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

construction-physics.com

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

#131

Post by epistasis »

thelastgallon wrote: post #97
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.

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-cla…

Capital costs and round-trip efficiency are the primary reasons. Even at constant utilization, electrolyzers are expensive enough that it's hard to replace fossil-fuel generated hydrogen at the moment.

Once you 2x-10x the cost of electrolyzer capital by only using it rarely, more generation and throwing away the excess electricity often makes the most sense.

Nuclear ships are similarly super super expensive. The only reason we build them at all are for their unique and wonderful operational capabilities, as in not needing to surface or refuel. Using nuclear ships for power would so expensive that we may need to up our GDPs 10x before such wasteful use makes sense. (Though I'm hoping we do reach such future luxurious lifestyles!)

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

#132

Post by swiftcoder »

not_the_fda wrote: post #104
duped wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poorly stored gasoline can spontaneously combust, though. So more like a firebomb.

No it can't. To combust it needs ~ 500F. If you left it out uncovered in the open and allowed the it to vaporize with a spark nearby, it might explode, but thats not spontaneous combustion. Gasoline sitting in a sealed container wont spontaneously combust.

Didn't everyone have one of those old mechanic friends who liked to put the cigarette out in the can of gas to scare the tourists?

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

#133

Post by dghlsakjg »

jgilias wrote: post #29
zamadatix wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less weight (all else being equal) is the same thing as more battery for drones. I.e. better range, payload mass, and/or flight time. You probably want both cheap and poor performing as well as expensive and high performing available.

In current battle conditions isn’t the range primarily determined by the size of the fiber optic spool attached to the drone than battery capacity?

For some uses in Ukraine that is true, but even there they are still using radio for many drones, and especially their longest range drones (100+km).

There's also payload and loiter time to consider.

If you have a drone that can watch the battlefield for hours instead of minutes that is incredibly useful. Same story if you have a drone that can 3x its payload.

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

#134

Post by [deleted] »

lightedman wrote: post #56
enslavedrobot wrote: post #5

Solid state batteries come in several flavours. Most of them don't stop dendrites. The flavour you want is polymer, single ion conducting solid state with an ion transport activation energy below 10kJ/mol at room temperature and no phase transitions from -40C to 80C. That is the holy grail of SS batteries.

"no phase transitions from -40C to 80C." Well that's fine for terrestrial use but aerospace needs that range to be expanded a little in both directions, otherwise it won't be much of a holy grail if it won't cover the needs of one of the largest growing industries.

[deleted]

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

#135

Post by BiraIgnacio »

enslavedrobot wrote: post #5

Solid state batteries come in several flavours. Most of them don't stop dendrites. The flavour you want is polymer, single ion conducting solid state with an ion transport activation energy below 10kJ/mol at room temperature and no phase transitions from -40C to 80C. That is the holy grail of SS batteries.

> The flavour you want is polymer, single ion conducting solid state with an ion transport activation energy below 10kJ/mol at room temperature and no phase transitions from -40C to 80C.

what makes it so? I don't know anything about this subject, I'm really curious now about what the perfect battery would be.

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

#136

Post by HPsquared »

trollbridge wrote: post #14
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 can - it’s called a bomb. Some of the problems with batteries are heat dissipation (one of those problems that superconductors would mostly solve), fire safety, and end of life disposal. Higher energy density makes it even worse. A good place to start would be a BMS on individual cells that monitors them for general degradation, unexpected discharge, unexpected temperature changes, and can remove a failing cell fro…

Making it require air (or some other kinetic / transport process) would help with that. E.g. zinc-air battery.

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

#137

Post by win311fwg »

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…

The good news is that humans already exist, so you can already use them. It will give them something to do with AI replacing them elsewhere.

You might not like the efficiency of that type of battery, though.

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

#138

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

saltcured wrote: post #79
csours wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an interesting discussion, because if you assume access to atmospheric oxygen, gasoline is MUCH more energy dense. TNT.....: 4 kJ/gram and 7 MJ/liter Gasoline: 43 kJ/gram and 33 MJ/liter

The previous point is fair though. What is the energy density of gasoline in a stoichiometric mixture with its oxidizer and not already detonated? That's where TNT beats it by a long shot. The mixture with any chance of being stored would be some relatively low pressure gas. Edit: Or, a fair closed-system comparison to a battery would need to include a liquid oxygen tank or similar so you have the two components stor…

Air is usually quite available though.

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

#140

Post by jimt1234 »

thechao wrote: post #23
trollbridge wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can - it’s called a bomb. Some of the problems with batteries are heat dissipation (one of those problems that superconductors would mostly solve), fire safety, and end of life disposal. Higher energy density makes it even worse. A good place to start would be a BMS on individual cells that monitors them for general degradation, unexpected discharge, unexpected temperature changes, and can remove a failing cell fro…

Gasoline has 10x the energy (MJ/Kg) than TNT, but it's not a "bomb". Being a "bomb" is about energy release rate . A battery is still controlled by its chemistry.

> Gasoline ... it's not a "bomb"

My teen years would beg to differ, when some neighborhood friends and I decided to experiment with gas and bleach. The neighborhood residents, fire department and local police also had an opinion, too. (We all got into BIG trouble. Definitely one of the dumber things I did as a teen.)

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