[HN Gopher] Stabilization of gamma sulfur enables 4000 cycle Li-...
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Stabilization of gamma sulfur enables 4000 cycle Li-S batteries
[pdf]
Author : jbotz
Score : 154 points
Date : 2022-04-17 11:43 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| tomohawk wrote:
| I have to wonder what economic chance new battery types have
| given the massive investment in current tech.
|
| It feels like we're betting on the wrong thing, and in the
| process blowing our wad and good will. Kind of like what happened
| with nukes.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| perlgeek wrote:
| > I have to wonder what economic chance new battery types have
| given the massive investment in current tech.
|
| Current tech tends to improve at a steady pace.
|
| Taking a new tech to production takes some years (somewhere in
| the 5 to 20 years range); processes need to refined and scaled,
| suppliers sourced, people trained, recycling must be addressed
| etc.
|
| So new tech only stands a real chance if you can convince
| investors that its advantage is big enough that it still
| dominates when it comes to market.
|
| Let's say current batteries improve 7% per year (number made
| up, but not totally unrealistic). If the new technology needs
| 10 years to get to market, the current technology improves by a
| factor of 1.07*10 = 1.97 in mean time. So a 2x advantage along
| any axis (density, charge cycles, price, availability of
| materials etc.) is not a solid bet for an investor. A 5x
| advantage likely is.
|
| If course you'd want advantages on multiple axes to really make
| a solid bet.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| There's lots of segments for battery chemistries to be used, so
| they just need to beat out smaller segments to establish
| commercial viability.
|
| EV batteries also aren't a monoculture. They are even mixing
| battery types in EV packs to achieve different range/cost
| aspects.
|
| If there's room for Sodium Ion, LFP, and the various
| cobalt/nickel chemistries, if there's air, sea, and long-haul
| modes plus grid storage, home battery storage, plus all the
| mobile and tools, there's plenty of segments.
| jbotz wrote:
| Full title: "Stabilization of gamma sulfur at room temperature to
| enable the use of carbonate electrolyte in Li-S batteries". The
| paper is from February, but it doesn't seem to have been posted
| before. TLDR is that with just a new anode made from carbon
| nanofibers and sulfur, batteries otherwise almost identical to
| existing Li-Ion batteries would have 2-5 times the energy
| density, last 3 times as long, and cost 1/3 or less, and be more
| environmentally benign (not needing cobalt). The breakthrough
| here is the discovery that carbon nanofibers stabilize gamma-
| phase sulfur which previously was thought to only exist briefly
| at high temperatures, and which doesn't form the polysulfides
| that have been the main problem with Li-S batteries.
|
| Yeah, there have been lots of "breakthrough battery tech"
| announcements that didn't lead to commercial products, but this
| one really looks like it may be just the leap forward that will
| make renewable energy storage a non-problem.
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| > that will make renewable energy storage a non-problem
|
| I recently played around with the data from Germany 2020. I
| scaled up the existing renewables (only the ones that are
| scalable - wind and solar, hydro is pretty much maxed out) so
| that the yearly consumption can be served from 100% renewables.
| Then I added a battery to carry the overproduction over to the
| gaps. A 3 TWh battery would still lead to 50 days of empty
| battery and thus gaps in the power supply.
|
| This is electricity, not Transport and heating. And obviously
| my approach is simple, no sector coupling effects, no smart
| grid just scaling up want we have.
|
| 3 TWh is 30 million Model S batteries. Even with sodium ion
| batteries I think this is not really realistic.
|
| I always wondered why the are talking about hydrogen so much,
| despite the much higher losses you get in that process. Now I
| get it. I think batteries will be a good solution for single
| family homes / buildings with solar panel. But the grunt of the
| grid storage I think will be hydrogen. Especially because
| during winter, it can produce heat and electricity and the same
| gas turbines that are already common in German cities.
|
| Either way, it's a big, hard project, but doable if we really
| want to.
| brianwawok wrote:
| Grid storage is different from powering EVs though. You don't
| provide a week of grid backup via battery. You do stuff like
| pump 100 million gallons of water into a dam with a hydro
| plant ready.
|
| I think water is more efficient then hydrogen even.
| maxerickson wrote:
| That's 3 minutes of maximum generation at https://en.wikipe
| dia.org/wiki/Ludington_Pumped_Storage_Power...
|
| I guess that plant doesn't have an extreme amount of head
| or a particularly large reservoir.
|
| It's about 7 minutes at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_
| County_Pumped_Storage_Sta... , which has a lot more head.
|
| So you need a lot more pumped storage if you want to start
| talking about days of backup, and we already used quite a
| few of the best sites.
