulfur and salt proves fast, safe and low-cost

#24
post #10

Ars [1] has a pretty decent article with a bit more depth. Still no mention of the cell's basic voltage which I thought was like the number one piece of information for a new battery chemistry. [1]: https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/08/new-aluminum-sulfur-...

I mean, the actual paper being discussed probably has the information you want - even if the Ars article doesn't

Re: Battery made of aluminum, sulfur and salt proves fast, safe and low-cost

#25

Hear hear, the next breakthrough like the last 20 ones we had in the last ten years. Though it's still Li-Ion, LiFePo and plain old Lead Acid in practice.

> Though it's still Li-Ion, LiFePo and plain old Lead Acid in practice.

LiFePO4 is a type of lithium-ion battery. There are also plenty of others. In 20 years cost has decreased to a tiny fraction and gravimetric density (kWh/kg) has increased 3-4x.

Re: Battery made of aluminum, sulfur and salt proves fast, safe and low-cost

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

one thing I'd have liked that I didn't spot was a joules/kg or joules/volume question, and "size" is a bit nebulous, are they talking volume or energy? if it's 1/6th cost per volume, but it's 1/7th the energy per volume, lithium would still come out ahead on cost. It's probably not, but the article and the abstract didn't clarify that to my read.

For the same energy, the mass of an aluminum electrode would need to be almost 2.4 times greater than the mass of a lithium electrode, in a sulfur-based battery (the ratio can be computed from the enthalpies of the 2 sulfides, the atomic masses of Li and Al, and their number of valence electrons). However, while there are also lithium-sulfur batteries in development, the current lithium-ion rechargeable batteries wit…

You don't have to insulate each module so one would think that last part isn't a consideration

Re: Battery made of aluminum, sulfur and salt proves fast, safe and low-cost

#27

No information about energy density and vague information about "..the new battery cells can withstand hundreds of charge cycles, and charge very quickly..." So it does not have enough density and thus useless in BEVs and if amount of charge cycles is not counted in thousands, then it is kind of useless for renewable storage as well. But at least it is cheap.

People with the paper quote 50mAh/g to 500mAh/g depending on charge rate for some reason (not discharge?). Which would give it slightly higher volumetric energy density but worse mass.

Re: Battery made of aluminum, sulfur and salt proves fast, safe and low-cost

#29
"They can not only operate at high temperatures of up to 200 °C (392 °F) but they actually work better when hotter – at 110 °C (230 °F), the batteries charged 25 times faster than they did at 25 °C (77 °F). Importantly, the researchers say the battery doesn’t need any external energy to reach this elevated temperature – its usual cycle of charging and discharging is enough to keep it that warm."

I feel like they're willing to hype anything. I'm sure this would be good for certain niche applications, but a standard operating temperature that high rules out a ton of uses and requires its own safety considerations.

I have no idea of the chemical reactions, but generally heat means wasted energy. I wonder what the efficiency is like for charge/discharge. And if they're used on a large scale how that heat dissipation would effect the local environment or climate change.

Re: Battery made of aluminum, sulfur and salt proves fast, safe and low-cost

#30
So I need a kettle of boiling water to warm up the battery in my electric bike, before I can ride off in the morning? Also, boiling-hot molten salt - I don't want that spilling on me in the event the battery is ruptured in a collision.

(Sure, I don't really want lithium salts splashing on me either; but molten salt at 90C?)

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