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Battery made of aluminum, sulfur and salt proves fast, safe and low-cost
- 8jef 4y agoI'll buy twelve.
- drcongo 4y agoWould this also be a lot easier / safer to recycle?
- adrian_b 4y agoThat is one of the main claimed advantages, because the main components are simple inorganic substances, and not e.g. complex organic solvents that degrade in time, like in most lithium batteries.
- drcongo 4y agoThanks, I scanned the article and searched for the word "recycle" but it wasn't clear.
- moepstar 4y ago...so it's probably huge then?
- noneeeed 4y agoSounds it. But as the article points out, this is probably more suitable for static installations like houses or charging stations, not in your car or phone.
- tmikaeld 4y agoMaybe not THAT huge, just not, pocket sized. There's a hint here: "The cells would cost just one sixth of the price of a similar-sized lithium-ion cell."
- wolfram74 4y agoone thing I'd have liked that I didn't spot was a joules/kg or joules/volume question, and "size" is a bit nebulous, are they talking volume or energy? if it's 1/6th cost per volume, but it's 1/7th the energy per volume, lithium would still come out ahead on cost. It's probably not, but the article and the abstract didn't clarify that to my read.
- tmikaeld 4y agoMaybe this is too hard to quantify outside of mass-production? I'd assume that a well-tuned mass-production cycle would drastically reduce size over time, like it did with lithium batteries?
- adrian_b 4y agoFor the same energy, the mass of an aluminum electrode would need to be almost 2.4 times greater than the mass of a lithium electrode, in a sulfur-based battery (the ratio can be computed from the enthalpies of the 2 sulfides, the atomic masses of Li and Al, and their number of valence electrons). However, while there are also lithium-sulfur batteries in development, the current lithium-ion rechargeable batteries with Co/Ni/Mn/Fe electrodes have a much worse energy/mass ratio than a lithium-sulfur battery. Moreover, in a lithium-ion battery, the mass of the electrode which stores the lithium is much greater than the mass of the stored lithium (which is intercalated in a porous structure), and the mass of the electrode is only a small fraction of the total mass of the battery. The proposed aluminum-sulfur battery needs good thermal insulation, which will increase the volume in comparison with a lithium battery, but which should not increase much the mass. In conclusion, it is likely that it should be possible to make such a battery at a similar energy per mass with the current Li-ion batteries, but at a worse energy per volume. There is a chance to improve the energy per volume by making a very large battery, which would be possible because there is less risk of fires, but in a large battery the regrowth of the aluminum might be not uniform enough, resulting in a shorter number of charge-discharge cycles until degradation.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
- noneeeed 4y ago> The team says that this battery design would be best suited to the scale of a few dozen kilowatt-hours, like powering an individual home from renewable sources. I'm curious to know if this would also be suitable for grid-scale storage, it seems like an odd ommision in the article. The description certainly implies that this would be a good use but I wonder if there is an issue that I'm not seeing that would make them less useful for that? Not being flamable sounds like a good thing for house and charging station level storage, although heat management might be an issue in smaller houses. I've always been a bit uncomfortable about the idea of a large li-ion battery pack in my house, given the difficulty of extinguishing fires that involve them, I'd be happier with something like this assuming the thermal management could be dealt with.
- comboy 4y ago> I've always been a bit uncomfortable about the idea of a large li-ion battery pack in my house So am I, but I think we're not different from people who are afraid of using planes. Yes, it's really bad when it happens, it just doesn't happen all that often and when it does it ends up in the news. Just like cars are more dangerous than planes even when you have li-ion battery it probably has very low impact on total probability of your house burning down because of other potential sources. Plus somehow people seem to be afraid of wall mounted battery while having no problem with EV car parked in the garage.
- giantg2 4y agoI guess it depends on how hard it is to move. At least when GM tells people not to park their Bolt inside or near flammable stuff, they can move it. I image it would be difficult to do that with a battery pack whether connected to the wall or not.