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| Hydrogen is not very efficient, hydro is very efficient.
| But the energy density for hydro is lower than people
| think.
|
| m * g * h -> you either need lots of water or lots of
| height. Best is to have both. You only get that in the Alps
| and you need some special geoprgaphic features to make it
| work. Europe is also densely populated and the nature we
| have left, we want to preserve, so we can't flood all of
| it.
|
| Do the math, figure out how big of damn we would need to
| store 3TWh.
|
| My result: at 1000m pump height, you would need 3000
| billion liters, which is cube of water with a length 1.5km.
| Double check this tough, I'm not sure if I did all the
| conversion correctly
| japanuspus wrote:
| I am not sure there is a universal value for "what people
| think" about pumped hydro energy density, but your
| numbers are quite far of: 3TWh at 1000m pump height would
| require 3e6Wh _3600s /h/(1000m_1000kg/m3*9.8m/s2) =
| 1.1e6m3, so a waist-high lake of one square kilometer
| would do.
|
| For what it is worth, in Europe, Switzerland is doing a
| lot of pumped hydro powered by surplus French nuclear
| power in the summer time. Norway has huge amounts of
| hydro and only pumps a little, but it doesn't matter
| much: The Scandinavian grid is so well connected, that
| hydro will ramp down when power is available elsewhere,
| in effect providing on-demand provider for the whole
| region.
| DanHulton wrote:
| Sure, but it's very dependant on geography, if you want to
| do it at scale. We're definitely going to have to adopt a
| mixed approach, so I'd say it still makes sense to keep the
| research into hydrogen, batteries, all of it.
| KuzMenachem wrote:
| If you overprovision the electricity production you can get
| away with less battery capacity. It's a tradeoff and the
| cost-optimal point is not going to be the one where the
| production is exactly equal to the demand.
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| This was the most interesting finding: increasing
| production by 20% did more then increasing storage by 10x.
| guerby wrote:
| Yes that's why no one is going for 100% currently yearly
| production match with renewable, it will need to go
| higher in production :).
|
| Then you'll get times with overproduction with very low
| prices, this will prop up "power to storage for power
| later" (liquid, gaz, whatever) with buy low sell high
| usual market stuff.
|
| Note that France has currently 130 TWh of gaz storage
| capacity for about 473 TWh of yearly electricity
| consumption.
| jhgb wrote:
| > I recently played around with the data from Germany 2020. I
| scaled up the existing renewables (only the ones that are
| scalable - wind and solar, hydro is pretty much maxed out) so
| that the yearly consumption can be served from 100%
| renewables. Then I added a battery to carry the
| overproduction over to the gaps. A 3 TWh battery would still
| lead to 50 days of empty battery and thus gaps in the power
| supply.
|
| Did you use the approach outlined in
| https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2018.07.004 ? Because
| "50 days of empty battery" is vastly different from the
| results in that work. 3 TWh is roughly 0.5% of German annual
| consumption and should bring you to at least a 90% renewable
| scenario, if not to 100%.
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| 90% is pretty close to the 50 days of empty battery. Keep
| in mind that on empty battery days, you still produce some
| energy as well.
|
| My approach was very very simple: if production is higher
| than consumption, store energy. Energy storage is limited,
| so when the stroage is full, energy is lost. If consumption
| is higher then production, take the difference from the
| battery.
|
| I have not considered any smart usage patterns or any
| advanced concepts at all.
|
| Also keep in mind that this ignores transport an heat. Pure
| electricity was what I looked at and that is somewhat
| around one third of the total energy used in Germany.
| jhgb wrote:
| > 90% is pretty close to the 50 days of empty battery.
|
| That's not quite how I understood "50 days of empty
| battery", but fair enough. This is not something that
| can't be solved, though. Even the 90% estimate is the
| worst case estimate, since there's actually a high
| likelihood of 3 TWh of storage being sufficient for 100%
| of renewables in any given German year.
|
| > My approach was very very simple: if production is
| higher than consumption, store energy. Energy storage is
| limited, so when the stroage is full, energy is lost. If
| consumption is higher then production, take the
| difference from the battery.
|
| That's Sinn's approach ("waste no energy and store
| everything, no matter the cost"), which yields
| significantly higher total costs (and storage capacities)
| than Zerrahn's approach which actually takes costs into
| consideration and leads to much smaller storage
| capacities on the basis of throwing energy away or using
| it opportunistically being actually cheaper than storing
| it for later grid use.
|
| > Also keep in mind that this ignores transport an heat.
|
| Transport and heat actually simplify things significantly
| for the grid since charging of EVs in Europe can be
| shifted around by as much as several days while heat will
| have been largely solved by the EU's 2010 and 2012 energy
| efficiency directives.
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| I'm sure that there is a lot of smart things that can
| reduce the amount of storage needed. I'm not a researcher
| in this field, I wanted to do simple but valid
| calculations that represent a realistic scenario,
| accepting being more pessimistic to keep it simple.
|
| I also found that increasing the production by 20% does
| more than increasing the stroage by 10x. I think at 200%
| renewable production and 2 TWh I ended up with 0 empty
| battery days in my simple model.
|
| So I believe you when you say that the storage can be
| smaller. I hope I can also run these numbers myself if I
| find some time.
|
| I am however also a bit sceptical about all these smart
| optimizations. It's hard for me to judge hoe much
| behavioural changes that would need. I'd rather overbuild
| production and storage than have people reject
| renewables, because they feel reminded of the DDR when
| they get their charge-time allotment to be consumed
| during a certain time only.
|
| Thanks for the names for the approaches, will check that
| out! I didn't do any research on existing material, I
| wanted to figure it out on my own first, to get a better
| feeling for the problem. Often when is start with the
| papers, I don't actually end up really studying the
| problem, because I hunt trough (often hard to understand)
| papers and end up giving up being overwhelmed.
| jhgb wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that all you need to start with is linear
| programming and the Aggregate Production Planning model
| -- which is usually being used for physical
| manufacturing, but can be adapted to electricity
| production. Ideally you'd want a MILP solver to make
| automated decisions to assign certain binary variables
| (for example whether or not to build certain large-scale
| storage projects of very specific sizes -- typically
| PHES, since they're all different), but you can often get
| by by simply generating multiple models for every
| combination of binary variables and picking the best one.
