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Sulfur selenium solid-state battery from NASA breaks energy storage boundaries
- phero_cnstrcts 3y agoAnyone care to explain what they mean by: > As any EV advocate knows, vehicles powered by batteries and electricity are far more efficient than conventional cars powered by last century internal combustion technology. Because they are comparing energy storage with energy creation. And as far as I know fuel holds more energy per cubic centimeter than batteries.
- mdeeks 3y agoI think they are referring to energy efficiency. If I remember correctly gas cars lose about 80% of their energy propelling you forward but EVs only lose about 10-20%. My numbers might not be exact but that’s the general range.
- jtriangle 3y agoBest case EV charging is about 80% efficient from the grid, power transmission losses are 7-14% depending on your local grid, EV power usage, from the batteries, is also somewhere around 80% Efficient Gasoline engines come in at 25-30% efficient, Diesel somewhere around 35%. Hybrids can boost that some, because they can scavenge energy that'd otherwise be lost, but only somewhere between 5 and 15% in real world scenarios.
- mdeeks 3y agoArticle I just read says they score EVs higher because of regenerative breaking. 87-91% go to the wheels. In any case, very efficient. https://www.motortrend.com/uploads/2022/08/Screen-Shot-2022-08-12-at-3.46.59-PM.png?w=393 https://www.motortrend.com/uploads/2022/08/Screen-Shot-2022-...
- jbm 3y agoOn a tangent, I've been spending the past month looking to see any form of charging I can do from a solar panel to the car without conversion losses and coming up blank. The battery is DC, the panel is DC; but you can't do direct DC charging at home, so you end up with DC -> AC -> DC. It would be nice to get that last 20% efficiency back but I haven't found it.
- jtriangle 3y agoYou'd have to be able to convince the car that you're able to provide DC charging. Far from an impossibility, but a very roll your own kindof system, and you'll likely need some beefy DC/DC converters to do so. You could also, similarly, subvert the car entirely and just disconnect it from the car, charge it from the panels/DC converter, and reconnect it when finished.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoI'm pretty sure that superchargers are DC.
- jbm 3y agoUnfortunately they don't sell supercharger components at home (and I won't be installing a battery to get that 150kw capacity at home). On a side note, I don't want to necessarily fast charge the car; I just want to use the electricity from my solar panel in the most efficient possible way; that would be heating water, powering stuff in the house and charging my car; the last of which probably would take the most electricity.
- cyberax 3y ago> Best case EV charging is about 80% efficient from the grid, power transmission losses are 7-14% depending on your local grid, EV power usage, from the batteries, is also somewhere around 80% Pure BS. Tesla is at 95% from outlet to battery on 240V, and it can be even more (depending on the need to run cooling/heating). Grid transmission losses average at around 5% nationally, but it heavily depends on the location.
- Tagbert 3y agoThat statement compares the one set of vehicles to another. It is using “batteries and electricity” to identify one set and “internal combustion” to identify another but it seems to be talking about the whole vehicle. In that context, EVs are massively more efficient in terms of energy used to travel than ICEVs are. Energy storage capacity and density are a different question.
- jtriangle 3y agoIf you charge a tesla off a combined cycle oil fired power plant, both good examples of efficiency, after transmission/charging losses, you end up somewhere in the neighborhood of 28-30mpg of bunker oil. I haven't bothered working out what the equivalent diesel or gasoline consumption is, just that both have a little higher energy density, and 30mpg is a good enough ballpark number to compare things by. More or less, if you're concerned with CO2 output, a hybrid car is a better solution until we can build enough carbon free base load (currently nuclear, eventually fusion).
- megaman821 3y agoYou are going to have to show you math here, because that is the lowest number I have ever seen. Not to mention, you just made up a power generation mix that doesn't exist, what nation uses mostly combined-cycle bunker oil plants? Will your next calculation feature power plant that runs off of old tires?
- anticensor 3y agoCyprus does.
- jtriangle 3y agoAs I said, it's just a point of comparison that I could get good numbers on. Power plant operators are very tight lipped about fuel/kwh generated, but, people selling very large, industrial gensets happily offer those numbers, and they're seemingly honest about it from what I could tell. Generally, combined cycle plants are ~50% efficient in terms of fuel to power, energy density of bunker C is 40Mj/kg, transmission losses are variable, but figure them at 10% so it's ballpark and easy, EV chargers are about 80% efficient, car extracts 80% of the energy it draws from the battery in normal use (remember the motor isn't all that's being powered). So there's alot of loss along the way. Some of that is solvable, some of that is improvable, but ultimately the solution is clean, cheap power so the losses don't matter. Until we've got that, hybrid drivetrains are a good solution, provided they're implemented well. I know you're being an asshole with the whole tires comment, but, it would be a fun bit of math to do.
- mk_stjames 3y agoFTA: "Most of us have little idea what NASA — the National Aeronautics and Space Administration — has been doing since the Apollo moon missions ended. We know it is responsible for Tang and space blankets, but what has it done for us lately?" This is such a dumb and off-putting opening sentence that I can't imagine this was written by an adult person and passed by a real editor. The rest of the article is equally infuriating. It quite literally looks like output of ChatGPT for an article where the input prompt was to summarize a NASA press release but in a way that will be presented to gradeschool children. And poorly. Which isn't appropriate for... anybody, actually. The real technical overview that isn't written like a middle-schooler-GPT-generated report is located here, specifically the PDF: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20230013163 https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20230013163
- xwdv 3y agoThe goal is to infuriate.
- leke 3y agoWikipedia says NASA was not responsible for Tang.
