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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?

#311

Post by inigyou »

ben_w wrote: post #309
moffkalast wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should star calling silicon chips crystals, we'll sound much more legit on the galactic level.

(If you will permit the fanfic): Carter: I've finished comparing Goa'uld control crystals, all that glow is completely unnecessary. O'Neill: So they added lights inside closed boxes because…? Teal'c: The Goa'uld have always favoured displays of grandeur over practicality. O'Neill: Hold on. You're telling me the galaxy's self-proclaimed gods are flying around in gamer motherboards? Carter: Sir… Daniel: No, I think Jac…

My motherboard has useful lights. They illuminate according to the current stage of startup. I think it's CPU, RAM, VGA, and something else I don't remember. Got a RAM problem preventing boot? It hangs with RAM lit up. This is infinitely more useful than the arbitrary undocumented 2-digit BIOS codes that it also has.

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

#312

Post by moffkalast »

ben_w wrote: post #309
moffkalast wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should star calling silicon chips crystals, we'll sound much more legit on the galactic level.

(If you will permit the fanfic): Carter: I've finished comparing Goa'uld control crystals, all that glow is completely unnecessary. O'Neill: So they added lights inside closed boxes because…? Teal'c: The Goa'uld have always favoured displays of grandeur over practicality. O'Neill: Hold on. You're telling me the galaxy's self-proclaimed gods are flying around in gamer motherboards? Carter: Sir… Daniel: No, I think Jac…

On Chulak, when a great warrior writes a fanfic, it is customary to sing a song of lament.

Fortunately we are not on Chulak.

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

#313

Post by schainks »

laxpri wrote: post #173
schainks wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is billions every year on R&D not enough, especially when you measure consistent improvement year over year in the technology? 10x energy dense does not mean 10x safer. Gasoline is still widely used because it is considered one of the safest options around! The problem is more nuanced than just "let's do all the battery density"

maybe you are right . I was thinking a world where battery improvement is the rate as chip performance improvement ,

Comparing how those technologies improve is apples to oranges.

Transistor manufacturing as we know it today started in the 1950s. Lithium battery tech as we know it started in the early 2000s.

Not only is there a massive difference in time spent on each tech, but the engineering disciplines involved are completely different from each other.

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

#314

Post by jjk166 »

maxwwwt wrote: post #48
mb7733 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We can extract a lot more energy from fossil fuels in large scale plants This isn't true at all for natural gas. Burning it for heat in the home is much more efficient than burning it in a plant, converting it to electricity, transferring that electricity, then turning that electricity into heat.

The theoretical efficiency maximum for burning gas in a home is 100%. Most systems won't hit that because they need to vent waste gases, which carry some heat away. Heat pumps are significantly more efficient than 100%. They can get to 500% efficiency. So no, it's definitely not more efficient to burn gas in a home. (To say nothing of the safety of running gas lines to every house.)

Heat pumps are best for small thermal gradients. If you want your room to be a nice 70F while it's 50F outside, a heat pump is a very efficient way of heating your room. If you want a blow torch that's hundreds of degrees above ambient, a heat pump is terribly inefficient. The exact cutoff where gas heating becomes more efficient is variable, but it's typically a temperature differential between 40 and 60F.

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

#315

Post by jjk166 »

qwery wrote: post #257
jojobas wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word "battery" is a stand-in for electrochemical cell, which wood obviously isn't. Quite some advantages are expected from batteries that don't involve liquids or gels, whether incremental or not.

I don't know what more I can say to convince you that I'm not trying to put down the technology. I'm interested in it, that's why I think it's a shame to curse it with a used-car salesman marketing name. As for wood batteries, Most usage of the term 'battery' is independent of technology, outside of usually wanting electricity as the interface. The fact that most batteries people talk about happen to be electrochemic…

> Most usage of the term 'battery' is independent of technology, outside of usually wanting electricity as the interface. The fact that most batteries people talk about happen to be electrochemical cells is incidental -- it's irrelevant to whatever they are actually talking about. So yes, a lot of the time 'battery' happens to refer to electrochemical cells, but it also refers to energy storage devices in general, which wood obviously is.

Wood isn't an energy storage device. You can't have a piece of wood where the energy has been depleted. There is no device. Wood is the stored energy - it's a fuel. You consume it in some device, like a furnace, to generate energy.

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

#316

Post by jjk166 »

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…

To stoichiometrically burn 1 gram of gasoline requires 3.5 grams of oxygen, so an energy density of 9.5 MJ/g, still more than double TNT. The state of the oxygen doesn't impact its mass.

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

#317

Post by jjk166 »

vablings wrote: post #302
jojobas wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even then it's just a slow-burning fireball, not detonation, no shockwave.

Still more than enough to burn your windpipe, skin to 2/3rd degree and permanently disfigure you

All of which are symptoms of burning, not explosion.

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

#318

Post by HappMacDonald »

moffkalast wrote: post #183
Razengan wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't their tech powered by portable black holes?

The regulatory approval for those is just too expensive in practice. I mean you blow up one star due to cost cutting and nobody trusts the tech ever again...

I love how Carter blows up a star system, and then later McKay blows up 5/6ths of a star system which it turns out is deeply more complicated to pull off.

On the other hand Carter did what she set out to do while McKay fscked up and wasn't trying to blow anything up, so there is also that.

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

#319

Post by K0balt »

moffkalast wrote: post #153
K0balt wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A snickers bar has nearly 5× TNT’s energy per kilogram—TNT merely has the habit of being extremely impatient about releasing it.

I'm still surprised we haven't figured out a bioreactor you can feed your scrap food and turn it into energy, methane combustion notwithstanding. Like imagine feeding a roomba some sugar and it's set for a few days lol.

Lots of experiments along those lines, actually.

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

#320

Post by qwery »

jjk166 wrote: post #315
qwery wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what more I can say to convince you that I'm not trying to put down the technology. I'm interested in it, that's why I think it's a shame to curse it with a used-car salesman marketing name. As for wood batteries, Most usage of the term 'battery' is independent of technology, outside of usually wanting electricity as the interface. The fact that most batteries people talk about happen to be electrochemic…

> Most usage of the term 'battery' is independent of technology, outside of usually wanting electricity as the interface. The fact that most batteries people talk about happen to be electrochemical cells is incidental -- it's irrelevant to whatever they are actually talking about. So yes, a lot of the time 'battery' happens to refer to electrochemical cells, but it also refers to energy storage devices in general, wh…

Your argument seems to be that some bits of tree doesn't constitute what we would usually call a "device", and that's fair enough really. I called that out myself in the same comment, so I guess you picked up what I was laying down!

The "wood is a solid-state battery" thing was an absurd rhetorical device I used to point out -- particularly in a field so significantly connected to electronics -- that merely substituting a liquid for a solid does not justify using what will obviously be understood to be a reference to solid-state electronics.

P.S. A coal-fired steam engine is a solid-state motor.

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