| Similarly you can handle the integration of nuclear power
| plants, which would be integer variables (for example the
| number of 1 GWe blocks in operation) -- just generate N
| models for 0..N-1 nuclear reactors on the grid. I did one
| such model for the Czech grid some time ago but I'd have
| to dig it up. The basics are not difficult, though --
| just split up the time period into intervals of a
| suitable size and observe in each time interval that
| Production_t + Storage_t - Consumption_t - Storage_t+1 =
| 0. That's what I did, having known production models but
| having read no papers on the renewable storage subject
| either. The logic is the same, though. I just got my grid
| information from https://open-power-system-data.org/ and
| ran with it.
| franckl wrote:
| Exactly, and we think ammonia is even better than hydrogen.
| It is easier to transport and to store (especially for places
| without underground salt caverns). See
| Https://www.airthium.com
| xoa wrote:
| > _Yeah, there have been lots of "breakthrough battery tech"
| announcements that didn't lead to commercial products_
|
| Although very important to note in these discussions: a lot of
| them _did_. Yes, in mass production as as part of a whole
| battery system vs a single lab cell the gains are almost always
| far smaller, but small gains add up over time. Energy density
| has dramatically increased over the last few decades [0] as
| well as cost dropping and those trends together have combined
| to make the current electrification acceleration possible.
| There isn 't any need to be overly cynical about this stuff,
| the progress is real and a tipping point was reached a while
| ago. With the amount of capital for R&D and production pouring
| in at this point it's not unreasonable to hope for even more.
|
| ----
|
| 0: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/eternally-five-
| years...
| RivieraKid wrote:
| > a lot of them did
|
| Really? I haven't noticed much progress over the last 5 to 10
| years. What was the biggest breakthrough that has
| materialized in that time?
| gameswithgo wrote:
| xoa wrote:
| > _Really? I haven 't noticed much progress over the last 5
| to 10 years_
|
| You don't call doubling to tripling of energy density
| progress?
|
| https://cleantechnica.com/2020/02/19/bloombergnef-lithium-
| io...
|
| And it's not about "big breakthroughs" any more than it is
| for microprocessors. A bunch of lab changes that in
| production add .5-5% each add up to 10-20% in a generation
| add up to 2-3x over a decade. That something works in a lab
| though is still interesting since it shows the possible
| ceiling we can work towards. Going from that to something
| that we can make billions of cheaply entails compromises,
| but the ultimate envelope still matters.
| multiplegeorges wrote:
| Just like in finance, most (consumer/laymen) people are
| looking for a big win when it's been shown over and over
| that small gains compounded over time always come out
| ahead.
| magila wrote:
| So this got me curious and I started to look at something
| a bit more concrete: the history of 18650 cell capacity.
| Currently the highest capacity 18650 that's widely
| available is 3500 mAh. The first such cell I found is the
| LG MJ1 which dates back to 2014: https://cdn.shopify.com/
| s/files/1/0481/9678/0183/files/lg_mj...
|
| I also found a 3200 mAh model from 2012: https://cdn.shop
| ify.com/s/files/1/0481/9678/0183/files/panas...
|
| That's a fair bit less than a 3x improvement over 10
| years. Now of course this is a rather crude and
| unscientific measurement. It's also effectively measuring
| energy density by volume rather than weight, but volume
| is more often the limiting factor for Li-ion batteries
| (e.g. smartphones and EVs are volume limited).
|
| Still, I think this shows why people are skeptical about
| claimed massive improvements in battery tech: it's hard
| to find clear evidence of it in actual products people
| can buy.
| simonh wrote:
| So far as I can tell Li Ion batteries have gained about a
| 1.5x charge per mass improvement in the last 10 years.
| They may have doubled or trebled over a longer time frame
| though. If there was a big jump due to a particular
| technology an extra year or two in the time frame, or
| shift in the time frame might make a big difference.
| gpapilion wrote:
| I think while the energy density has doubled the amount
| observed work from a battery seems constant.
|
| Laptops last a few hours, phones last around a day, etc.
| We've used that density to get thinner and lighter
| devices with slightly more performance that's hard to
| observe from everyday tasks.
|
| The outlier is cars, where they've crept up as the
| density has come up.
| moonchrome wrote:
| >I think while the energy density has doubled
|
| Has it really ? I remember the same mAh ratings or slight
| bumps in phones for many generations. 2016 Samsung galaxy
| s7 had 3000mah battery - latest ones have like 3700mah ?
| There have been larger batteries in bigger phones - but
| I'd like to have a 6000mah battery in a normal form
| factor.
|
| The only doubling I see is in 10 year period, but phone
| size grew considerably in that time as well.
|
| And smart watch batteries still suck no matter the price
| range.
| simonh wrote:
| You're not taking into account the weight of those
| batteries or their cost as components. A bigger phone
| might not just have a bigger battery, it might have a
| bigger cheaper battery with the same capacity. Only
| looking at the capacity doesn't tell you anything useful
| about charge to weight.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| This chart is a little suspicious given that iPhone
| battery density has only increased by 20% in 9 years.
|
| https://twitter.com/Alxbk/status/1181307722991652864
| zardo wrote:
| Apple isn't going to be selecting for mass/energy
| density. That's a major concern for EVs, but for a phone,
| you would gladly take double the capacity for 3x the
| mass.
