Brilliant! I am very excited to see the Blue battery used in homes and maybe even electric vehicles one day - thank you for your passion to change the world.
Hi everyone, this is Mei Nelissen. I've read some of you are interested to learn more about the battery and the scientific proof/background. Wetsus has recently published an article about the battery: Egmond, W. J., et al. "Performance of an environmentally benign acid base flow battery at high energy density." International Journal of Energy Research. I hope you'll enjoy the article :)
Thank you for the reference to the paper. Your presentation was thoughtful. The barrier between halves of the battery is the central interest. Do you have any more information on its construction?
Thank you for the link to the experimental data. The benefits of using environmentally friendly solutions are obvious. The energy density is moderate but not a problem in a fixed environment like a home or business that may have the room for less energy density. The benefit of fast charging being better cannot be overlooked either, as most batteries are adversely affected by fast charges. I believe the real solution to a secure energy future is in the hands of researchers who can design and build the energy storage.
What's the price per kWh? What's the efficiency? How many cycles can it do before it dies? What's the energy density by weight and by volume? Can it be scaled to grid level? The battle for energy storage is just beginning, flow batteries are usually limited by things like pumps and membranes.
I'm kinda skeptical, but interested. All natural because it uses salt water, but what are the membranes and other parts made of? How many 'charging' cycles before those components have to be replaced? What kind of loads did they use to estimate their 'average household'? So many questions, so little information in the presentation.
I agree.. she wasn't specific about anything. At 4:50, she says, "able to store as much energy as we want." I was thinking, "WHAT??" Seemed as if she was saying that little contraption on the counter could store infinite energy. Then at the end, she says that a cubic meter of it will provide energy needs of a household for one day; so I was like, "Oh."
+BC AtheyNo she wasn't specific. But that is ted talks. If you listen to a few of them, you will always get a broader picture but never the closest technical specs. In addition, this is a brand new technology, so some of your questions can't be answered yet.
She used some pretty loose language there like "energy" rather than electricity. The average US household use about 30kW/h per day or 901kW/H per month. Given this thing is a cubic meter (that's what she said) made mostly of water, the weight is about 1000kg, giving it about 30watts hours per kg. The lower end of the Lithium Ion cells can hold about 128Wh/kg. I didn't bother with the volumetric calc, but it's probably pretty low as well. As you mentioned, we have no idea what those membranes are made of. If this can be done cheaply, it might be worth building very large backup systems though. TBH, I don't know that anything has ever come from one of these Ted talks. They always have these giant breakthroughs that never seem to come to the market. There was a super efficient reverse osmosis contraption demonstrated at Ted years ago and it's still gone nowhere. Most of this stuff is in experimental phases and simply aren't commercially viable.
Was always going to be a But.!....A lot of u un answered questions..im skeptical about anyone taking either salt or water from our seas...and using it for energy...supply bearing in mind sea pollutions..these Days!!!!!!.
Looks hopeful, and truthful. However real batteries have specifications like how many cycles it can run before the energy storage degrades. How long does it last before it must be replaces? Also, there are two big issues for energy storage today: 1) Storing the days solar energy for night time use. 2) Storing summer excess solar energy for Winter Use. Day/night storage is not so difficult. But storing summer to winter energy requires 6 months x 30 days per month of storage. That is not 1 cubic meter, but 180 cubic meters per household. That is about the size of a 1000 square foot house!
I find it very hard to believe that commercial energy storage research labs, have not already thoroughly investigated this obvious approach, in their quest for low volume, efficient electric car batteries.
Since when are lithium batteries "almost impossible to recycle". That is one of the good things about lithium ion batteries, once the battery has done some 5000 cycles you reuse the lithium salts, metals and so on, the only thing you need to put in new is electrolyte basically.
The lithium comes in diferent oxydes. You need first to open safely the battery and then use different solutions and solvents to take out every element. This process is not jet standardized and it's more expensive that actually mining more lithium.
