China has Made A Water Based Battery: But Does it Live up to the Hype? 

So many thing wrong with this video: 1) iron flow batteries that use iron, vanadium and chlorine are already in service. If adding bromine was the panacea that this video makes it out to be, companies making iron flow batteries would have already figured this out. Bromine, chlorine and iodine are all halogens. Their research would have included all of them. 2) you said this “new” battery lasts 1,000 charging cycles. That is less than lithium ion batteries in cars that have advanced battery management, like charge controllers and water cooling. They already last for 1,500 charging cycles. 3) In the slides you show show this battery is using Cd, cadmium, which is a still a rare metal and it is very toxic, after you went on a rant about how lithium batteries use rare earth metals, while cobalt and manganese are rare, but do not qualify as rare earth metals. 4) China, the largest battery manufacturer, is using lithium iron phosphate batteries in 50% of their cars and 75% of their grid scale storage batteries, and those don’t use any nickel, manganese or cobalt. And they don’t have the fire risk that lithium NMC batteries have. 5) you talked about how using nickel is bad, but in the slides you show, these batteries also use nickel. Normally your videos are good, but this one is a dumpster fire.

Would be great for everyone if this pans out but there are an ENORMOUS amount of potential battery technologies that work in-lab on a small scale that cannot scale up in any practical or cost-effective way. Cautious optimism is the name of the game here.

3:53 "Nor can [lithium-ion batteries] be recycled" he says, while showing a clip from a lithium-ion battery recycling facility.

Put that water based battery on the shelf next to the 100 mpg carburetors and the electrolytic cells that break down water and feed the hydrogen and oxygen into the engine.

This video was mostly talking about how great a new battery would be, and less about the yet to be reproduced study

Woah, your writers need to do some more research. You were showing “black mass”, which is the recyclable material that comes from recycling lithium ion batteries while you were literally saying that lithium ion batteries can’t be recycled. That is kind of fucked up.

I will believe in this new battery when it has been tested and found working by other sources. And I will belive in the manufacture and usage of these when it had been shown that they are as simple and cheap to manufacture as claimed. There have been so many innovative battery technologies unleashed in just the last fifty years, and yet only four really made the transition from idea to product, and of these three are lithium based and the last a variation on the NiCad batteries. What is almost as strange is that even back in the 70's something as basic as the charging of NiCad cells were close to black magic. The charge rates and discharge leves were something where scientific studies hadn't made much difference. Batteries were charged and discharged using the same ideas as was used in the 40's. And this was after NASA had released their information on battery maintenance. But as it didn't fit the common ideas it was ignored by almost everybody. This is something that has improved with modern battery chemistry. There has been more data on charging and discharging these batteries and we know more about how the charge cycles degrade them. I won't believe in any new battery tech that promises to double the energy density unless it's really made into a working product.

"Most rechargeable batteries are lithium ion" Shows one of the few LiOn batteries that's not rechargeable.

Whoever does your research made a big Oops here. Lithium Ion batteries are very much recyclable.

I couldn't stop staring into the closet on the left. The door is open, and I need to know what is in there.

I'm still waiting for my airless tires promised 35 years ago. Not a month goes by without a couple amazing battery breakthroughs that never leave the lab.

I made a battery from a lemon. World changing, I know.

They were singing the same praises of "solid state" batteries 6 years ago! What ever came of that?

As someone who has worked for ten years in the battery recycling industry, thank you for mentioning the recycling problem with Lithium batteries. There is no financially feasible method to recycle them. The only places that do have to be government subsidized. (aka, you pay for it through taxes) This means that nearly all of them are winding up in landfills. To contrast with lead-acid batteries, lead is 99.9% recycled and is done by private companies because the results pay for the process without government subsidies. Additionally, due to the EPA restrictions added in the 1970's, only the companies that have implemented stringent environmental controls are still in business.

Great. Now we can get back to putting lithium in 7Up.

Watt hours/litre and watt hours/kg are different things and want both to be as high as possible. First is energy/volume and second is energy/mass

Lead acid car batteries are water based. Before you were born we used to be able to pop the tops on a battery Before you were born we used to be able to/need to pop the tops on a battery and add warm water. This was done in mostly northern climates for cranking power. Trucks, tractors and aircraft. Maybe ask them living in Siberia how they got long quite well at -35C in the 50's

IS IT APRIL FOOLS AGAIN? THIS VIDEO HAS SO MANY MISTAKES I WOULDN'T KNOW WHERE TO BEGIN 😂😅😮

How many freaking YT channels does this guy have? Everywhere on YT I go, Simon is bound to be in some of them.