| magila wrote:
| EV battery capacity hasn't exactly been skyrocketing
| either. When the Tesla Model S was introduced in 2012 the
| largest battery option was 85 kWh. For the 2015 model
| year it got a 90 kWh option and 100 kWh for 2016. Today
| 100 kWh remains the most you can get.
| zardo wrote:
| How has the mass changed? If we're talking about a
| fraction (density) it's pointless to talk about the
| numerator on its own.
| robocat wrote:
| Mobile phones mostly optimise for Wh/m3 or for batteries
| more usually stated Wh/L (stored energy by volume),
| however that tweet is about Wh/kg (stored energy by
| weight) which is less relevant to mobile phones.
| "Density" means one thing that has little to do with
| energy, "energy density"
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density is a
| slightly better term but it is also misused. "volumetric
| energy density" versus "gravimetric energy density" are
| clearer terms (edit:) for usage in conversations like
| this, although the more standard industry terms afaik are
| "energy density" for volumetric and "specific energy" for
| gravimetric.
| userbinator wrote:
| Energy density, yes; longevity, no. Obviously making
| batteries that last (much) longer would not be very
| profitable, especially to the companies who depend on forced
| obolescence.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Not really. A battery that can last longer at a given
| operation rate also means you could, for example, charge it
| faster or draw bigger loads.
| altcognito wrote:
| This applies less when selling B2B. Auto companies and
| power companies are GOING to shop based on reliability, and
| are GOING to notice when your stuff doesn't last as long as
| it should.
| userbinator wrote:
| I'm referring to the battery companies, who won't bother
| to increase longevity beyond the bare minimum necessary
| to meet a specification.
|
| While I doubt something like the Phoebus Cartel exists
| for batteries, when they all have little incentive to
| make them last longer, you won't find much difference
| between them. Exceptions include military and aerospace
| where the costs are also many times higher.
| Eyght wrote:
| You can mitigate planned obsolescense with recurrent
| billing, like monthly fees.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| EV batteries with 2-5 times the energy density would completely
| change the game. Imagine a car with a 900 - 2300 km range on a
| single charge.
|
| The cost savings would immediately solve the business case
| around renewable energy storage, too.
| kkfx wrote:
| Remember that you also need to recharge the car. EV are
| called environmental friendly, in the sense "they pollute
| less than ICEs in their life" only if charging is done from
| renewables.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| I would guess that even charging an EV from a "dirty" power
| source is still better than an ICE, simply due to
| efficiencies of scale.
| kkfx wrote:
| What efficiencies? Those who demand energivore and
| polluting oil, gas, coal extraction and processing to a
| moderately near power plant + the energy you loose in
| transport + the energy you loose in battery and relevant
| inverter and intermediate transformers of the energy
| grid?
|
| An electrical motor is _very_ efficient, a battery system
| is _moderately_ efficient and combined with all
| environmental costs to source needed materials, dispose
| of end-of-life batteries (witch means 5 to 8 years per
| battery in mean) are _huge_. Of course pushing refined
| oil around the world is not efficient either but such
| infra is already there, while no country in the world can
| recharge their potential EVs on scale nor we can produce
| them in sufficient numbers nor we know how to dispose of
| them.
|
| Costs should be computed in total, not just in the
| running part. Like cost of trains must take into account
| the construction of the train network, it's entertainment
| etc NOT just the energy the train use.
| dangrossman wrote:
| Where are you coming up with this stuff?
|
| Well-to-wheel, covering every single CO2 molecule
| involved in producing, transporting, burning and
| consuming ANY fossil fuel used for electricity
| production, electric cars are still more efficient and
| produce less emissions per mile. You could turn over the
| entire fleet of cars on US roads to electric today, and
| charging them would not pose a problem for the grid.
|
| Batteries do not reach end of life in 5-8 years. Every EV
| battery on the US market comes with a minimum of an 8
| year 100K mile warranty, and they do not get disposed of
| the day the warranty ends. They have 10-20 years of
| usable life in a car, then another 10+ years as
| stationary storage with reduced capacity. When an EV gets
| totaled out, the batteries never ever go to a landfill,
| even 10+ year old ones, as they have so much usable life
| in them they're still worth thousands of dollars.
|
| For one point of reference, a 10 year old Nissan LEAF EV
| battery -- which were tiny compared to the batteries that
| come in new EVs today -- will still have more usable
| capacity in it than a brand new $11,000 Tesla Powerwall
| for whole-home battery backup and solar storage.
| fpoling wrote:
| Indeed efficiency of a modern ICE engine in a car is 25%
| max in ideal conditions, while a modern industrial
| turbine powered by natural gas can get 60%.
|
| In fact even with coal the amount of CO2 will be smaller
| per distance driven. The efficiency of the latest coal
| power stations is about 48%. With this and accounting for
| significant energy losses to refine gasoline from oil the
| electrical cars are already greener than gasoline or
| Diesel engines unless one use the energy from very old
| coal plants with low efficiency.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Right, but there are no technological barriers to renewable
| electricity generation. Not only is it possible with
| current technology, it's already the cheapest way to
| generate electricity. The limits on adoption of renewables
| are all to do with storage.
| kkfx wrote:
| I have a p.v. system at home, not the maximum power
| possible but enough for my needs. With an EV I'll have to
| spend around half the price of the new EV for augmenting
| my solar part of the mini-plant with a life expectancy of
| solar inverter around 10 years and for the car from 5 to
| 8 maximum. After that time car battery got buried
| somewhere in the third world since we actually have no
| recycling strategies and I can only recharge from
| renewable if I do not use the car much and one day yes
| another no since I produce electricity only during the
| day.
