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I think batteries are headed in many directions. I do not perceive any technology that could provide all requirements for all battery situations, power, weight, price, recharge rate, etc. Each new technology opens up more viable uses for batteries. I think we still need more options. Maybe some day, a Shipstone Battery will be invented (see Robert Heinlein, "Friday"). Until then, we will have to have many variations in batteries with different sets of engineering trade-offs. I am fairly certain that we are only scratching the surface of what is possible with power storage at the moment. Chemical power storage is incredibly limited when you compare that to the power stored in sub-atomic particles per unit area. The questions are how do you get it out and how do you recharge it. We are still in our societal infancy in understanding the quantum world, but that world is what powers the universe.
That was quite a hit job on the lithium manufacturing process how about balancing that compared to the fossil fuel industry, including images from the Gulf war, sea birds covered in oil when ships sink or BP oil rigs leak, the methane leaks from abandoned gas wells.
This technology is great, but do we really need battery storage in our future? I don't think so. I am looking at a tiny piece of solar lens a size of a piece of a rice sitting next to the camera lens on the back of a cellphone that is good enough to collecting all the energy it needs to powering up a cell phone. A bigger piece of solar lens for the laptop computer, tablet, electric vehicle, and all the lighting it needed for the heating of a family home, warehouse. Where there is light, either it is from a piece of burning wood or from the sun. Solar panel is the way to go in our future. Our scientists need to focusing more on the solar panel development.
NO! It's becoming repetitive! There are literally a MILLION other things which affect us in our daily lives. Imagine hearing about a new laundry detergent that has measurably less impact on the wearing out of your clothes. Or a new type of eye glass material. Improvements in the UV protection of stuff we have to put in the sun or in our cars. Literally millions.
Battery technology is THE technology right now that will affect our world the most. Scientists and companies and govts and colleges all know this so the amount of battery research going on around the world is very large, probably so much so that most people don't release how much time, effort and money is going into research because every technology that works well as a solution is billions of dollars when it scales.
@@christo930 i guess you should watch the videos because either you didn't (understandably) or didn't pay enough attention. battery technology is life changing for the entire world. laundry is meaningless but batteries aren't, specially nowadays that fusion is proven to be viable. imagine being able to feed the entire world electricity but instead of "rationing it" in a buffer you trash it because you don't have the way to store it... imagine the world where batteries don't blow up because the phones go a touch too hot... imagine the world where batteries don't contamine and are cheap AF because they are made out of mundane materials. i understand that's a bit too much for some people and i do agree that he could do a shorter video containing various kinds of batteries where he explains the tech behind and the possible uses. laundry detergent is pointless because clothes are affordable. UV protection is.. pointless. if you talk about objects that get damaged by UV.. that would come too damn expensive (and pointless again) imagine a plastic that even the most powerful waves from the sun can't break down ever... talking about pollution... and if you talk about yourself (humans in general) you don't really need UV protection. your body can handle that with extreme easy. except when the ozone layer went to shit because we used tech that polluted like mad, but thankfully that issue is already taken care..
Pyrolysis is the magic that makes a thousand different materials. There was a researcher looking at making these out of hemp too. The woody chips of the hemp plant have a lot of micro pores so after its pyrolyzed you have a lot of places for electrons to go
I hope they find a faster growing medium than trees. I’m no scientist by any stretch of the imagination. I wonder if bamboo would work. It’s extremely fast growing and abundant.
Cool stuff. I think it makes a lot of sense that these technologies will coexist, serving different use-cases. What makes sense depends on the financial details. Provided they're cheap enough to produce and recycle, grid storage can tolerate really low performance batteries. It all comes down to cost and sustainability.
For grid storage the most important properties are: 1. Reliability 2. Efficiency 3. Cost to make and operate 4. Raw material abundancy 5. High scale manufacturability
Rather than wood -- faster growing with lower resource requirements in a chase for Lignin include bamboo, miscanthus giganteus (bread for more growth control or the invasive fast growing Chinese Silvergrass used as suburban ornamental), sorghum, and corn stalks.