Lithium ion batteries can DEFINITELY be recycled What are you talking about?

I’ve heard about so many wonder batteries that didn’t come to market that I could walk on them across the Great Lakes when placed end to end. I’ll believe it when one shows up in my phone or car.

Ok, I will need to read the actual paper, but just a few thoughts. First, iodine/bromine do the work here, not water, just like lithium does in conventional batteries, so saying it is aqueous vs lithium batteries is somewhat confusing. Second, lithium is unique that it is the third lightest element (after hydrogen and helium), and it also generates the highest voltage. Now, bromine and iodine are very heavy elements, so if they managed to get better energy density per weight compared to lithium batteries, it sounds pretty crazy, but who knows, maybe….

You still need some way to charge those new batteries for an industrial society, and it won't be with windmills and solar panels. Embrace nuclear power.

Oh, bromine. That sounds safe

they also discovered cold fusion and alchemy. totally legit!

The Sodium Battery is actually now on sale in the UK.

Every couple of months, there is some huge breakthrough in Battery Technology. It's more stable, it charges really fast, it's got a higher energy density, it's cheaper to make. It always has at least two. Even John Goodenough, the inventor of Lithium Ion Batteries, came up with an improved, solid state battery, and we aren't using it. I've grown pessimistic about seeing new batteries enter the market. In EVs maybe, but elsewhere? I think it's going to be a while.

I've been waiting for a water-fueled combustion engine for as long as I've waited for mainstream consumer flying cars. The clock is ticking on those two gems. I will now start the timer on the water-based battery and see if it can beat the time of the other's time to market.

We've been building these water badäsed batteries for a long time. They consist of two lakes, one is situated on a higher elevation than the other. Those get connected via a big pipe with a pump and a turbine. You want to store energy, you pump water up the pipe. You want to regain energy, you let water down the pipe and the turbine produces electricity. Easy!

I could have taken a bath, gone shopping, cooked dinner and then come back and the intro will still be going.

Y'know, if this pans out, these researchers deserve all sorts of medals, and/or long-ass tenures if they don't already have them. Absolute legends (allegedly).

This guy loves the sound of his own voice. Trying to watch this I just kept screaming 'Get to the point!'

This study was published back in April. If the battery was as simple to construct and replicate as promised, it would have been independently replicated by now--and if it was truly revolutionary, we'd be hearing about it everywhere.

I still remember how some random person online said that the only reason we wouldn’t be able to make Optimus Prime in real life is because of, “BATTERIES” xD

Meanwhile, industry just keeps putting in more, bigger lithium based energy storage systems on grids all over the world. EV growth continues unabated with lithium batteries as the predominant driver. Still the price of lithium remains fairly low. I'm driving a car with LiFePO batteries with no cobalt or nickel or fire proclivity. Just about to order a bank of those batteries for my home. So every time someone goes on about how we just can't power the world with this problematic lithium based technology, I have to wonder if that is in any way true at all.

Weird. The batteries (mostly LiPo) I install for a living are guaranteed by warranty for 8000-10000 cycles at a depth of discharge usually around 90%. 400 cycles sounds more like AGM.

Just to clarify. This is a flow battery, will not be used in electronics like your iPhone. More like stationary energy storage and eventually electric cars, planes, and ships. The advantage of flow batteries is that if you want to double energy storage, you just need to double tank storage. Very easy to increase storage when needed (and cheap).

You're right Canned beer is such a goated invention that we take for granted

You got one thing wrong here. Cobalt can be recycled. It just isn't financially feasible to recycle it now with current means. But it has been stated several times that it is being recycled down by some. And 64 to 65% of that recycling is being handled by used battery reprocessing.

It’s not about electric cars driving further on 1 charge, it’s about making the batteries way smaller and lighter.

Take a drink every time he pronounces a work wrong.

"Power" is measured in watts (W) or kilowatts (kW), "energy" is measured in watt-hours

These aren't new!! The first aqueous battery was developed by John Daniell in 1836. This battery, known as the Daniell cell, used an aqueous solution for the electrolyte and was an early form of electrochemical cell. The Daniell cell consisted of a copper pot filled with a copper sulfate solution and a porous earthenware container filled with sulfuric acid and zinc. It provided a more reliable and consistent current than earlier voltaic cells, making it one of the earliest practical sources of electrical power. This invention played a significant role in the history of batteries and laid the foundation for future aqueous battery designs.

