Another New Battery Technology
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I wish one of these "new battery technology" batteries actually made it to market. I can make a battery out of an orange, but that doesn't mean it would useful to run a car.
I'll keep dreaming, but dang, it sure would be nice if one of these ideas came through.
I'll keep dreaming, but dang, it sure would be nice if one of these ideas came through.
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What's the energy density of an orange? Pretty low, I'm guessing.
Probably take a semi-truck load or more to equal a Volt battery.
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Not really. Using a solid carbon source means that you have to atomize (literally atoms) to construct carbon nano tubes. Using CO2 may be easier. However, I'd use CO2 that was in a cylinder/tanker already instead of atmospheric.
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It doesn't depend that much on the orange which is just the electrolyte. It actually depends on the electrodes. Look up a good source of electrochemistry and you can build a orange (or any citric fruit) powered cell with two coins or two different metallic electrodes. But one cell has very little power, so yes, you need a truckload to hold enough energy.What's the energy density of an orange? Pretty low, I'm guessing.
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One orange makes a cell. You need more to make a battery which are many cells in series and/or parallel.
At this stage, this a science project funded by NSF and has a long way to go before it can be considered a battery technology. Reduction of CO2 to produce carbon is not a new technology but one that has surfaced periodically when discussion of CO2 sequestration was a hot topic.
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Haven't you heard, the Egyptians used Lemons and a crude bulb when carving on the inner walls of the pyramids.
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http://blog.caranddriver.com/a-better-battery-a-survey-of-what-might-come-after-lithium-ion/
The following three technologies show the greatest potential:
The following three technologies show the greatest potential:
- Reduction-Oxidation Flow
- Solid-State Lithium-Ion
- Metal-Air
Interesting. I'm surprised they didn't say anything about Magnesium, which seems to be a more likely candidate than those three from what I've read - either the generic Magnesium-Ion or Magnesium-Sulphur:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnesium_sulfur_battery
Still some problems to solve, but the dual electron ionization means great energy density if it can be figured out, and it sounded like the Mg-S version was getting kinda close.
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It does. It just takes a while, long enough that people forget that it was ever one of those "new battery technology" ideas once. Lithium Ion batteries first got commercialized 20 years before the first Volt was sold, and was one of those "new experimental batteries" a decade before that.
"Potential" depends on application. I can see redox flow being awesome in static installations but not so great for laptops.
Metal-Air are already really good for some things. Most hearing aid batteries use this already, and have for decades. The challenges are in RECHARGING the darned things. It can be done, but it's delicate and fussy at this point. They also store a lot of power for their weight, but can't dump it out fast.
In fact, Li-ion batteries were used in hand held devices and laptops long before they were used in cars. Marc Tarpenning and Martin Eberhard, the founders of Tesla, made their previous fortunes in the PDA/E-Book business. So they were comfortable with the technology. Just needed to scale it up.
They started up Tesla on the heels of the crushing of the EV-1s and other EVs, bypassed NiMH, and went straight to Li-ion for the Tesla Roadster. The rest is history.
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