5 ms·
I consider rechargeable lithium chemistry batteries just as crucial to the 21st century as the internal combustion engine was to the 20th. And we're only two de
by Robotbeat 7y ago
I consider rechargeable lithium chemistry batteries just as crucial to the 21st century as the internal combustion engine was to the 20th. And we're only two decades in.
1) Practical electric cars.
2) Practical and scalable (both directions) and geographically independent grid storage.
3) High performance cellphones and smartphones.
4) Practical laptops and tablets.
5) Other wearable smart devices (smartwatches, portable VR/AR, fitness trackers, etc)
6) Medical devices (insulin pumps, CPAP, wearable artificial kidneys, portable oxygen generators, portable artificial heart, etc)
7) Electric trucks.
8) Electric aircraft (low range now, will soon be 1000km range, eventually will get long range and full size using more advanced chemistries like lithium sulfur, lithium anode, or even lithium air in a few decades).
9) Battery electric trains (including things like Hyperloop or Loop people movers).
10) Battery electric ships.
11) E-cigarrettes.
12) Various personal mobility devices like e-scooters, those funny hoverboard things, e-bikes, etc.
13) Lightweight spacecraft energy storage.
14) Aerial Drones. Both the ubiquitous quadcopter/DJI types and the more advanced winged flight delivery drones like Zipline is using to revolutionize high speed medical product delivery in places like infrastructure-hobbled Africa or rural India and may eventually become commonplace in the rest of the world for more products.
15) Greatly enhanced submarine propulsion, especially for underwater drones. (I have a feeling we're just scratching the surface with this one.)
16) Robotic prosthetics/assistance devices.
17) Animal or humanoid robotics like Boston Dynamics.
18) Ground based delivery drones.
19) Other ground-based drones like more compact robotic vacuums, those silly robotic trashcans, etc.
20) Secondary power sources, like for hybrid cars or APUs for aircraft or launch vehicles (such as SpaceX's Starship).
It's actually remarkable how big of an impact lithium ion batteries have already had. In some cases, it's just significantly extending the performance and convenience of things already marginally viable using lead acid or NiMH batteries, and in others it's truly enabling. And we're just getting started.
I truly believe the impact of the rechargeable lithium chemistry battery in the 21st Century will be just as great or greater than the internal combustion was for the 20th century.
So this prize is well-earned.
- cjbenedikt 7y ago...and how big an impact mining it will have on environment and water use...just saying
- Robotbeat 7y agoIt will likely have some (small) impact just due to the scale of its use. However, the process is not too different from sea salt production... You're evaporating a brine, usually. And you're displacing fossil fuel use with a material that can be recycled, so instead of constantly mining for fossil fuels, we can just extract the material once. Additionally, it can be extracted from seawater at a price that isn't insane, most affordably through desalination discharge brine. So in that sense, it could actually improve water usage by helping offset the cost of desalination. So a huge net positive compared to our current system and with a pathway to eliminate the negative impact entirely.
- tverbeure 7y ago> And you're displacing fossil fuel use with a material that can be recycled, so instead of constantly mining for fossil fuels, we can just extract the material once. I was wondering about the recycling aspects of Lithium. According to Wikipedia, it's not a thing (yet?), because mining lithium is 5x cheaper than recycling. But they're working on it...
- Robotbeat 7y agoIt's a thing, but it's done at a small scale. And prices of lithium have started to climb to the point that it is looking attractive. And there's a simple solution, here: have companies (including foreign, via tariffs) pay for the fully burdened cost of the environmental damage they're inflicting. That'll end virtually all fossil fuel usage and enable recycling and/or exclusively low-impact mining techniques.
- rory096 7y ago>including foreign, via tariffs Border adjustments, not tariffs.
- ajross 7y agoThe most constrained components elements in lithium ion batteries are not lithium itself (which is very common in the Earth's crust, though tends not to concentrate in easily minable ores) but the heavy metals like Cobalt used in the cathode. These will be the first focus for recycling.
- outworlder 7y agoEven simple things that we took for granted, like bicycles, have been undergoing transformation basically due to lithium batteries. Apart from the obvious (e-bikes), there are also electronic gear shifters and even lights. Lights used to be dynamo powered (and go out when not moving). Now, $5 devices will provide more light than what we previously had available, and are more reliable. There are probably other, less conspicuous applications that we are missing and taking for granted.
- dpark 7y ago> Lights used to be dynamo powered (and go out when not moving). Now, $5 devices will provide more light than what we previously had available, and are more reliable. Credit for that really belongs to LEDs. Dynamo lights sucked because the bulbs were 1/10 as efficient as modern ones. Standard alkaline batteries are quite sufficient for bike lights.
- narrator 7y agoVery long term prediction, but I think the most important technology of the 22nd century will be powering humans with electricity using some sort of sophisticated wetware tech. It would cost less than a dollar a day in electricity to give someone 2000 calories of energy. Humans will then always be more power efficient than any AI and will be able to live in space and on other planets far more easily.
- steelframe 7y ago> Humans will then always be more power efficient than any AI Wait, wait, I've heard this one before. The Matrix, right?? https://filmschoolrejects.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/0unhRQ7WqOh9cLYlZ.jpg https://filmschoolrejects.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/0un...
- narrator 7y agoYou got it in reverse. Batteries power humans, not humans are batteries.
- aeternum 7y agoInteresting idea, I wonder if we could basically do that now albeit probably not very efficiently. All a machine needs to do is manufacture glucose using CO2, H2O & energy, then we inject it directly into our bloodstream, probably along with some multivitamins.