Lithium-Sulfur batteries are also a promising technology. Sulfur is cheaper and has greater capacity than current technologies.

And China, like Russia and North Korea, never bluffs. Ever.

After 2 kids, I have concluded my reproduction study.

Remember when America said they had a lazer in space that could shoot down a nuke. And the soviet union collapsed trying to replicate it🤭. Water battery.

Definitely a fantastic first step, can't wait to see where the tech expands/improves

He forgot to mention LiFePO4. It's the new standard for power banks with life cycles around 4000.

My dad and myself's old friend, Mike The Mechanic, was doing research into batteries in the seventies and eighties. He thought Hot Sulphur batteries were going to be the bees knees. Then one blew up on him, he got badly burned. He was a truly interesting guy, he started out life as a Barnodo's Boy, then worked as an apprentice mechanic on Stirling Moss' Pit Crew.

liquefied metal batteries .... lithium , salt and ferrate... iron 6.... 9 volt singular cell

Well, let's have a couple of Chinese technicians hook it up to some machinery and stay next to it while it's running for 6 hours. That'll answer all questions.

I’ll hold my breath. I’ve found Chinese research nearly always impossible to replicate and never makes it to the main stream suggesting they struggle to replicate it too.

"No one seems to be talking about" new battery tech? Dude, I can't stop getting RU-vid video recommendations for new battery types, even months after I was last interested

So, does this mean we can finally have underwater cities powered by these batteries? Just kidding... or am I?

I have the Round File Cabinet ready nevertheless, in case this concept cannot be proved and it qualifies as "Irreproducible Results".

This, plus realistically achievable temperatures for superconductive metals and efficient solar panels, will completely wipe out and replace the current electrical infrastructure we're supporting.

1) You can recycle lithium ion batteries 2) While such an aqueous battery is an exciting prospect, my only concern would be for cold weather usage when conditions drop below water's freezing point.

What are you talking about "lithium batteries can't be recycled?" They are already being recycled, and are 100% recyclable. I agree that they are not the answer for ALL storage applications, but they work great at the tasks they are good at.

Guess water-based batteries isn't that different a concept than water-filled missiles! Not WHOOOM, but SPLOOOSH!

Sun doesn't shine at night and the wind doesn't blow all the time... you'll have to build out 5x the consumption in Renewables to come close with batteries

1:20 - Chapter 1 - The importance of better batteries 5:10 - Chapter 2 - Building a battery 8:30 - Chapter 3 - What does this mean ?

Difficulty: both iodine and bromine are highly corrosive and have a high vapor rate. This means that it will be much more challenging controlling the reactions during cycling to prevent premature wear or breakdown. It also greatly raises the risk of catastrophic failures that will make lithium fires look gentle in comparison. It doesn't look feasible as a commercial product.

As Tom Bötticher said: if a new battery technology sounds too good it probably is.

Also, grid-scale storage _can_ be water-based, but in the form of pumped hydro storage, not fancy chemical batteries.

I will believe it when I see it.

It is a good report. But every week brings news on some game changing new battery technology. In China today the most common automotive battery is LFP, which use no cobalt, nickel, or manganese. And sodium batteries also don't use those elements, and cost less with more common materials. Other battery chemistries (which can scale to volume production) use no metals or rare earth materials at all. They have also been tested to function well after 1,000 cycles, and are cleanly, easily, cheaply recycled. I do hope this battery chemistry does produce affordable, long lasting, safer, cheaper batteries. But right now I will just add it to my growing list of experimental technologies to watch, over the coming years.

I've been hearing about battery breakthroughs for over 20 years. And we've only had incremental changes.

That’s why AOC loves electric cars. She heard that the electrons are FREE

Ahh they invented the Baghdad battery

Stationary storage of power has many options other than Li-ion batteries. A couple years an Australian university released a map of off-river pumped hydro sites that store all the energy needed for storage. note: 5:42 litre is a measure of volume, not mass so all the numbers are energy per volume not per mass.

I don’t believe he even mentioned lfp batteries. I am normally pretty impressed with the research done for his videos but this is a huge exception. There were so many questionable statements and so much missing information it isn’t doesn’t do a good job at educating people at all.

