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Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries?

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

#241

Post by smilekzs »

jp555 wrote: post #236
gepi79 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Where weight and size do not matter, more choices for batteries are possible. E.g. redox flow batteries. https://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/fuel-cells/its-big-and-... In the near future, atmospheric CO2 will be recycled to create organic fuel. http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2017/09/18/solar-fuel-system-recyc... https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2017/Q2/instantly-r... Solid state batteries are also intere…

“In the near future, atmospheric CO2 will be recycled to create organic fuel” That’s been around for quite a while already; you’re describing a tree.

--- at a rate orders of magnitude faster than trees currently do

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

#242

Post by cgdcraig »

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…

The article says that Australia has 14% of global reserves not that they're only mining 14% of what they have. We've also found all the easy stuff already, the cost of exploration will only increase over time since the good stuff will be deeper or in more random places.

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

#243

Post by basicplus2 »

francisofascii wrote: post #132
SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is anything truly sustainable when we live on a planet of finite resources?

The sun is our best bet. We will have it for another 5 billion years give or take.

Yeh so not sustainable.. it will run out..

and...

it will run out even if we don't use it!

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

#244

Post by ajross »

dredmorbius wrote: post #233
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.

The most-recycled material in the US presently is a battery electrolyte: lead. Reuse rate is only 68%. That's a 32% reduction in stock per generation. High rates of recycling are possible in theory, yes, but have not been demonstrated in practice. The loss rate over n generations for a recovery rate r (percent/100) is r^n. At a 90% recovery rate, you've lost 50% of initial stock in 7 generations. https://minerals.usg…

Unrecycled material isn't "lost"[1]. Those batteries are still in landfills and can be recovered at least as easily as ore can be mined. Economics will fix this for us. Increase the price of lead and at some point it becomes worthwhile to scavenge those landfills for old batteries (or to use alternative battery chemistries, etc...).

[1] Though in a handful of cases it gets dispersed in a way that's very difficult to recover. I mentioned phosphorus in another post: P is being unsustainably pulled out of rocks and put into biomass, where it gets flushed into the oceans. Figuring out a way to get it back out is a far bigger mess than mere cobalt recycling is going to be. But even there economics will save us as fertilizer costs make recovery new techniques worthwhile.

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

#245

Post by marcosdumay »

simias wrote: post #25
agumonkey wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like over confidence in any resource access, that's probably what oil digger thought 100 years ago.

Doesn't this example go against your point? I've been hearing that we were nearing the end of the oil supply since I've been a kid but the date keeps being pushed back. As the demand for oil grows the price goes up and new methods to extract more oil from the ground become profitable. Now current projections seem to target the 2050s at the earliest.

I remember oil exhaustion projected into the 2050 since I was a kid at the early 90's. Every time I ask for a source of those earlier dates, people point either at crazy conspiracy theorists or at projections of peak extraction rate at the early 00's, that seem to be correct¹.

1 - If you exclude oil substitutes that started being counted like oil by then. There have been two peaks at this time, and production is mostly staying steady. There was very little experience with how the after-peak of something with no replacement option would look like, so those projections were indeed very diverse and off-target.

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

#246

Post by syngrog66 »

jp555 wrote: post #236
gepi79 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Where weight and size do not matter, more choices for batteries are possible. E.g. redox flow batteries. https://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/fuel-cells/its-big-and-... In the near future, atmospheric CO2 will be recycled to create organic fuel. http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2017/09/18/solar-fuel-system-recyc... https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2017/Q2/instantly-r... Solid state batteries are also intere…

“In the near future, atmospheric CO2 will be recycled to create organic fuel” That’s been around for quite a while already; you’re describing a tree.

yes but... 3D printed by a neural net at Trees.com ON A BLOCKCHAIN and crowdsourced with a Kickstarter from curated ambi-sexual SanFran hipsters, avail in 5 colors for pre-order at a low low annual subscription add-on for Prime members of $79.99

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

#248

Post by Robotbeat »

xigma wrote: post #37
Robotbeat wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current 3% battery cobalt level already confirmed by 3rd party tear down analysis. "Next gen" could be years away, sure. But there are PLENTY of existing lithium battery chemistries which use no cobalt whatsoever.

There's a big difference between 3% cobalt and no cobalt. Cobalt is important for safety, skimping on it to save some money is a big risk. I'm not saying it won't happen, just that I wouldn't put money on it.

LiFEPo batteries, which are notable for their safety, use zero cobalt. There are other ways to accomplish these goals.

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

#249

Post by gepi79 »

AngryData wrote: post #221
gepi79 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO Thorium reactors are too late. In some decades, there will be enough solar power, wind power and fusion power anyway. But there is enough Uranium and Thorium for many centuries, even millennia. The most important problem to solve is climate change; besides aging as the most important reason for misery and death today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6HyNk5Duvk

I think people are underestimating the amount of energy production required for sustainability. We use fossil fuels in many other applications besides turning into combustion fuels and if we want to start scrubbing CO2 so we don't turn into Venus that is even more energy. Take fertilizer production for example, we already know it is an energy intensive proccess, a large portion of global energy supply is used on maki…

I do not know about the effects of plastic decomposition on the climate.

But the replacement of animal products by vegan food is the only sane choice for medical, ethical, economic and ecological reasons.

http://www.cowspiracy.com/

http://www.whatthehealthfilm.com/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGJq0eQZoFSwgcqgxIE9MHw/vid...

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJRjK20fHylJyf-HiBtqI2w/vid...

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

#250

Post by rbanffy »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #228
gepi79 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Where weight and size do not matter, more choices for batteries are possible. E.g. redox flow batteries. https://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/fuel-cells/its-big-and-... In the near future, atmospheric CO2 will be recycled to create organic fuel. http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2017/09/18/solar-fuel-system-recyc... https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2017/Q2/instantly-r... Solid state batteries are also intere…

> In the near future, atmospheric CO2 will be recycled to create organic fuel. If you have unlimited free energy in this near future, then maybe you can do what yoj say (or maybe electrolysis to produce hydrogen is better/more profitable). Otherwise no, this won't happen.

Hydrogen may be more energetic than a lot of stuff per unit of mass, but we shouldn't forget the tanks we need to carry it around are anything but light.
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