Nearly-free clean energy? This could be the cheap solution we need 

Leave the sea floor alone...

Scientists have just discovered that these nodules supply a lot of oxygen that goes into the ocean. Dredging for these nodules is not a good idea.

Aren’t those nodules like super important for oceanic life or somethin?

Skip to 3.42. to avoid the video padding. It is basically is just a thermal carbon battery, very similar to the sand battery those in the EU have developed. The hype is not justified AT ALL. Storage efficiency is entirely based on how long you store it for and conversion efficiency to electricity is already circa 37%. Infra red panels with an efficiency of over 40% is hardly a massive leap forward. I made it to 7.58 before thinking this is re-packaged old stuff and had my thoughts taken over by what was for dinner. Basically a snoozefest for this video.

40% efficiency…. From heat to electricity…. Does that work out economically?

Salt based lithium batteries are taking over the battery genre lately... it is working in more extreme temps, plus, salt is way cheaper and abundant to use than a full on lithium base battery

Holy crap this makes me hopeful for the future. Why isn’t this front page news? This is amazing

Can this be licenced? Busy listening. As a dane,..... The country that developed the wind mills that has now become 'megawindmills'.

So, the thumbnail for this video mis-spells “energy” as “engery”. I’m pretty sure that’s not what you wanted.

The sea floor disturbance modelling is apparently based on course sand. I am given to understand that the real nodules are in a fine silt environment. I am also concerned that we know very little about how this environment interacts with the rest of the ocean. We've only just found out that the nodules seem to be generating oxygen.

Look at the quantity of metal extraction and how it is barely a fraction of the quantity of oil/gas extraction occurring across the globe.

This channel makes me hopeful for the future

Hey i was wondering if we could use bio generated methane in jet fuel, bcuz in aviation fuel price takes 30-60% of it and the main problem is petroleum is dominated by some countries and they control prices bloodly...this sector is centralised so much....so what if we could use bio generated fuels like methane or degrading plants y9 make petroleum through them , like we make artificial diamond....

The nodules have been shown to be important for the deep-sea life....

It's starting to look like those nodules are some of the most important things on the sea floor and given the massive amounts of money those guys have invested; I don't think they're going to stop. Give it a year or two and those Nodule miners will have evolved into full on Captain Planet villains.

Thermal energy storage makes sense for storing heating and cooling needs, for hot water, space heating, even industrial process heat. But it is a well proven farce to try to use it for storing electricity. The killer is that, even with a ludicrous 600 C temperature differential, you're only going to recover about half the energy you put into the system, best case scenario in steady state operation. That means if there's two wind turbines generating power, you're throwing away all of the electricity output from one of them. There is no possible economic scenario where you can afford to double your generating capacity to utilize a cheap storage system. You want to drive the thermal differential with a heat pump? Well if you can maintain a high enough COP, and if you're able to recuperate the power cycle without significant pressure drop (which is very difficult at the low temperatures involved) maybe you can squeeze out 80% round trip efficiency, the same as flow batteries but with more mechanical complexity, more maintenance, and occupying 8-10X as much space, even if latent heat with 200kJ/kg capacity storage material were used. It. Is. A bad idea. If you honestly earned a Ph.D in this field without gaining an understanding of thermodynamics or the practical constraints of engineering, than I would suggest asking for a refund.

Quick fact check, rebewables aren't going to supply free electricity, or anywhere near free. There's a lot of hard work currently being put into getting storage systems developed that can deliver renewable energy uninterrupted at close to the same price as fossil fuels. And that is a likely reality within the next 10 years. But that would mean energy prices are about the same as they are now. They might go down a little bit over time with improved technology, though the rate of tech development in renewables and batteries will propobably decline once we've reached a level where they're "good enough". We won't run out of them, so we have energy security, but it'll just look like how it looks now, same or similar price with better air quality. Stop with all the tech bro utopia jargon of "free electricity as far as the eye can see!!" That's all garbage you're spewing to drive up your startup share price and you know it.

Infinite "Engery"?? 1.24m subscribers and you can't be bothered to spell check your damn thumbnail? Wow.

Solid carbon won't burn? Can someone remind me what coal and charcoal is made from? Anyhow, good luck with it all.

There no easy answers, nuclear does the least harm.

Parrots acting like they first heard about energy storage problem

For a channel called "Freethink" this place feels a bit slow and naïve at times. These guys talk like they never heard of energy storage? Like what is the audience here?