But by providing an alternative to burning the lignin that is created as a by-product from paper you can encourage more green friendly energy sources. These by-products will continue to exist. There is no reason to avoid using them in a way that is better than just burning them
3:42 When working for Milwaukee Tool in the battery R&D department, we purposely overloaded tools with batteries installed and batteries by themselves. We had to put them into well ventilated, concrete- and bulletproof glass-encased rooms, with a little tiny tube to run all of our testing wires through. When one of those things went off, you felt the heat THROUGH the bulletproof glass... it's kind of insane. Also... don't let your Li-Ion batteries recharge and sit on the charger for long periods of time in sub-zero (°C) temperatures. The cold reduces the energy storage, but the charger may recognize this as the battery being undercharged, so it tries to put in more charge which could overload the battery causing a thermal runaway event. Keep your batteries warm as best as you can and try not to force too much power out of them when they're cold until they've warmed up a bit. Just some helpful tips... :D
All of these different battery technologies is incredibly interesting and leaves me optimistic that one if not more will stick. And despite this not being viable for electric vehicles, if any of this "works on a large scale like backup power storage for the grid" technologies bears fruit, it will lessen the overall need for Lithium which is a big win. I just hope we keep on this path and some if not all of these alternatives make their way to market.
VERY impressed with sourcing lignin as a waste product of the paper industry. "Garbage is just resources we are too stupid to utilize yet" -- Buckminster Fuller echoes loudly here. Thanks for all your hard work and creative insight.
I would usually say you are right in turning the lignin into a battery grade carbon, however, the process in manufacturing produces a byproduct called Syngas, which can definitely be used to produce electricity by running in an engine or many other things
U run my 3d Printer with some solar panels and old car batteries most lead acid batteries can be revived by just topping them off with a bit of destilled water if they are maintenance free you neeed to make a small opening for that I simply used a soldering iron to melt a small hole roughly 1cm below the seem where the lid is welded on and filled destilled water until something came back out, wipe it dry, melt it shut and it's good to go with 2 different battery testers I get some batteries that get the original ratings, hence why the battery currently in my car is an old battery I revived this way not saying this is the solution for the big storage issues, but it is a way for folks at home to reduce their energy consumption from the grid
Thanks for yet another super interesting and informative video! And a huge thanks for all the effort you clearly put into your texts! Coming up all these word plays is yet another of your special talents!
How many wood batteries would a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck would chuck batteries? And what will wood chucks chuck if all the wood is used for batteries? Only time will tell! Keep up the interesting content.
Succeed or fail, what is important is that problems are being looked at, and solutions being worked on, from as many different mindsets and directions as practicable.
Affordable, safe, and durable stationary energy storage is the key to better use of local renewable energy generation. Combine solar roof panels with enough energy storage and you improve the use of the energy you yourself generate and you reduce the load on the grid. Besides that, it can be used for active load balancing of the grid.
See you just mentioned the disadvantages of lithium ion. The cost benefits are just due to the current economics, which will change. The short recharge cycles of lead acid, misses the point. Lead acids can be made in such a way, that the plates are easily replaceable, making it a non issue.
Low energy density so probably not cars or phones? Maybe trains if you had an entire section dedicated to batteries. That's a pretty unfortunate limitation. Stationary batteries for homes and to store renewable energy for the grid is still a pretty big use case though.
Great video! I was wondering were you got the 40 Wh/kg from as I find on Ligna’s own website a max energy of 0.48 mWh for a 2.1 gram battery. That would mean 0.23 Wh/kg. Think the 40 Wh/kg sounds more realistic so I would like to understand :)
The first batteries came in wooden boxes! Got me thinking if primitive batteries could be made locally in underdeveloped parts of the world like Rual Africa? Plenty of cheap solar cells that can be made locally into panels, but no cheap storage options! Game changer??