|
| That not counting the environmental damage provoked by
| mining for solar panels and batteries. Not counting the
| fact that we already have issues satisfying electricity
| demand without much EV on the roads.
|
| Sorry, I'm an environmentalist and an engineer, I know
| people like dreams, but I also know what we can have, so
| far the proposed new deal is simply a disaster. I've
| built my new house well insulated, with actual green
| standard, because that's a good and doable thing for
| those who can afford doing so and now I consume far less
| energy to heat/cool the house, that's good. If gas prices
| goes up a bit more I might benefit economically from an
| EV but that's not a green in environmental sense of
| green, that's dollar green. First we can't rebuild in a
| decade the 99% of existing buildings to lower energy
| consumption, it's good going fast in that direction, but
| we can reach that goal perhaps in a century, and "we"
| means in the western world only. That's do a good job for
| us, but it's only a part, even if big enough, of our
| energy needs. We have industry needs, transportation
| needs. For industry actual best option is nuclear
| (constant production per nearly constant demand in
| developed industrial systems) witch also work for ships,
| even if is hyper expensive. Some goods can probably be
| transported by intermittent rail service that move goods
| only when we have energy, but such commercial-only
| network is to be built and is a colossal and not flexible
| at all solution so probably not even worth the
| investments in environmental terms.
|
| The sole Green New Deal I see theoretically possible is
| with a _mass genocide_ that kill a large slice of
| humanity in very short time. With that scarce resources
| would be less scarce and so we can probably last longer
| enough to evolve _if_ the reduced number of humans
| suffice to produce technological advancements witch is a
| bit uncertain, morality aside. Not counting the little
| issue of dealing with billions of death in a short time
| span and resulting social and biological consequences.
|
| Really, try to imaging, to dimension a bit a possible new
| society and draw your conclusion, I've done that with
| what I know and that's what I conclude, I'm curious about
| others opinions. Remember in the game that even our small
| p.v. plant in modern houses are not born in the backyard
| and the supply chain and industry behind them need to
| been able to exists forever if we want to live with such
| model. Similarly EV does not born in our garage. Just to
| say I can produce around 25kWh/day in moderately good
| days, I use around 12kWh for my house in mean, try to
| design a recharge pattern for an EV. Extend the
| computation for actual population density and needs. Try
| to determine how much TWh we consume in gasoline for our
| cars and how much renewable we need just to recharge a
| hypothetical equivalent fleet of EVs. Do such basic and
| approximate math. Add to it, even if it's not needed, the
| energy we need for industry and for heating/cooling.
| Really try that instead of dreaming or swallowing
| advertisements like most do dreaming a miracle car with a
| solar roof that run autonomously as the owner wish.
| Tagbert wrote:
| Multiple studies have shown that, even if an EV is charged
| from a power grid powered 100% by coal, it still produces
| about the same CO2 as a 50mpg ICE vehicle. Very few grids
| are that dirty and contain a mix of cleaner sources like
| natural gas, nuclear, wind, solar, and hydro. Each cleaner
| source you add reduce the CO2 output due to that EV. On a
| typical grid, it only takes about 12K miles to offset the
| additional energy needed to manufacture that EV.
| kkfx wrote:
| Unfortunately those studies do not take into account the
| pollution and energy needed to create actual battery
| chemistry, just because that happen in the poorest area
| of the planet and the fact that actual batteries last
| from 5 years if used much to 8 if used softly, while ICE
| cars last more than double and materials in them are
| partially recycled. As I said: remember the TCO
| pollution, not just the journey. Oh, BTW CO2 is a
| problem, but is not the only nor the worst pollutant, it
| was just chosen because people can't really embrace nor
| like complexity and is a thing we can reduce, so
| something useful for economist games, not for science.
| foepys wrote:
| Honestly, I'd rather have EV under 2 tonnes than 2,000km
| range...
| pedrocr wrote:
| You can have that now. A Tesla model 3 weighs between 1600
| and 1900kg depending on version.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| The science says, 2-3x is pretty much a done deal. There are
| a lot of challenges to productize and that will take time but
| there are so many independent companies and research groups
| coming up with different ways to dot this that I feel
| confident saying at least one of them is probably onto
| something. I think the real deal is another doubling in
| energy density to somewhere between 5x and 10x. E.g. solid
| state batteries might enable that eventually. It's probably a
| bit further out. 10-20 years at least. But more than
| probable.
|
| The impact of this for EVs would not necessarily be cars with
| bigger ranges but much lighter/cheaper cars with similar
| ranges as current high end models with faster charging times
| that only need a third of the battery weight. Anything beyond
| a few hundred miles of range is basically irrational and
| overkill. Normal people have a bladder range of about 200-300
| miles at best (I get uncomfortable way before that) and ought
| to stop for longer than five minutes when they relief
| themselves eventually. Perfect opportunity to top up a
| battery. But most people don't actually drive that far more
| than a few times a year; if at all.
| ridaj wrote:
| Human bladder range can already be extended 10x by the use
| of Gatorade bottle technology.
| mrfusion wrote:
| The problem is a 300 mile range isn't a true 300 miles.
| There's losses for temperature, running the heater, battery
| reserve, etc.