It's the membranes, not the solutions, that are the point: What are they made of, what do they cost, and how many charge/discharge cycles do they support before they stop working? These are the questions the talk should have answered, but didn't, so I don't know what they've actually accomplished. Oh, and will it work when the solutions are sloshing around, so it can be used in an electric car? And what's their energy-loss rate if you charge them and then leave them for 6 months?
how many cycles membrane would hold? I suspect that and membrane is more expensive to produce than the stored by it energy costs, and protons will be hard to store and OH base would be very violent...idea is good but I suspect that it is better to convert water to H2 and O2 or in other words to Hydrogen energy
Nice presentation and cool look like your team around the world can change the field of storage of energy but some technical doubts are what is its discharge rate, ratio of weight to storage and for any kind of hazard.
How much do these things cost, and how many charge/discharge cycles do they support before they quit working? Lithium-ion batteries support so few charge/discharge cycles that getting power from them is more expensive than buying it from the grid.
I think you can just estimate the price, but the more its produced the lesser is the cost per unit. massproduction make these affordable. But I want to see some predictions how much this could be
Any volume of H2O will have a percentage of impurities. The filtering system for a pharmaceutical or semiconductor use costs tens to hundreds of thousands to install and maintain. The water in that mostly pure form is extremely corrosive and cannot be stored. Even one biological will start to multiply when the system is stagnant. That said, a home sized system would take an enormous system to run and the waste in drinking water would drain the great lakes. It takes water as a waste product to produce pure water. As the membranes are disolved the water would need filtering during the cycle. Good science but very difficult to make practical for long term use.
i see comments that are asking for information. because not enough was giving. i hope she did find a better way to store energy. but for now i will stick with the salt water batteries as my favorite eco friendly battery
Your battery sounds like a Electrolysis/Fuel Cell battery, if so, and even if not, what materials are used to make the Fuel Cell?, cos you say the battery could be emptied into the Sea without any problems. But is the Fuel Cell materials as safe?
I want 2 of these so my solar and wind electricity generators have a battery to store the power. This way I can get off the grid and away from the thieving parasites we call electrical resellers. My power bills have gone up 3 fold on 4 years even though I've reduced my grid usage by 80%.
What a pity we never saw it working. The main issue was the bipolar membrane and how that works. That was never shown so we have no idea as to its effectiveness.
9:02 This is what she is up against. There are two things here, size and power delivery. She said it would store an amount of power, but the issue with flow batteries is that the current they can provide is insufficient without a LOT of surface area. That means lots of modules. What she is up against at 9:02 in the video is the Tesla Powerwall. A battery that existed even as of the making of this video. A battery with actual specifications that we can look at. Stop by The Energy Sovereignty Project on our channel to see 6 Tesla Powerwalls in operation to power a home. The same volume of batteries as that she is standing next to, will power our home for a week.
so where do those electrons come from? for a chemical reaction to produce electricity it must release electrons. to release electrons you have to have free ones. mixing the chemicals together after you have used them and then pouring them into the sea is taking for granted that the atomic balance is unchanged. not sure that is a good thing.
Unfortunately know electricity at school or university level it is not enough. Experience in that field it is absolutely necessary before think new storage solution.
I was waiting for her to distribute the "blue batteries" in the boxes to the public. At least 12 lucky ones. LOL. It's like the hydrogen fuel cell concept but without pressurized H+
When did she said gas will run out? 2002 or 2052? Audio got screwy and subtext said 2002... Don't really care because I use solar and it is available NOW. We all should be using co-generation now in every house hold, anyway, natural gas can make electricity and hot water at the same time!
A house needs to store a year's worth of energy to store solar energy for all times of day, all seasons, and all types of weather. We don't have space in our homes for 365 1-cubic-meter boxes.
It does sound kinda like a fuel cell. Not only that, I'm gonna guess that two other solutions are something like sodium hydride solution and HCl solution. Instead of a hydrogen/oxygen fuel cell, might this be some kind of hydrogen/chlorine fuel cell? I mean the half cell voltages are a bit more attractive.
I don't get it. It makes no sense and I see nothing working. Empty cardboard boxes? 4 glasses with some fluid in them Sodium chloride and sodium sulfate and a stack of what?
I think she meant that the machine was so inefficient that they could only extract enough energy to light up a room. But doubt there is enough power in a lighting strike to power a small town for a week. However it can light up a large town for a brief moment seeing as they do this naturally with no human intervention whatsoever.
External research suggests she's describing a flow battery using methylene blue. Might have described a bit of the chemistry. Terribly inadequate presentation.