If you can sell me a battery at 60% of the cost of LFP, twice the lifespan, and can live outdoors, I don’t care if it’s the size of a shed, I’m buying one for home storage.
Didn't Tesla already solve the issues with the lithium processing by removing the need for toxic materials used in the process? If you're not sure what I mean go back and rewatch Tesla Battery Day.
It seems like a lot of the problem with comparison is that lithium batteries aren't sustainable and the price doesn't include clean up. When we have multiple options to get the job done we can do comparisons based on cradle to grave costs. Maybe we all have to start driving big vans to accommodate less energy density.
I wonder if instead of batteries we can use bio-electic-generators. Eels produce electricity somehow, right? Maybe there is a way to make a bio-organism which uses water and some food and generates electricity?.. It would be awesome
My thoughts on energy is that if you focus on one for energy for environmental efforts that's meant to be "clean" and "eco friendly" it will be in vain because companies will eventually rack up the demand and end up using methods to cut corners. Not enough wood batteries? Let's cut more trees down. Not enough coal power? More coal. Etc. Point is to have an equilibrium of multiple sources of energy and to minimize the impact by cleaning the manageable waste/pollution. If we do that, humanity would've been fine.
Only drive 16 miles a day. I’d be ok with a better longer life battery even if I couldn’t drive 300+miles on a single charge. They make the batteries able to be removed and changed out easily by a normal user. That’d change the market.
Just thought of a water tank battery that could be used along side wind, possibly in the wind towers themselves, there'd be 3 openings in it, 1 at the bottom with a heavy metal sheet and a magnet above it (I'm sure most of you know where this is going now), the 2nd is for overflow, should be up top above the 1st with some guides along the sides top stop the overflowing water going anywhere but where it would be let out (where the metal sheet would be blocking at that time), that will allow recovery of left over energy if needed, finally the 3rd opening will be at the very top with a pump above it, the pump will bring the water up to fill the tank, the energy is taken back by letting the water out to power turbines, in other words when the electricity shuts off the magnet turns off allowing the sheet to drop which in turn allows the water to empty out, since all components there do not need a specific type of energy the raw energy from the windmills will be plenty, yes it might be maintenance hell but it's 100% green
@@lordgarion514 That's fine, just build the lakes then, just need a lot of dirt and rocks,mining sites need to send their dirt and rocks somewhere, why not dump it at a long term lake building project? There's no need to rush building it after all
@@lordgarion514 You can, you just need to take the time to build it right, there are plenty of examples that already exist in nature, how do you think volcanoes which hold even heavier liquid exist? How do you think old volcanoes that have become lakes exist? Here's how I roughly view how the lakes would be built: 1. The exit hole is made 1st with a ditch to it's eventual target, in this case a water processing plant 2. Pipe work and turbines are laid into the ditch 3. Build a small doughnut hill surrounding the exit hole for a pool of water to start building. 4. Line the bottom of the pool with rocks before the water starts to gather proper, this is to avoid large amounts of muddy water mixing reaching the water facility 5. You then build a path for the overflow from a hole made in the tip of the hill to a river 6. As dirt and rocks get delivered you go to the top of the fill and drop dirt on the outside part and line the new top with the rocks 7. Over the years this hill will gradually get bigger and bigger forming hole shaped like a reverse pyramid in it's center, it will look natural on the outside so you'll have little opposition if at all, on that note, what weirdo doesn't like seeing a lake? 8. As a bonus you can add some trees, foliage and left over rocks on the outside of the hill when you're satisfied with the size to turn it into a nature reserve
@@zxuiji LMAO That's NOT how volcanoes work. The lava is deep underground, down below the bedrock. Also, lava doesn't soak into soil, undermining the foundation. And here's a massive difference between land that's had an enormous weight on it for thousands, or millions of years, and suddenly dumping millions of tons on top...... The land resettled itself long before humans. For an extreme example, go look up how China's large dam is doing. ALSO, after an eruption, the ground usually collapses. Why? Because all that lava that was holding all that weight, is gone. They call it a "caldera". Yellowstone has 3 of them from collapse after different eruptions.
