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What about liquid metal batteries? http://www.ted.com/talks/donald_sadoway_the_missing_link_to_renewable_energy?language=en http://www.ted.com/talks/donald_sad
by stcredzero 10y ago
What about liquid metal batteries?
http://www.ted.com/talks/donald_sadoway_the_missing_link_to_renewable_energy?language=en http://www.ted.com/talks/donald_sadoway_the_missing_link_to_...
From a naive/quick glance taking a Musk style "first principles" look at them, being made of elements that are literally "dirt cheap" and available in major construction project quantities would seem to be a decisive advantage.
EDIT: Seems they ran into major problems with seals: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/541851/race-for-a-new-grid-battery-hits-a-speed-bump/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/541851/race-for-a-new-gri...
- walrus01 10y agoI am not aware of any that are actually shipping as commercial products that I can buy with a net30 PO, everything so far is PR fluff, lab test and field beta tests.
- taneq 10y agoGoing back 15-20 years, there was the ZEBRA battery which was looking pretty good. I don't know what happened to it. According to ZEVA the power output was fairly low so maybe that was the issue.[1] At least one company[2] is pretty close to bringing a redox flow battery to market, which should have most of the advantages of molten salt / liquid metal batteries without the downside of having to keep it molten. The limiting factor seems to be electrode lifespan but even then the cycle life is huge (~3600-4000 full discharge cycles). Also from the numbers they give, round trip efficiency seems a bit lower (~80%) than LiIon / LiPoly. [1] http://zeva.com.au/Tech/Batteries/ http://zeva.com.au/Tech/Batteries/ [2] http://redflow.com/ http://redflow.com/