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From the blog post: > Malta’s solution is to store electricity as heat in high temperature molten salt and cold in a low temperature liquid for days, or even w
by bch 8y ago
From the blog post:
> Malta’s solution is to store electricity as heat in high temperature molten salt and cold in a low temperature liquid for days, or even weeks, until it’s needed. The key insight behind Malta is that electricity can be stored as heat in high temperature molten salt and cold in a low temperature liquid for days, or even weeks, until it’s needed.
The key insight is an oft forgotten energy storage fundamental called ‘tautology’.
- darawk 8y agoNot sure if you noticed, but the phrase "Key insight" links to a scientific paper: https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.4994054 https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.4994054
- bch 8y agoYes, and to be clear, I’m interested (enamoured, even) in heat, by my long-running interest in air-cooled engines (VW, BMW, Porsche), and am fascinated with what’s going on here. My citation above was really a cheap shot at bad copy.
- ams6110 8y agoHow can energy be stored as cold? Cold is by definition the absence of energy.
- antidesitter 8y agoTemperature differences are what drive heat engines, i.e. you need a hot and a cold(er) reservoir. A nice demonstration of this is a handheld Stirling engine, which you can power by placing ice at the bottom (since it’s colder than the surrounding environment).
- ams6110 8y agoOkay, but technically you're storing the energy in the environment, not in the cold reservoir. Maybe a distinction not worth making.
- robertelder 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_generator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_generator
- starbeast 8y ago0 - you must play the game 1 - you can never win 2 - you can only break even on a very cold day << f.n. 3 - it never ever gets that cold ---- f.n. >> the maximum efficiency of the work that can be extracted from a heat cycle is dependent on the relative difference between the hot end and the cold end and absolute zero. The closer you can get the cold end to zero relative to the hot, the higher the efficiency. The energy of a heat engine comes from the potential. If everything is equally hot there is no potential energy just as much as if everything is equally cold. If there is a gradient, you can do work.