Per the video, lignin currently goes to an incinerator to produce energy. Presumably that energy is going toward powering the paper mill and reducing its operational costs. If the lignin is going to batteries instead of the incinerator, the paper mill will need to get the energy it had produced from elsewhere and increase its operational costs. I wonder how that will affect the cost of lignin and paper mills' willingness to participate.
I think the paper mills could serve to add renewable energy to their roster so that their byproduct can be used for more promotion of renewables. It just happens that the industry balanced their waste product into fuel for itself, not cause it was necessary, but for convenience.
Personally I wish countries would ban the use of Li-Ion batteries for use in grid storage. That's the LAST place it needs to be used. Density isn't critical for grid storage. Number of cycles, cost, and conversion efficiency are the most important issues for grid storage, not power density.
I think its meant as in the evaporating water is fresh water which could otherwise be used as drinking water, I can't really see how else it would make sense?
They extract huge amounts of low ground water, not necessarily caring for the drinking water but drying many of the wells of drinkable water, people have used for centureis
My concern with wood-based batteries is driven by the behavior of the wood industry, which has long shown a distinct disinterest in the impact it has on the environment, from cutting logs shorter to be able to export and import otherwise illegal wood, to clearcutting ecosystems and not replanting, and more. I do not believe that all adopters of this technology will be willing to buy only from suppliers who source the wood ethically, and it's just going to spur more environmental degradation. Too many greedy humans, I'm afraid. Wood you like to comment?
Fresh water is also used during the processing. Here’s a study: it estimated that in 2020 lithium companies in the Salar de Atacama used more water than all of the local communities combined, by about 70%.
I'm pretty certain trees are already batteries. Solar energy comes in, then it gets stored as chemical energy for later. They even have sustainably-sourced solar panels built in!
@@itoothitooth4943 Coppicing is the best answer; cut deciduous trees on a regular schedule during dormant seasons, and they grow back straight, faster and with denser wood while keeping the root system alive and healthy. It's been in use for 6,000 years that we can document but probably longer. Trees that are carefully coppiced become practically immortal because they never reach the imbalance stage of senescence where trunk girth exceeds sapwood's capacity to efficiently cover it. In other words, the trees stay juvenile forever. The soil remains undisturbed, with healthy root systems and microbial colonies in place. The ecosystem experiences maximum biodiversity (with "patch" and edge habitats rotating cyclically), supporting species that have evolved alongside this practice, like the nightingale songbird. Sustainable forestry is the most regenerative fuel source and carbon capture technology yet explored. It's already practiced in many countries, as it has been since the Neolithic period. We just need to regulate the industry so that all logging returns to coppicing.
Now THIS is the type of design thinking that I think we need more of, in which we look for ways to use the waste products of existing processes to solve some other problem. Hoping this works at scale, it'd be way more resource-efficient than mining new crap all the time.
It seems better, but for one thing. If this solution uses 7 times more material or battery, then it also has to be 1/7th the cost. Half the price of the alternative won't work without something else to even out the playing field. But it seems a little too early to know the real cost based on this video.
You might find the Trabant interesting, it was an east-German car built during extreme metal rationing, so to build bodywork without metal they created a material called Duroplast which was made from wasted cotton and surplus chemicals for resin, so the bodywork on the car was made almost entirely out of recycled materials. Duroplast was lightweight and strong, and didn't rust or rot, though it also doesn't biodegrade at all so all the bodies of those cars are still around even if the chassis and whatnot are long gone. Still an interesting recycled material though!
Nice one. Stora has existed as a company since the 13th century, due, it seems, to its flexible approach. It started out as a copper mine, but later switched to paper making. It's great to see that they're still innovating.
I've just stumbled onto your channel. I really like the way you take a neutral position giving pros and cons for each topic you bring. I will be following and sharing.
