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

Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries?

nature.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 261 posts

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

#171

Post by bdamm »

vanderZwan wrote: post #90
nickik wrote: post #72

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. And of course Toxic is not a problem because most of the metals a rare earth mine would deal with would be toxic. You can actually find heavily concentrated earth in the US that would basically count as nuclear waste because nuclear policy is so insane.

> 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.

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

#172

Post by aphextron »

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…

>A lithium-ion car battery with a 100 kg cathode requires 6–12 kg of cobalt and 36–48 kg of nickel

The wording here is also really awkward, and shows how little the author actually knows about batteries. There is no Li-ion battery in the world with a "100kg cathode". There may be 100kg of cathode material used in within the cells of a battery pack, but to say "100kg cathode" is just flat out wrong and makes me question this entire analysis.

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

#173

Post by xigma »

jessaustin wrote: post #134
xigma wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also exactly what is holding back synthetic fuels from becoming profitable. Fossil fuels will eventually lose out over synthetic fuels, but not until prices rise substantially.

How are "synthetic fuels" produced? If it's anything like synthetic lubricants, it's still fossil fuels, just with more energy-intensive processing.

From a theoretical standpoint, virtually any source of carbon could be used, you could even make it out of the carbon already in the atmosphere:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-carbon/scie...

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

#174

Post by Obi_Juan_Kenobi »

justinator wrote: post #152
ajross wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Unlike petroleum, batteries are almost 100% recyclable. Not using current technology. You can't recycle lithium (for example) using smelting. It's also not very profitable. It's still very much an unsolved problem. I would love to be proved wrong! Edit: I don't know why this is being downvoted. Using current recycling methods, the lithium is not recyclable (the cobalt is). I then asked if I am not correct, to pleas…

http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-lithium-ion...

Not really there yet, but it's ultimately a very solvable problem: the elements are right there and in high concentrations.

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

#175

Post by xigma »

nickik wrote: post #49
xigma wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Polluting the environment is damaging someone's property (private or state), for which they will eventually demand restitution. It's part of market forces. Conversely, a certain amount of pollution/environmental destruction is a price people are willing to pay.

That is all nice and true in theory. But property rights don't exist from nowhere, they need to be created by private actors or governments. Global property rights issue will not be solved by simply law-suit the way you might fix a noise problem. Governments are not only not establishing property rights they would actively prevent anybody that did. If your read the literature on the economics of property rights and R…

The point is not that "the market fixes everything", the point is these are still market forces.

Even in a completely free market, you can get screwed over.

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

#176

Post by euyyn »

KingPrad wrote: post #170

My first encounter with a "just 10 more years" projection was while writing a paper on zinc in middle school. My reference book about mining and metallurgy discussed declining reserves and that the world would be entirely out of zinc by 1985 without careful conservation. Except I was reading the book in 1995, and it was published in 1975. It became an interesting point in my paper. If this writer didn't work for a co…

> If this writer didn't work for a company that will make money off his ridiculous assertions

You mean the authors of the Nature article? Only their affiliation to Georgia Tech is listed. Or the author of that book on zinc?

Ooooh at the very bottom:

> Competing Financial Interests

> G.Y. is a co-founder, chief technology officer, a board member and a shareholder of Sila Nanotechnologies, the company commercializing silicon-based anode materials mentioned in this Comment article.

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

#178

Post by opportune »

joking wrote: post #5

This is supposing that we want big cars with big batteries, In the cities the mobility is moving toward small personal vehicles, and if you have bigger commuter needs, I hope that in the future the highways can be electrified and the cars would only need the battery to get from the highway to your home. There are not enough minerals to make batteries to replace all the current cars with their current autonomy, but a…

If we could replace gas station infrastructure with EV battery swap out stations, and redesign EVs for easy/fast battery changes, there would be no need for an electrified highway

I’ve been floating this idea around for a bit in my head and I haven’t really thought about any serious problems with it. Main issue would be if people tried to pass in low-value batteries to the network but that could be fixed with a good serial numbering system

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

#179

Post by justinator »

xyzzyz wrote: post #168
justinator wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unlike petroleum, batteries are almost 100% recyclable. Not using current technology. You can't recycle lithium (for example) using smelting. It's also not very profitable. It's still very much an unsolved problem. I would love to be proved wrong! Edit: I don't know why this is being downvoted. Using current recycling methods, the lithium is not recyclable (the cobalt is). I then asked if I am not correct, to pleas…

Are you suggesting we know how to extract lithium from a random mix of many minerals, but getting it out of the used battery is beyond our capabilities? That’s not very believable. The real issue is that, just as you hint, it’s actually cheaper to get lithium from mineral rich dirt, than to set up collection, disassembly and recovery operation for existing batteries. We can do it, it’s just not most economically effi…

> That’s not very believable.

Can you point me to a recycling facility that's doing this?

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

#180

Post by vinceguidry »

saudioger wrote: post #158
vinceguidry wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear weapons won't target cities, there simply aren't enough weapons to hit all of the military targets, so none would be left over for counter value. It makes little sense to target civilians, who can't directly inflict damage on your nation's military or citizens, when you have available military targets that will further the accomplishment of objectives. So all nuclear warfare in total war is counter force.

It's near impossible to hit many military bases without drastically impacting local civilian population with fallout.

Nuclear weaponry is both far far less powerful than it was during WW2 and the Cold War, and the buildings are also much much stronger. It's estimated that you'd need some 40+ of today's warheads to completely destroy NYC. You have to expect some to get shot down, so it's not one-to-one targeting.
Post reply on HN