|
| I see 300 possibly being sufficient but I'd want the
| advertised range to be 400 to make sure I reliably get
| that.
| phtrivier wrote:
| > But most people don't actually drive that far more than a
| few times a year; if at all.
|
| Absolutely true, but, until we move to a "usage" rather
| than "possession" model for cars, this will be the biggest
| obstacle to massive adoption of EV as the primary car.
|
| At this point people get that they probably only run 100km
| a day at most, and that an EV would perfectly suit their
| daily commute (small EVs would be the perfect yellow jacket
| thing.)
|
| However, everybody has family to visit on the other side of
| the country twice a year.
|
| The moment you cross the psychological threshold of 1000km
| on a single charge (or, roughly a full day of highway), the
| whole game changes.
|
| Would it be better if people commuted by train and ebike,
| visited their family by trains and had small easy to rent
| EVs for the days they need a car ? Sure. Will it happen
| before 70 years of cultural impact of personal car change ?
| Hard to tell.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| > However, everybody has family to visit on the other
| side of the country twice a year.
|
| Relatively few people drive across the entire country
| twice per year. Many Americans do drive several hours to
| visit their family.
|
| It takes basically one trip using a current long range EV
| (e.g., ~310 miles range) and modern HVDC charging to rid
| yourself of these concerns. A 9h (~500 mile) trip only
| requires about an hour of HVDC charging. You'll need to
| stop for 30 minutes anyway unless you're on some kind of
| cannonball run.
| robocat wrote:
| > You'll need to stop for 30 minutes anyway
|
| Except that on the holidays, there will not be enough
| chargers, so the "30 minute stop" is an ideal that simply
| cannot be reached under peak holiday conditions. Booking
| a charger could make things predictable, but it can't
| solve the problem of not enough chargers available during
| peak periods.
| phtrivier wrote:
| Fair enough, I should have said "across country/state"
| (speaking from France.)
| 14 wrote:
| It isn't irrational though for people who live in
| apartments for rentals for example and can not ad charging
| capabilities. They don't want to charge all the time and if
| you can get a battery that lasts 1000 miles that would be
| huge. Also Canadians and others in cold climate are finding
| range really limited because of the need to run heaters so
| a battery with much greater range and the ability to run a
| heater and still have moderately good range in the winter
| months would absolutely make sense.
| wffurr wrote:
| Aviation too would benefit enormously from this.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Yes a 3x increase would be transformative for general
| aviation. A lot cheaper to operate. Similar range. Probably
| will start happening in the next five years. Current models
| are a bit limited for range. But that should be a solvable
| problem.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| I'm personally thinking in a quite different direction-- that
| 100 kWh is pretty decent and that the advantage might be that
| an electric car with advanced batteries could be something
| quite simple, and something possibly quite cheap.
|
| The transition from a battery weighing 500 kilograms to one
| weighing 250 is something which I see as allowing electric
| cars from being highly specialized constructions to something
| needing much less care in their design. After all, there are
| ordinary cars with engines weighing 250 kilograms.
| GordonS wrote:
| Or even EVs capable of 500km, but weighing a tonne less than
| they do today.
|
| If this turns out to have the purported benefits _at
| commercial scale_ , it could have an immense impact on our
| future!
| altcognito wrote:
| It is definitely the weight loss and reduction and
| materials that would make this a big deal. Imagine cutting
| the cost of the vehicle by 20-30%. Would be massive.
| rsfern wrote:
| I'm curious if they set out to stabilize this particular sulfur
| allotrope, or if they had more of a serendipitous "hmmm...
| that's weird" data analysis moment.
|
| It's really interesting because there could be so many ways to
| stabilize interesting new phases that conventional high
| throughput theoretical screening isn't going to predict
| jbotz wrote:
| Apparently it was serendipitous. They were just hoping the
| carbon fibers would slow down the polysulphite formation, and
| were surprised when they found stable gamma sulfur[1].
|
| [1] https://www.freethink.com/environment/lithium-sulfur-
| battery
| zardo wrote:
| Given that the breakthrough is getting this stable sulfur phase
| at room temperature that previously wasn't stable below 93C,
| I'd like to see how well they survive cold temperatures.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| The only real reneweable energy storage problem is that we've
| not built enough generation to really need any storage yet. And
| so we're shovelling money to authoritarian regimes around the
| globe which they use to buy politicians and media.
|
| Luckily the EV market alone is enough to drive battery tech for
| short term storage forward, and green hydrogen for fertilizer
| is enough to take care of the rest. But, there's no need to
| wait, we should be a decade ahead on this at least if not for
| well funded lies holding us back.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| What fertilizer is made out of Hydrogen??
| photochemsyn wrote:
| H2 + N2 (atm) -> NH3 (ammonia) (Haber Process) -> ammonium
| nitrate, nitric acid etc.
| becurious wrote:
| Ammonia is currently produced from methane.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| To be precise, it's made from hydrogen and the current
| standard hydrogen is in turn made from methane (and the
| rest of the methane is dumped into the atmosphere as
| fossil CO2).
| MobiusHorizons wrote:
| While accurate in a technical chemical feasibility sense,
| it is misleading to suggest that ammonia is industrially
| produced from hydrogen. Existing facilities take in
| methane and output ammonia and CO2. It is true that the
| chemical reaction used to make ammonia takes hydrogen and
| not methane, but that fact in isolation ignores a lot of
| existing infrastructure. Existing ammonia producing
| plants do the conversion from methane to hydrogen in the
| same facility that produces the ammonia, making the
| hydrogen essentially an implementation detail. There are
| other ways of producing hydrogen industrially, but it is
| incorrect to think about the hydrogen generating system
| in isolation when considering existing infrastructure.