Yes it seems as though she/they have made a Fuel Cell battery, I would like to know if Platinum is used in the Fuel Cell( as it is in most) or any other non renewable material!.
This is the same old stuff we have been hearing for years. Everyone trying to find a way to continue our destructive lifestyle. Can't these people see that the only way we can survive is to drastically reduce our energy consumption. And I DO mean drastically. By at least 90%. Either we do that now, or we will all have to move back into caves. The electric car is a joke waiting to happen. The great dream of endless rows of cars driving down endless highways is becoming a nightmare. Whole forests are vanishing before our eyes. And some people think a battery will save us. I hope I am still here in 20 years to say, "I told you so"
Why do You say " This Box " when in actual fact it looks like there are Twelve(12) boxes ! Six Boxes on top of another six Boxes and then what ? Why did You not show the Battery unless there is and was NO BATTERY !
Na, Liquid Floride Thorium Reactors (LFTR), that's the way to go. This thing is only a battery - a storage device, where does the electricity come from in the first place?
No Batteries Necessary If we can harness & produce energy faster than we could use it, then we wouldn’t need an extra man-made energy storage battery. The Space Around Us Is The Best Battery The vacuum of “empty space” appears to be an energy reservoir of immense capacity that makes nuclear power seem old fashioned. Richard Feynman and others have pointed out that the amount of Zero Point Energy in one cubic centimeter of the vacuum (ambient space) is much greater than the energy density in an atomic nucleus.
There are several methods that have been demonstrated to "Harness Space Energy". Here's just one example : Thomas Bearden's patented MEG (Motionless Electromagnetic Generator) www.google.com/search?q=Thomas+Bearden+MEG&client=safari&rls=en&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjjsJnWxsLRAhWJiVQKHYh9B7IQsAQIKA&biw=1154&bih=715 
+Mike Hingle There is one flaw. If we produce energy faster than we could use it, it's transfered to heat. We would need immense cooling if we overproduced electricity like you seem to say we should. If you are going to say that "we can just turn it down to match our need" then my answer is. Only if it's government controlled. With out current nuclear plants for example. They are almost exclusively slow calibrated meaning that they are all designed to opperate at 100% allways. They are not designed to quickly be tuned down. The reason for that is economics. The guy who invested in them does not want to make less money. He wants to make 100% money always.
So where can we purchase one? Sounds fishy to me. If its so great, why aren't they manufacturing and selling them? I know a millionaire who would JUMP at the chance to finance something like this. I am sure there are Tens of Thousands of people who would invest in this company just in the USA.
No efficiency data, no product, no large numbers... no proof, just basic slides. I like the idea, but I don't want to imagine the battery, I want to see that it works and has a proven tested efficiency.
If she's working on it with a company Why would she divulge how exactly it's made? That would be pure folly. Have a little hope people. At least she's out there trying her a** off to make things better. I talk a mean talk but it's more then I'm doing. How about you? Give the kid a break
It's a flow battery, which is closely related to the concept of a fuel cell. I keep getting different answers with regards to efficiency. But 60% seems low. A commercial vendor of grid size flow batteries claimed 80 - 90 % round trip efficiencies depending whether operating for maximum power versus maximum energy. In any case, this seems like just a bunch of cardboard boxes, with no real system design.
This woman is as cute as can be, but that's no reason to think she even knows what she's talking about . . . sure doesn't sound like it. But boy, is she a little cutie ! ! ;->
If this invention was true so it would have been got commercialised now. But we don't see any blue battery in the market except previous colours, heheheh
Wonderful invention but now is 2020 and there is no bluebattry or aquabattry in sight. Why is that? Maybe we are waiting for China to get it going for us.
2024 still not available, shouldn’t it be everywhere already? Or do some people need to get more money first? 😂 (silly how the subject disappeared, only to reappear probably much much more expensive than it should)
The cardboard boxes were never opened. Hummmmmm. OOPS is spelled that wrong SCAMMMMMMM. No more anything about blue battery since 2016. Gee, I wonder why.
Unbelievable naivety. I hope the R&D is built on something more substantial than this. This is like a home-school project in making a battery - not a serious attempt to define a new battery platform.
