Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?

construction-physics.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 331 posts

Re: Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?

#91

Post by womble2 »

epistasis wrote: post #76
iso1631 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all batteries need to be mobile. A 1 GWh grid scale battery takes up about 4 hectares at the moment. The UKs total energy use is about 2,000GWh a day. It would need to use 240,000 hectares to store all energy requirements (eletric, transport, heating etc) for a whole month. Even in extreme cold conditions it would last a couple of weeks. That would be about 1% of land use.

Storing a month of energy use doesn't make any sense when it comes to renewable grids. Since you don't have to mine/extract and transport an inventory, far far less storage is required.

A month is probably excessive, but there are large regions of the world where its not uncommon for both solar and wind power to be running at <5% for multiple weeks in a row.

Re: Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?

#92

Post by lightedman »

vitally3643 wrote: post #80
lightedman wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Liquid gasoline does not have anywhere near the energy of TNT," Energy density of gasoline is approximately 44 to 45 megajoules per kilogram. Energy density of TNT is approximately 4.184 megajoules per kilogram.

[flagged]

I read it all and even what is stated is mostly wrong UNTIL THE EXACT UNIT IS SPECIFIED.

And I'd know because I have to work with this IN ORBIT. I've had this conversation a dozen times in meetings with military and government.

Re: Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?

#94

Post by thelastgallon »

toss1 wrote: post #54
laxisOp wrote: post #6

We need way more research on batteries. People cant ingine what is possible if we make battery 10x energy dense.

It should be relatively straightforward to imagine — we already have that in gasoline-powered internal combustion engines. The Watt-hours per kilogram of good Lithium Ion batteries is around 250-280 Wh/Kg; for Lithium Iron Phosphate it's about 180 Wh/kg, and for Sodium-Ion about 170 Wh/Kg. The raw energy in gasoline is about 12,300 Wh/Kg but automobile internal combustion engines get only about 20-30% efficiency yiel…

An EV doesn't need to have 480 miles of range. Nobody is driving that distance daily. 98% of trips are under 50 miles. Only 0.8% of the trips are over 100 miles!

Also, EVs use regenerative braking. That should help a little bit.

EVs should be built with 100 - 150 mile range. All families with 2 cars can immediately switch one of their cars to a daily driver EV and the other vehicle is a minivan. There are lots and lots of people for whom an EV works perfectly well and if they need to go longer, US has a robust rental car industry. What would help is to let people charge anywhere they park. All workplaces should offer free charging, and companies can negotiate to get paid for charging their employees cars. The price of electricity goes negative because of lack of demand, and this is something that they can offer to the grid, demand as a service.

Re: Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?

#95

Post by aqme28 »

clickety_clack wrote: post #17
laxisOp wrote: post #6

We need way more research on batteries. People cant ingine what is possible if we make battery 10x energy dense.

I think people can imagine lighter cars and laptops and things. Is there something bizarre that’s unlocked like battery powered space launches or something?

What point is there in gasoline if we can get better energy storage in batteries?

Re: Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?

#96

Post by hwillis »

MarkusQ wrote: post #81

> because the liquid electrolyte currently used in batteries is flammable, replacing it with a solid could make batteries safer and less susceptible to fire. The problem is primarily that batteries are storing a lot of energy, which can be released when things go wrong. The electrolytes (technically, the solvents) typically don't ignite under 750°F or so, which makes them less flammable than a lot of other common mat…

The energy "stored" in the light oil electrolyte of a battery is >10x more than the electrical energy or the energy released by reacting lithium alone.

An 18650 battery weighs ~50g and stores ~10 watt-hours. 10 watt-hours is 8,604 calories, enough to heat 50g of water by 172 C or 310 F. The battery would not even burn without a liquid electrolyte to ignite.

Re: Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?

#97

Post by thelastgallon »

iso1631 wrote: post #47
laxisOp wrote: post #6

We need way more research on batteries. People cant ingine what is possible if we make battery 10x energy dense.

Not all batteries need to be mobile. A 1 GWh grid scale battery takes up about 4 hectares at the moment. The UKs total energy use is about 2,000GWh a day. It would need to use 240,000 hectares to store all energy requirements (eletric, transport, heating etc) for a whole month. Even in extreme cold conditions it would last a couple of weeks. That would be about 1% of land use.

Instead of batteries, why not green hydrogen or green ammonia? Ammonia is needed for fertilizer, storage/logistics are a solved problem. Emergency plants around that can use ammonia as fuel can solve the dunkelflaute problem?

Another option is natural gas peaker plant on a ship/barge. Have a fleet of these around that can dock at any port and supply electrictity. A peaker powership is essentially a mobile, marine-class version of an onshore peaking power plant.

What would be best long term if we have a few hundred - few thousand nuclear ships/subs that can go anywhere and supply power.

It can be the sharing economy for clean power at scale.

Re: Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?

#98

Post by andrewflnr »

raumgeist wrote: post #26
laxisOp wrote: post #6

We need way more research on batteries. People cant ingine what is possible if we make battery 10x energy dense.

I think, apart from finding better Batteries altoghether, we should build multi-tier batteries inspired by biology. Humans have bloodsugar, sugar in the Liver and then fat. All of them have their respective properties with availability and amount. This way, engineering tradeoffs could be allocated much more fine grained. For example, a while ago I read about a startup building an energy storage where they heat up lar…

Humans do that because we're big and extra complicated. The closest analogue is probably a hybrid car, though ideally you'd want one that can create synthetic fuel from its battery. But I suspect cellphones are properly analogous to e.g. bacteria that have much simpler energy storage.

Re: Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?

#99

Post by hwillis »

ck2 wrote: post #9

are dendrites why so many people are now burning down their apartment/complex charging their scooters is LiFePo4 immune to dendrite shorts? Or do they happen just don't burn?

dendrites are not really a significant problem in popular batteries. It's associated with lithium metal, vs lithium in normal batteries is in the form of salts. Solid state lets you use metal, which is much more energy dense since you don't need the salts.

The most common lithium battery failure mode is that you have a hole in the plastic separator between the +/- sheets inside the battery, which shorts and causes a hotspot that eventually starts a fire. Dendrites cause the short by growing across the gap. In normal batteries it is caused by a manufacturing defect. The outcome is pretty similar.

Re: Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?

#100

Post by kansface »

raumgeist wrote: post #26
laxisOp wrote: post #6

We need way more research on batteries. People cant ingine what is possible if we make battery 10x energy dense.

I think, apart from finding better Batteries altoghether, we should build multi-tier batteries inspired by biology. Humans have bloodsugar, sugar in the Liver and then fat. All of them have their respective properties with availability and amount. This way, engineering tradeoffs could be allocated much more fine grained. For example, a while ago I read about a startup building an energy storage where they heat up lar…

I look to a future of regularly servicing the immune system of my battery.
Post reply on HN