- BrandoElFollito 3y agoOh, we had Tang in France in the 80's but it was often eaten (by children like myself) before it made it to the glass.
- adamredwoods 3y agoPrevious HN discussions have been relatively quiet on this battery: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33603281 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33603281 >> To that end, SABERS has experimented with innovative new materials yet to be used in batteries, which have produced significant progress in power discharge. During the past year, the team successfully increased their battery’s discharge rate by a factor of 10 – and then by another factor of 5 – inching researchers closer to their goal of powering a large vehicle. Looks like they're not quite there yet?
- ZeroGravitas 3y agoCATL were claiming they'd get a battery with a similar 500 Wh/kg into production this year: https://www.catl.com/en/news/6015.html https://www.catl.com/en/news/6015.html Which makes this news rather less exciting unless this battery has other advantages.
- pcl 3y ago> This presentation will demonstrate a feasible path for solid-state cells that possess a specific energy of greater than 400 Wh/kg to enable electric aircraft Wow!! Gasoline is 12 kWh/kg. Only 4x better! https://chemistry.beloit.edu/edetc/SlideShow/slides/energy/density.html https://chemistry.beloit.edu/edetc/SlideShow/slides/energy/d...
- chx 3y agoI am sorry but either math or English comprehension fails me. 12 000 Wh/kg vs 400 Wh/kg is 30 times better.
- luckystarr 3y agoRegarding gasoline: the question is how much of that energy is actually converted into motion instead of heat. With electric mirrors it's more than 90%, with gasoline it's more like 30-40%.
- anticensor 3y agoI am sure you meant motours/motors, not mirrors.
- luckystarr 3y agoYes. Gboard is getting ever more useless.
- Animats 3y ago"The SABERS concept proposes a battery that meets the key performance criteria through development of a solid-state architecture battery utilizing high-capacity sulfur-selenium cathode and lithium metal anode." This isn't even a result. It's a proposal for funding. There is no "Solid State Battery from NASA". There is, at most, a prototype cathode. There are real solid state batteries. Maxell has tiny ones for sale.[1] Many companies are making solid state battery noises, but few, if any, are shipping a product. Toyota's announcement of Real Soon Now has the Financial Times writing "The trillion-dollar question is whether solid-state batteries — a technology that promises greater range and safety than lithium-ion ones, and which Toyota has indicated it is near to mass producing — can be that miracle."[2] Solid-state batteries are the next overhyped big thing. They may eventually work, but they don't work yet. Typical solid state battery company hype site: [3] Note pictures of green and eco scenes and renders of battery modules. Note absence of product data sheets. If you dig enough, you find "Note that we have not completed the development of our multilayer commercial battery cell..." [1] https://biz.maxell.com/en/rechargeable_batteries/allsolidstate.html https://biz.maxell.com/en/rechargeable_batteries/allsolidsta... [2] https://www.ft.com/content/ffc78e5d-eb8d-442c-bc5e-d2f029951165 https://www.ft.com/content/ffc78e5d-eb8d-442c-bc5e-d2f029951... [3] https://www.quantumscape.com/ https://www.quantumscape.com/
- cyberax 3y ago> Solid-state batteries are the next overhyped big thing. They may eventually work, but they don't work yet. There are commercially available samples. So they do work, but production is not here yet. Factorial announced that publicly: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231005300023/en/Factorial-Ships-A-Samples-of-100Ah-Lithium-Metal-Solid-State-Battery-to-Automotive-Partners https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231005300023/en/Fac... Other companies have been providing cells to independent labs and prospect clients since the last year. So far under the NDAs.
- Animats 3y agoOK, somebody issued a press release a few weeks ago announcing they sent the first sample to a customer for evaluation. On a scale of 10, where 1 is "it looks like it might be theoretically possible" and 10 is "in stock at WalMart", this technology is maybe a 4 or 5.
- nonrandomstring 3y agoSuddenly a new element on the table piqued my interest. Selenium [0]. Seems relatively abundant, already used in glass and semiconductor making, but a tad toxic like arsenic etc. Any chemists weigh-in on Se ? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selenium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selenium
- pomian 3y agoSelenium is a fascinating element. Very necessary for healthy life, UpTo to a level, then it may be toxic. Different areas of the planet have more present in the soil. So on some places, it is added as a supplement to feed(especially animals - horses cows), but if that feed is given to an animal that doesn't need the supplement, it may kill it. (See polo pony kerfuffle.) There are various states of selenium which makes analysis, and chemistry complex. Se^-2,0,+2,+4, and even +6. Similar(but not) to sulphur and in strange ways to iron. Certain oxidation states are more reactive(obviously) and therefore are more toxic. But when dealing with environmental issues, finding which state of selenium is present, is extremely difficult, and requires very complex laboratory procedures. Total selenium does not answer most questions. Chemistry can be fun!
- gilleain 3y agoA couple of biochemical points about selenium: * Selenocysteine <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selenocysteine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selenocysteine> is the 21st amino acid - essentially cysteine with selenium instead of sulfur. * Selenoenzymes are used in humans for peroxide metabolism and in the thyroid
- pfdietz 3y agoSelenium is actually not very abundant. It's the 69th most abundant element in the Earth's continental crust, at an average concentration of about 50 ppb. It's less abundant than silver and only 10x more abundant than platinum. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth%27s_crust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth...
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
- shireboy 3y ago> "“Fire” and “airplane” are two words that should never be used in the same sentence" Don't ICEs and Jets all require fire and explosive fuel to fly?
- rokkitmensch 3y agoCombustible, yes. Not explosive unless Poorly Engineered.
- readthenotes1 3y agoAnother Better Battery Bulletin!