| Hopefully in the future new plants will be built with
| green hydrogen in mind.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Yeah, we do not need any breakthroughs in battery technology
| for grid stabilization in fixed service. We can do it today
| with lead-acid batteries if we needed to. Nobody cares about
| energy density, power density, or mass generally.
| rsfern wrote:
| DOI link: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42004-022-00626-2
|
| The micrographs of the nanofiber composite electrode are cool!
| Isslam1 wrote:
| Incredible
| giantg2 wrote:
| I just want cheap 1kW/kg lithium sulfur batteries promised by
| Theion. Apparently gen 1 is out, but gen 3 is at that density.
| mkl wrote:
| You mean kWh/kg. Gen 3 is supposed to be "out" in 2024, but I
| doubt that means available to regular people. This article says
| they expect to start with the space industry, which suggests
| they'll be pretty expensive:
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmorris/2022/04/02/sulfur-b...
| giantg2 wrote:
| Good catch.
|
| Yeah, any new tech will be expensive. In theory, once it hits
| mass production it should be cheaper than existing li-ion
| since it doesn't require cobalt or nickel. I'm hoping it
| works out and hits similar price as today's batteries by
| 2030. But I'm probably too optimistic.
| Tade0 wrote:
| LFP batteries already don't require nickel nor cobalt and
| they're indeed cheaper than alternatives.
| giantg2 wrote:
| But at 1/4 the claimed density of the gen3 lithium sulfur
| crystal.
| qeternity wrote:
| Alright domain experts of HN - tell me why this is too good to be
| true.
| known wrote:
| [deleted]
| perlgeek wrote:
| I haven't read the whole thing yet, and I'm not really a
| battery expert, but a battery needs to check really many boxes
| to be viable in a commercial product.
|
| Among these are: ability to mass produce, resistance to
| mechanical stresses, safety, peak performance, low auto-
| discharge, ability to recycle, energy density, charge cycles,
| efficiency, availability of materials, operational temperature
| range, storage temperature range.
|
| The latter criteria seem to be well addressed in the paper, the
| first few not really, or only tangentially (based on a quick
| ctrl+f for some of the key words).
| [deleted]
| scythe wrote:
| They successfully used an electrolyte that has been refusing to
| work for the last 20 years of research on the topic. That's
| pretty good. Carbonate (ester) electrolytes are unparalleled in
| stability.
|
| But the abstract says that they're made using sulfur
| _stabilized by_ [1] carbon nano _fibers_ [1]. Great: now make a
| million of them.
|
| 1: EDIT: nanofibers stabilize the sulfur, but it is not
| encapsulated. The phrasing "within" in the abstract threw me
| for a loop.
| formvoltron wrote:
| Engineering seems easier to improve than science.
| upofadown wrote:
| It does? Most things fail in implementation.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Here's the step-by-step production they used, it doesn't seem
| implausible that this could be scaled up in a factory
| setting. Maybe a modular approach would work, i.e. you might
| have 100 production lines running simultaneously, each one
| running the following ~8 steps:
|
| Material synthesis Synthesis of CNFs. The free-standing CNFs
| were made by electrospinning. Typically, 10 wt%
| polyacrylonitrile, was added to DMF and stirred overnight to
| form a polymeric solution.
|
| This solution was then loaded into a Becton Dickinson 5 mL
| syringe with a Luer lock tip and an 18-gauge stainless steel
| needle (Hamilton Corporation). The syringe with the needle
| was connected to a NE-400 model syringe pump (New Era Pump
| Systems, Inc.) to control the feeding rate of the solution.
|
| The grounded aluminum collector was placed 6 in. from the tip
| of the needle. Electrospinning was performed at room
| temperature with a relative humidity below 15%. A potential
| difference of 7-8 KV (Series ES -30 KV, Gamma High Voltage
| Research, Inc.) was applied between the collector and the tip
| of the needle. The flow rate of the solution was kept
| constant at 0.2 mL h-1.
|
| The as-spun nanofibers were collected and stabilized in a
| convection oven at 280 degC for 6 h in air atmosphere.
|
| The stabilized nanofiber mats were then placed in alumina
| plates and carbonized in a nitrogen environment up till 900
| degC at a ramp rate of 2.5 degC min-1 and then activated
| under CO2 flow for 1 h in a horizontal tube furnace (MTI.
| Corp). The furnace was then cooled at 2 degC min-1 until it
| reached room temperature.
|
| Monoclinic g-sulfur deposition on CNFs. The free-standing CNF
| mats were pun- ched with stainless steel die (ph = 11 mm) and
| dried at 150 degC overnight under vacuum.
|
| The CNF discs were then weighed and placed in an in-house
| developed autoclave (Stainless steel 316) and subjected to
| 180 degC for 24 h in an oven. The autoclave consisted of a
| sulfur reservoir at the bottom and a perforated disk for
| placing electrodes at the top. After 24 h the autoclave was
| cooled to room tem- perature slowly in a span of 6-8 h.
|
| The electrodes were weighed and transferred in an Argon-
| filled glove box via overnight room temperature vacuum drying
| in the antechamber for battery fabrication.