- comboy 4y agoYou could always mount it on wheels, which would be way way easier than moving a car that's on fire (you can even keep big wire cutters nearby) If fire hazard is what's stopping people I guess one could also build a fire-resistant brick cage around it (presumably just a shelf on top should be enough? so that it still can stay cool during normal operation)
- ID1452319 4y agoThe challenge of course is scale. It is very easy to build a high powered and fast charging batteries as a one-off in a lab. Trying to produce a million a month is an altogether different proposition.
- timbit42 4y agoSure, but if it can't be done in a lab, it can't be done in a factory.
- unwind 4y agoArs [1] has a pretty decent article with a bit more depth. Still no mention of the cell's basic voltage which I thought was like the number one piece of information for a new battery chemistry. [1]: https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/08/new-aluminum-sulfur-battery-tech-offers-full-charging-in-under-a-minute/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/08/new-aluminum-sulfur-...
- unnouinceput 4y agoProbably 1.2 V, like any classic cell. I mean take one zinc and one copper disc, put some paper between them, spill citric acid onto said paper and voial!, you got yourself a battery cell.
- jhoechtl 4y agoThe classic cell has 1.5V.
- unnouinceput 4y agoThe classic is this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaic_pile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaic_pile
- mannykannot 4y agoFrom what I can recall of high-school chemistry, it depends on which ions are being used, and generally different for each combination. The basic zinc-manganese dioxide cell has an EMF of about 1.5V, while lead-acid car battery cells give about 2V. https://www.pveducation.org/pvcdrom/battery-characteristics/battery-voltage https://www.pveducation.org/pvcdrom/battery-characteristics/... https://www.pveducation.org/pvcdrom/battery-basics/electrochemical-potential https://www.pveducation.org/pvcdrom/battery-basics/electroch... Update: I see it also depends on their concentration, so the voltage changes as the cell discharges, unless all the components are solids: https://www.pveducation.org/pvcdrom/battery-basics/nernst-equation https://www.pveducation.org/pvcdrom/battery-basics/nernst-eq...
- jhoechtl 4y agoHear hear, the next breakthrough like the last 20 ones we had in the last ten years. Though it's still Li-Ion, LiFePo and plain old Lead Acid in practice.
- Schroedingersat 4y agoSodium ion is looking pretty promising.
- vardump 4y ago> Though it's still Li-Ion, LiFePo and plain old Lead Acid in practice. LiFePO4 is a type of lithium-ion battery. There are also plenty of others. In 20 years cost has decreased to a tiny fraction and gravimetric density (kWh/kg) has increased 3-4x.
- Tagbert 4y agoThe Li-Ion battery that you have today is much better than the one you had 10 years ago. All battery tech has been improving year over year for a couple of decades now. We just don’t notice because the yearly change is not so large. New chemistries don’t come into play as often as it takes longer to work out the details and to make them ready for wide spread use. https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/eternally-five-years-away-no-batteries-are-improving-under-your-nose/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/eternally-five-years...
- TheLoafOfBread 4y agoNo information about energy density and vague information about "..the new battery cells can withstand hundreds of charge cycles, and charge very quickly..." So it does not have enough density and thus useless in BEVs and if amount of charge cycles is not counted in thousands, then it is kind of useless for renewable storage as well. But at least it is cheap.
- vardump 4y ago> useless for renewable storage as well If it's cheap enough, it might still be useful in a some sort of hybrid setting. Use this one after a more durable battery is almost exhausted. This way you'd get less cycles overall, but still have power when it's really needed. Other way to look at it is if this one is 10 times cheaper per kWh, then you might prefer this over a more durable battery.
- Schroedingersat 4y agoPeople with the paper quote 50mAh/g to 500mAh/g depending on charge rate for some reason (not discharge?). Which would give it slightly higher volumetric energy density but worse mass.
- harvie 4y agoli-ion has 70-100mAh/g based on my estimation? so if they can do 200mAh/g that would be very nice, but what about the voltage, charge cycle lifespan and maximum discharge rate?