The biggest goal is speed in getting this clean transition as quickly as possible. I think it could be possible to pull a lot of heat out of our trillions of tons of garbage we are storing up in land fill , it would slow down the break down process of garbage that naturally happens in nature I think , but our earth is heating up by our tremendous amount of heat coming from the process of garbage process naturally breaking down in our environment. But if we use that heat and regulate the temperature of the speed of the garbage break down and then use that energy in regulating the temperature of garbage speed of break down we can solve two problems at once.

Deep closed loop super critical geothermal energy is the key to unlimited energy… could easily be done with more investment and research and development, we would be there already if it weren’t for our greed.. very disappointing.

Wrong. Niagara Falls shut down 3000 of Edison's 1MW coal plants. There's enough hydroelectric power in Canada to power the entire U.S.

OMG infinite ENGRY

Greed wins out every time, don't fall for the greenwashing!

Then won't need any federal or state rebates?

Thank you for this hopeful video. I hope everyone is having a great day. Sheila Mink in New Mexico

Enhanced Geothermal using advanced drilling techniques looks promising - maybe even enough to make solar and wind obsolete, especially in areas with poor sun and solar, and maybe areas that don't have many geological faults. Enhanced Geothermal can be dispatchable AND baseload, requiring no storage, with a very small real estate footprint compared to wind or solar. And it's looking like it can be widely used - i.e. not just in areas where geothermal heat comes close to the surface. AND it could be the same folks now doing oil and gas drilling - so they can keep profiting, eliminating a big political roadblock. Basically, if projecting out past 2030, it should be taken into consideration as an alternative to W/S/B.

This is a very interesting topic and I think it could be very scalable the bigger the block the bigger the storage. We also have the biggest block of storage of heat in the center of the earth if we could get close to that block of heat we would have an endless supply of energy. One thing for sure we know where the heat is and how to make it work for us we just need the will to act on it and go forward as a country and lead the way in this process of doing it. It is very important for all of humanity’s best interests. Just think of a endless energy source that doesn’t cause cancer and lung disease from breathing exhaust from burning things that puts mercury and ton and ton of very dangerous gases into our atmosphere it that poison the air and our eco systems all over the world it has been sneaking up on humanity world wide for the last hundred years and it is accelerating at very fast rate but these people are on the right track getting ahead of the problem for our children’s future and their future , great job great ideals . we must get behind these people that know how to serve all Americans for the best interest of everyone and our eco system we live in. If we destroy our habitat we aren’t able to survive as humans on earth.

Graphite cannot be heated in air, you need a very good vacuum or inert gas. It's an engineering problem but an annoying problem to stay ahead of.

Gosh, Looks like Elizabeth Holmes male version. He is not blinking at all. Must have spent a lot for facial expression and hand movement.

Am supper un-psyched by the promise of "affordable batteries,"from the West,but thanks to China i know that advanced affordable battery will reach me in

The main problem with more energy, even if it is "green" energy, is the fact that more energy means more environment destruction which is really bad for human's future. The only way for the humanity to have a bright future is to consume under the regenerative capacity of Earth. Unfortunately humans are not wired to voluntary limit themselves so it will be business as usual, which will inevitably lead us to more environment destruction until the collapse of society. Human's greed lead us to deny the physical reality and then make us take stupid actions. The only thing we do is adaptative actions which does not fix anything. Therefore we are doomed to collapsing.

Let the necessary technologies for energy freedom flow freely, avoided from all humans greed that stops society from having the security they need!👇⚡💚✨ 🎙️ALSO, companies/ states can install, wind turbines to collect power during stormy weather. Also, welding/installing solar panels to power substations and the large power line towers to further increase output during both types of common weather.🎙️

Energy storage doesn't make sense unless you have surplus production from renewable sources, which may be decades away. These guys are always looking to solve problems that dont exist.

figure there will be different energy storage used for heat or electricity. this heat battery looks promising for industrial heat(don't fully understand how it delivered) but not so much for electricity. What is the cost per kWatt of this solution for electricity and how this compares to batteries such as LFP?