They appear to be barking up the right tree with this idea. Let’s see if it sticks. Hopefully they can branch out to a variety of use cases since it’s sounds like it won’t end up in our trunk anytime soon. I’ll log off for now.
There are several strands to the anti-renewable energy push - and the nature of the minerals used is most certainly a prominent subject in that push. I agree that there is no single technology to meet all the battery needs we have, and if a technology like this can have good enough storage density, and acceptable cost of manufacture, while also being somewhat benign to the environment, then that cannot help but be part of the overall solution.
@Sebastian Hahn to solidify your argument even more , we should take in count that Solar panels and Wind Turbines are extremely subsidized in most countries , something that studies regarding the price of Solar and Wind vs other technologies never take into account , i remember reading an article talking about that 3/4 of the price of the energy that Solar produces is subsized by the goverment , meaning that without goverment subsidy Solar would be ALOT more expensive , now imagine how the case it Will be with Wind Turbines
I wonder, is there a future where these paper-thin style batteries (like how the Lab battery was printed to paper) could go into Solar Panel manufacturing so that every individual solar cell has batteries underneath it? Instead of buying the Panels and batteries seperate, you'll have combo panels that release the power all day and night.
It's a cool idea, but there's a issue with the efficiency. Tldr is the more panels you have the less batteries you need for a given storage unit. Tony seba is a good Google search
Around 2014 this kind of innovation was applied for a patent. Single layer bi-polar separator coated LFP cell with polymer electrolyte (which standa high temperature) laminated in the PV panel frame in a way where silicon cells are 7 in series to provide 3,5V charging voltage for the li-ion cell. Li-ion cells (4 or 8) were the connected to series with BMS and DC chopper switch to do SOC matching. I hope this was not too messy explanation. 😅
@@mrspeigle1 batteries are like capacitors; they store charge but in the form of chemical reaction. It is certainly possible to have a supercap of the size of the solar panel that can supply reasonable power day and night.
Admittedly there extraction methods of lithium without that water impact (being scaled in Germany) Also I think a large share of lithium deployed in Germany is on track to be recycled indefinitely
Feels like none of them will because they always get dropped for the next, more promising hope on the horizon. A bit like the cure for insulin dependent diabetes. Always 5-10 years away.
@@andoletube Yes, that's frustrating. OTOH, I watch BOTH sides of the Atlantic, so I'm seeing more kinda sorta moderately priced EVs. ON SALE to real customers. America is perpetually in a "bigger is better" rut. Compromise is a dirty word. The second half of the 19th century must have felt like this, with each new technology destroying the previous.
Yes, they are called extremely efficient genetically engineered fat cells that store most of our energy for billions of years. And are high density , cost effective, space efficient, ling lasting. 😉😂
I think it’s important that we explore as many sustainable technologies as possible. I don’t think there will ever be a perfect battery for all applications - and seeing as how NiCAD and NiMH have continued to exist along lithium batteries, I think that’s evidence of such. Those biodegradable ones would particularly be great for disposable things like vapes, which people tend to throw on the ground when they run out…
That paper based battery sounds like a good opportunity for life rafts on ships. As soon as it hits the water the battery gets power and you could get light and send EPIRB signal/phone.
Well I mean if they can lower from 2$ to 1$ that cuts half of half the battery cost right there. The other half could be cut down using salt or suf that also reduces the cost by 30% - meaning we could see batters cost as much as 70% less would be pretty big deal even if they don't hold as much charge per weight/volume. That would be REALLY good for grid storage to the point that instead of installing new power plants - we could just instead install new battery plants. With that said - I am a bit confuse - you you talk about how Lignin charges faster by being random - while graphitic is more layer design - yet some how it holds less? Wouldnt that mean we would want a mix of the two instead? One that allow for faster charging by mixing in like 1/x over the graphitic to increase storage by lowering the over all cost? Even at something of a cost savings of 20% would still lead to cheaper storage + faster charging that the grid needs would be a good balance between the two.