- Schroedingersat 4y agoVoltage is 1.2. I couldn't understand the claims about charge cycle (I think the tests were of 100s of charges, but the discharge rate was variable). Discharge rates were up to 200D, but no explicit mention of internal resistance. I think this was more of a 'we tried the thing' paper to justify whatever funding they had and now it'll all be hush hush until they think they have a product. It's being commercialized by the same people that did ambri which looked like a very promising technology at the time with one hard materials problem then they went dark.
- jaybeavers 4y agoAt this point I strongly distrust any 'breakthrough' article about research at MIT. After hundreds of these, I'm fairly convinced that any time a grad student pours liquid into a beaker, MIT's marketing department is out publishing the fact that Flubber has just been invented and we're all going to be saved by bouncy flying automobiles. I mean, congrats on the great marketing department. But it's tiring to be disappointed over and over by the hype.
- mensetmanusman 4y agoViews like this are common amongst STEM types, but they vastly underestimate the importance that science communication plays in getting the public on board with science funding. These are articles for taxpayers, not for you. A scientist who is also an effective communicator can be 10-100x more effective than one who only publishes in journals, because it can build consensus to fund large projects and get champions and stakeholders.
- toss1 4y agoThat's lovely, but if this is not even effective communication. Very frustrating that the article entirely fails to provide key information about its main topic - batteries. They even fail to provide even rough order-of magnitude values. How much energy can it store, i.e., the energy density (watt-hours per kilogram or equivalent measure)? How much power can it put out per unit mass (watts per kilogram or equivalent measure)? What level of cost (e.g., dollars per kilogram) are we talking about? Sure, they talk about some new feature, but without at least a rough order of magnitude on these key parameters, we cannot even guess at what will be the valid applications. For example, a battery with a very modest energy & power density but really cheap will be worthless for transport or airborne applications but may be great for fixed storage, and many other combinations. But with only highlighting some new feature in isolation, the only possible audience is ignorant enthusiasts, who we hope are not making policy. I used to be really enthusiastic about most new battery tech articles, but at this point, if they fail to even mention one of those three parameters, it looks to me just like clickbait or spam.
- warvariuc 4y ago
- egberts1 4y agoNow it’s time for MIT or the like to correspondingly design a high-torque 1.5VDC electric motor.
- giantg2 4y ago"They can not only operate at high temperatures of up to 200 °C (392 °F) but they actually work better when hotter – at 110 °C (230 °F), the batteries charged 25 times faster than they did at 25 °C (77 °F). Importantly, the researchers say the battery doesn’t need any external energy to reach this elevated temperature – its usual cycle of charging and discharging is enough to keep it that warm." I feel like they're willing to hype anything. I'm sure this would be good for certain niche applications, but a standard operating temperature that high rules out a ton of uses and requires its own safety considerations. I have no idea of the chemical reactions, but generally heat means wasted energy. I wonder what the efficiency is like for charge/discharge. And if they're used on a large scale how that heat dissipation would effect the local environment or climate change.
- sdenton4 4y agoSounds like you could put them in a data center...
- jessaustin 4y agoInternal combustion engines regularly get that hot. It isn't hot enough to damage any commonly used metals.
- giantg2 4y agoBut do you want that in a phone, in your pocket? Or any other electrical device? Or producing that heat in your house?
- denton-scratch 4y agoSo I need a kettle of boiling water to warm up the battery in my electric bike, before I can ride off in the morning? Also, boiling-hot molten salt - I don't want that spilling on me in the event the battery is ruptured in a collision. (Sure, I don't really want lithium salts splashing on me either; but molten salt at 90C?)
- webmobdev 4y agoFor finicky people like you sire, we have the sodium-sulphur battery that works at room temperature - https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/iit-m-designs-room-temperature-sodium-sulphur-battery/article30544366.ece https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/iit-m-designs-room... ...
- harvie 4y ago"its usual cycle of charging and discharging is enough to keep it that warm." Sounds like thermal loss to me...
- solarkraft 4y agoBattery "breakthrough"s are a dime a dozen. There are usually fatal flaws. Wake me up when you can buy them.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- rapjr9 4y agoDoesn't salt corrode aluminum? Maybe not these specific salts?