The second law of thermodynamics may be false conventional wisdom. Let's face the possibility of breakeven free energy. The second law of thermodynamics was imposed on us during Victorian England's scientific and religious cultural fascination with steam engines. The second law is behind modern refgeration needing electrical energy to compress the refrigerent to force it to release as waste the heat that it has removed from the refrigerator's service interior in the cooling part of the refrigerent's circulation. There is also discarded heat from mechanical friction and electrical resistance. The total released and discarded heat minus the removed heat equals the electrical input balancing this system's energy but this only shows that energy is conserved even if the energy use is unneeded wasteful or harmful. Refrigeration by the principle that energy is conserved should produce electricity instead of consuming it. It makes more sense that refrigerators should yield electricity because energy is widely known to change form with no ultimate path of energy gain or loss being found. Therefore any form of fully recyclable energy can be cycled endlessly in any quantity. In an extreme case senario, full heat recycling, all electric, very isolated underground, undersea, or space communities would be highly survivable with self sufficient EMP resistant LED light banks, automated vertical farms, thaw resistant frozen food storehouses, factories, dwellings, self contained elevators, safe rooms, and horizontal transports. In a flourishing civillization senario, small self sufficient electric or cooling devices of many kinds and styles like lamps, smartphones, hotplates, water heaters, cooler chests, fans, radios, TVs, cameras, security devices, robot test equipment, scales, transaction terminals, wall clocks, open or ciosed for business luminus signs, power hand tools, ditch diggers, pumps, and personal transports, would be available for immediate use incrementally anywhere as people see fit. Some equipment groups could be consolidated on local networks. If a high majority thinks our civilization should geoengineer gigatons or teratons of carbon dioxide out of our environment, instalations using devices that convert ambient heat into electricity can hypothetically be scaled up do it with a choice of comsequences including many beneficial ones. Energy sensible refrigerators that absorb heat and yield electricity would complement computers as computing consumes electricity and yields heat. Computing would be free. Chips could have energy recycling built in. A simple rectifier crystal can, iust short of a replicatable long term demonstration of a powerful prototype, almost certainly filter the random thermal motioren of electrons or discrete positiive charged voids called holes so the electric current flowing in one direction predominates. At low system voltage a filtrate of one polarity predominates only a little but there is always usable electrical power derived from the source, which is Johnson Nyquest thermal electrical noise. This net electrical filtrate can be aggregated in a group of separate diodes in consistent alignment parallel creating widely scalable electrical power. The maximum energy is converted from ambient heat to productive electricity when the electrical load is matched to the array impeadence. Matched impeadence output (watts) is k (Boltźman's constant), one point three eight x 10^ minus 23, times T (temperature Kelvin) times bandwidth (0 Hz to a natural limit ~2 THz @ 290 K) times rectification halving and nanowatt power level rectification efficiency, times the number of diodes in the array. For reference, there are a billion cells of 1000 square nanometer area each per square millimeter, 100 billion per square centimeter. Order is imposed on the random thermal motion of electrons by the structual orderlyness of a diode array made of diodes made within a slab: -----‐------‐----_____-- Out 🔻🔻🔻🔻 ■■■■■■___ + Out All the P type semiconductor anodes abut a metal conductive plane deposited on the top face of the slab with nonrectifying joins; the N type semiconductor cathodes or common cathode abuts the bottom face. As the polarity filtered electrical energy is exported, the amount of thermal energy in the group of diodes decreases. This group cooling will draw heat in from the surrounding ambient heat at a rate depending on the filtering rate and thermal resistance between the group and ambient gas, liquid, or solid warmer than absolute zero. There is always a lot of ambient heat on our planet, more on equatorial dry desert summer days and less on polar desert winter nights. Focusing on explaining the electronic behavior of one composition of simple diode, a near flawless crystal of silicon is modified by implanting a small amount of phosphorus (N type conductivity) on one side from a ohmic contact end to a junction where the additive is suddenly and completely changed to boron (P type conductivity) with minimal disturbance of the crystal lattice. The crystal then continues to another ohmic contact. A region of high electrical resistance forms at the junction in this type of diode when the phosphorous near the ĵunction donates electrons that are free to move elsewhere while leaving phosphorus ions held in the crystal while the boron donates holes which are similalarly free to move. The two types of mobile charges mutually clear each other away near the junction leaving little electrical conductivity. An equlibrium width of this region is settled between the phosphorus, boron, electrons, and holes. Thermal noise is beyond steady state equlibrium. Thermal noise transients, where mobile electrons move from the phosphorus added side to the boron added side ride transient extra conductivity so the forward moving electrons are preferentally filtered into the external circuit. Mobile electrons are units of electric current. They lose their thermal energy of motion and gain electromotive force, another name for voltage, as they transition between the junction and the array electrical tap. Inside the diode, heat is absorbed: outside the diode, to exactly the same extent, an attached electrical circuit is energized. The voltage of a diode array is likely to be small so many similar arrays need to be put in series to build higher voltage. Understanding diodes is one way to become convinced that Johnson Nyquest thermal electrical noise can be rectified and aggregated. Self assembling development teams may find many ways to accomplish this wide mission. Taxonomically there should be many ways ways to convert heat directly into electricity. A practical device may use an array of Au needles in a SiO2 matrix abutting N type GaAs. These were made in the 1970s when registration technology was poor so it was easier to fabricate arrays and select one diode than just make one diode. There are other plausible breeches of the second law of thermodynamics. Hopefully a lot of people will join in expanding the breech. Please share the successes or setbacks of your efforts. These devices would probably become segmented commodities sold with minimal margin over supply cost. They would be manufactured by advanced automation that does not need financial incentive. Applicable best practices would be adopted. Business details would be open public knowledge. Associated people should move as negotiated and freely and honestly talk. Commerce would be a planetary scale unified conglomerate of diverse local cooperatives. There is no need of wealth extracting top commanders. We do not need often token philanthropy from the top if the wide majority of people can afford to be generous. Aloha Charles M Brown Kilauea Kauai Hawaii 96754 I