If such an aqueous electrolyte battery does come to market, it would also solve the problem with long charging times for electric vehicles. Not because they charge faster, but because you could conceivably drain and replace the discharged electrolyte as easily as plugging in a pair of hoses and turning on a pump at the gas station. It might be necessary to also swap out the anode/cathode as well, I'm not sure exactly how these batteries work and what chemical reactions and buildup occurs on the electrodes, but that wouldn't be too difficult to manage either.

I think there have also been reports of unicorns living in that part of the world.

It's important to understand that Batteries are measured in Liters of Volume for Energy Density. This does not relate to the Aqueous KOH Solution or other liquid water. It is an Energy Density/Volume in Liters to determine Capacity Expression.

Thank you so much for this video Simon. As you made abundantly clear, this is potentially a huge change for the better in many sectors of technology. Plus, it's just always great to watch one of your videos.

Lithium is recyclable sir. It's just not a cheap way and the scientific community is working on ways to make it more cost effective at recycling

The CSIRO is working on improving Sodium Ion batteries. They're currently working towards a battery of batteries capable of powering the Port of Newcastle.

Other countries have water run batteries too. They're called nuclear power plants.

There is a battery technology (for permanent installations) that with only one issue that should be easily solvable that has over 100 years of use. The only major issue is that the water based electrolyte needs to be able to have deionized water added, hydrogen gas & oxygen gas generated during recharging vented, without carbon dioxide entering the cells. The cells do self discharge slowly, albeit at a faster rate than modern batteries... but then there has not been a lot of research to see about improving the technology. Nickel-Iron batteries with a lye (potassium hydroxide solution) based electrolyte. If CO2 is kept out of the solution, and fresh water added as gases are vented, then these batteries can last for many decades.

Reporting a study which is yet to be reproduced is shoddy journalism.

Basically the same logic as China making a bad ripoff of the hadron collider and announces that they've achieved warp drive after the first failed startup test.

The Chinese will develop ice-nine before long.

Great video. Pity people are criticising it as it was not necessary. It simply covers an alternative type of battery and the video is pretty clear that there are a lot of IFs with the claim

Welcome back to decoding the unknown as always i am your host Winnie the Pooh

4.5 billion in lithium ion battery recycling market value projected this year...admittedly that indicates it's not a huge global industry but, seems to suggest it's far from impossible. That said I'm onboard with all manner of energy storage solutions especially sand batteries at grid scale and love to see reporting on some of the less often covered solutions. Thanks much.

I remember back in the late 80s having rechargeable batteries and a charger from radio shack. They sucked so bad. You would charge the batteries for a few hours and when in a flashlight would last about 15 minutes and would dim after the first 5 minutes.

TLDR about the video title: no clue, no idea, no leads

Lithium ion batteries CAN be recycled and ARE recycled en mass by a number of companies including but not limited to Redwood Materials.

Ummm, I'll admir to only listening to thais in the background while house cleaning, but pretty sure the Redflow battery system developed in Australia have already deployed Iron Bromine batteries and has small/medium scale commercial production up and running.

Cars? I'm more thinking about trucks, ships, maybe even aeroplanes! I mean, if they can deliver more energy, why not use them for those who need more energy?

Cadmium's toxicity causes NiCd batteries to be banned in many places. They'd have to replace that before these batteries can get deployed, if they work at all.

We use lithium everywhere, not just for batteries. If we stopped with batteries today they would still be mining it. The cobalt has been used for thousands of years 😅 no way they stop mining these things.

Watch Elon Musk discredit this all over X

Wow, this was really well written! Give that writer a raise!

“They can’t be recycled” Tell me you didn’t research your video without telling me you haven’t the slightest clue. Thanks for making it easy to block your well produced bullshit.

I still use NiMH rechargeable AA battery. LOL They self discharge slower when not used and get a lot of charge cycles. Those little outdoor solar cell lights use Ni-Cd which can charge faster and get more cycles but hold less power. Not an issue cause they get recharged every morning with the sun. Ni-Cd AA can be up to 1000mAh, NiMH AA can be up to 2800mAh. A big D battery can be 10,000mAh. But all of these only 1.2 volts. Yes, for any modern electronic Lithium Polymer battery is best. Lithium power bank can do 10,000mAh with 5 volts! Most cars do not use Lithium, and that button batter you showed is not rechargeable.

Rule 1: don't trust chinas word, ON ANYTHING

I hope we see a transition back into higher quality videos, less frequently than frequent videos with errors that are so glaring that it’s almost kind of difficult to keep watching

Because of the amount of power limitation it sounds like this type of battery will have very limited in what it can be used for.