[HN Gopher] Cheapest Energy Storage Could Be New Iron-Air Battery
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Cheapest Energy Storage Could Be New Iron-Air Battery
Author : courtf
Score : 30 points
Date : 2021-07-24 21:24 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.rechargenews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.rechargenews.com)
| thefoodboylover wrote:
| very good
| 2sk21 wrote:
| "We've completed the science, what's left to do is scale up from
| lab-scale prototypes to grid-scale power plants."
|
| I can't even count the number of lab-stage announcements that I
| have seen in HN. This will be of interest only when they can get
| it to scale
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Graphene can do everything! Except get out of the lab.
| philipkglass wrote:
| _Wiley said that a 300MW "pilot" project for Minnesota-based
| Great River Energy will be commissioned in 2023._
|
| _That project, announced in May last year, was originally due to
| be a 1MW /150MWh demonstration plant capable of outputting 1MW
| for 150 hours straight._
|
| If the energy had gone up 300x from the originally announced
| pilot project the same way the power did, this would be a _huge_
| storage project boasting 45,000 MWh of storage capacity. That
| would mean leapfrogging big pumped storage projects like the Bath
| County station (capacity: 24,000 MWh):
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Sta...
|
| But this news article doesn't tout any superlatives like that.
|
| Reading between the lines, here's what I think has changed:
|
| - The original announcement of a 1MW/150MWh project was an
| implicit admission that their battery could not charge or
| discharge quickly. It took nearly a week to fully
| charge/discharge. At the time they put a positive spin on it by
| touting "long duration." That's not really an advantage, though.
| You can just discharge a high-rate-capable battery slower for
| long duration applications.
|
| - Since this updated pilot project announcement touts a big
| increase in power and leaves any _energy_ increase unspecified, I
| think that they found a way to increase the charge /discharge
| rate for their chemistry. That would be good because it would
| mean that the chemistry is suited for grid tied storage in
| general, more like lithium ion. If it can charge and discharge at
| high C-rates and it has lower lifetime cycle cost per megawatt
| hour than lithium ion batteries, it could be very successful.
| Meandering wrote:
| This is interesting... I hope they can make it feasible in the
| long run. There is another interesting application for this
| oxidation phenomenon.[1] They burn iron dust to create a C02-free
| furnace. Imagine replacing coal with iron in concrete plants...
|
| [1] https://newatlas.com/energy/bavarian-brewery-carbon-free-
| ren...
| wanderingmind wrote:
| Anyone remember all the rage of Lithium air and how it went away
| with no single application. Looks like a new round of academic
| bullshitting for wasting a new round of tax payer funding.
| mackman wrote:
| More information in this article:
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9814873/Scie...
| imglorp wrote:
| Form Energy, ... Fe, get it?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Faaak wrote:
| I'd love to be able to buy "cheap" batteries that are big, large,
| heavy, but cheap (per kWh). Sadly there are many startups but
| none are selling as of now. The only one I found ("Salt battery")
| was more expensive than Lithium but with less cycles...
| tehjoker wrote:
| Interesting concept. How does humidity affect it the
| oxidation/reduction process?
| Neil44 wrote:
| To be cynical, I'm not sure how fast responding and controllable
| rusting and un-rusting iron will be. But even so this sounds
| useful.
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