sooo simple, sooo smart!!!!! wow!!!!!

Walker Patricia Harris Daniel Lee Richard

If we have customers for this free electricity, then the price will go up and it will no longer be free. So this existence of storage devices like this one, will increase the floor price of electricity. This is a good thing, because if wind farm owners are delivering a significant chunk of their product for free, they'll stop building new wind farms. For this reason, the heat-to-electricity use case makes no sense. 40% round trip efficiency is too low to complete with pumped hydro or chemical batteries, which are about twice that. Heat-to-electricity at low efficiency only makes sense if you can buy the electricity for next to nothing. On the other hand the thermal use case may make a lot of sense, especially if we introduce a carbon tax (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-U3zIjwI5mOk.html ).

Sediment isn't the issue. The loss of oxygen production is.

I wonder where to find these really smart guys? Why don't you mention their name and links?

This isn't new......at all.

Hmmm there's a lot of carbon in the air these days.

Who are they talking to? I think batteries are currently being solved in so many different ways and the market will decide which works best. He didn’t come up with the concept, they are and currently have been using sand batteries utilizing heat in one of the Nordic countries I think, maybe Holland. Hey go for it but just do it and don’t act like you are creating some paradigm shift. I bet he wants some money though. If you say you are working on something no one else is thinking about you should really be self aware or no one else will think you are serious.

isnt this like molten salt battery? or even the sand battery?

Yeah why not just grow more dinosaurs and pressurize them into oil to use for cars 🧠🧐

The cute robot carefully selecting a nodule and picking it up with minor disturbance is not true. The actual machine resembles an agricultural combine. It is driven across the sea floor with a wide harvesting scoop. It digs up the everything on or in the sea floor to some shallow depth collecting the nodules and spitting out all the rest into a massive cloud of silty debris. We have no idea how this will impact the ocean. We have some understanding how our continued combustion of carbon based fuel is impacting the ocean. Let's solve that problem without risking the creation of another life threatening manmade issue.

40% conversion back to electricity means at least 60% loss. Doesn’t sound like it will be any where near to free to me.

"What the fossil fuels will just stay in the ground"? Is the interviewer really that dense? Dude, people didn't stop riding horses because we ran out of horses

At the risk of oversimplifying everything, I have a hard time seeing the same corporations who've exploited the earth and gotten us where we are in the climate crisis being the same corporations who'll save us. Also, leave the ocean floor alone.

40% efficiency for electricity production? That is not good. Hopefully, there is a viable market for industrial heat production at 90% efficiency.

😪

Thermal batteries and lithium ones are pretty good. But people keep forgetting about pump hydro.

Meh Nuclear still better

I think there will be a use for oil and gas but not throwing it into our air like we use it today 30 % efficiency or less is not how to use it . We need to rethink how we use it more safely.

WTF is engery?

i dont get it! why are we producing electricity and generating heat from it and then re producing electricity from heat, this process is very ineffective. It doesent make sense to me.

The young guy is speaking with the eyes of a convert. Which is great. Might one add that either natural gas or biogas + hydrogen from windpower is THE balancing act. In Scandinavia. And Ireland. That can provide heat and electricity during winters,... recently other kinds of -electricity-to-heat schemes have been devised,....... The great thing here is the exuberance. And the ideas of how to integrate this into chemical industries and the like.

That distant noise you can hear is the Chinese laughing.

Leave the sea floor alone...

Do better freethink, this is the dull edge.

The key is NOT wind and solar. Look at the actual data.

As ever, how clean is "clean energy"?

2nd comment

wool socks to bed = sleep improvement to a drug addiction cure level🟩🟠

The idea of using molten salts for energy storage has been around for decades. Thermal batteries are NOT new.