| scythe wrote:
| Indeed, I read the abstract:
|
| >we stabilize a rare monoclinic g-sulfur phase within
| carbon nanofibers
|
| and my mind jumped to "sulfur inside a nanotube again". But
| the sulfur isn't "within" the carbon nanofibers, as they
| later specify, and this _is_ new.
|
| >We demonstrate that _despite an exposed "un-confined"
| deposition of this sulfur phase_ on the host carbon
| material, the carbonate-based battery exhibits high
| reversible capacity
|
| The sulfur is _in contact with the electrolyte_. And it
| works! That 's not supposed to happen, but now it does. So
| the process you described doesn't make carbon nanotubes, it
| makes nanofibers, which are much simpler (you don't need
| axial concentric planes).
| derefr wrote:
| So this is essentially a piece of carbon "cotton candy"
| that has sponged up some sulphur?
| jokoon wrote:
| At this point any submission related to battery tech research
| should be removed.
| lordnacho wrote:
| The nature of science is disappointment, no? Maybe this will
| work... Nope. Maybe this other way? Nope.
|
| Now and again there's an actual advance and we rejoice, but
| if you keep an eye on cutting edge stuff it's got to happen a
| lot that some promising lead leads nowhere.
| rzzzt wrote:
| Reporting could be delayed until the advance happens. Even
| better if I can buy it in a store at that point.
| Fordec wrote:
| I'll take "How we end up with scientists running around
| in circles making the same mistakes over and over." for
| $500.
|
| If you goal is to learn about things once they're stable
| and working, I suggest drop reading science journalism
| from your schedule and just start window shopping at
| electronics stores.
| rzzzt wrote:
| OK, I was thinking more of summaries of summaries of
| university news portal announcements on tech sites (which
| this one is not). I am not against academic publications,
| scientists should definitely be acquainted with what is
| happening in their field.
| scythe wrote:
| >Electrochemical characterization and post-mortem
| spectroscopy/ microscopy studies on cycled cells reveal an
| altered redox mechanism that reversibly converts monoclinic
| sulfur to Li2 S _without the formation of intermediate
| polysulfides_ for the entire range of 4000 cycles. The
| development of unconfined high loading sulfur cathodes in
| Li-S batteries employing carbonate- based electrolytes can
| revolutionize the field of high energy density practical
| batteries.
|
| [italics mine]
|
| These are bold claims. You don't hear that every day.
| Polysulfides have been an accepted fact of life in Li-S
| batteries forever.
| rsfern wrote:
| Why? I haven't seen a silver bullet yet, but I always learn
| something new
| grishka wrote:
| I think GP's point is that Li-Ion batteries were state of
| the art 15 years ago, and they still are today. And they
| aren't much better either, they still degrade from normal
| use and still expand if you look at them wrong. Except 15
| years ago they at least were designed to be easily
| replaceable.
| Retric wrote:
| This is a Li-Ion battery because Lithium isn't one single
| technology it's a family of batteries that use Lithium.
|
| So lithium titanate, lithium cobalt, lithium manganese
| oxide, nickel cobalt manganese(NCM), nickel cobalt
| manganese Aluminum(NCMA), lithium iron phosphate(LFP),
| and now lithium sulfer are all related but they have very
| different trade offs. 15 years ago Li-Ion battery tech
| meant worse trade offs so fewer charge cycles, slower
| charging, less energy per charge, more costly etc etc.
|
| And yes, NCM and NCMA both use lithium.
| 41b696ef1113 wrote:
| Li-ion has made tremendous advances in that time. This
| article[0] goes through some of the history.
|
| Some hot takes:
|
| - Price per cell has dropped ~97% since 1991
|
| - 1991 energy density ~200 Wh/liter; 2005 energy density
| ~500 Wh/liter; 2017 ~700 Wh/liter
|
| [0]: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/
| ee/d0ee0...
| Tagbert wrote:
| As Xoa posted in another branch, it's not true that
| batteries aren't much better in the last 15 years.
| Lithium Ion is not a single type of battery but a
| category of batteries with many types, each with their
| own benefits and challenges. Numerous changes have been
| made to the anode and cathodes to improve stability,
| power capacity, recharge cycles and cost. Recent efforts
| have focuses on reducing or removing cobalt. Capacity has
| grown about 5% per year and general stability has
| improved. I remember reading articles like this years ago
| where they talked about using LFP cathodes to improve the
| stability of batteries. Today LFP batteries are used in
| some Teslas and probably other vehicles.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/eternally-five-
| years...
| gameswithgo wrote:
| The cynicism for battery teach research is misplaced. In our
| lifetimes we have seen real enormous strides in battery
| technology actually go into production. LFP batteries are now
| in actual Teslas, provider a cheaper/safer/simpler option for
| lower range cars that depend on fewer exotic
| materials/mining. Sodium batteries are in the pipeline.
| Sulfur batteries may or may not make it too.
| matheweis wrote:
| If I'm reading it correctly there's little significance to the
| 4000 cycle count; capacity had already stabilized at ~650mAh/g at
| around 3000 cycles and didn't drop significantly thereafter.
|
| Am I missing anything obvious that would imply the cycle
| stability is limited to 4000? From the trends it seems to me that
| the headline is understated and these might last much longer than
| 4000 cycles.
| manmal wrote:
| Increasing cycle count (and thus, battery life) of all big
| batteries by 33% would be a huge deal though.
| was_a_dev wrote:
| Is 650mAh/g a lot, how do current battery technologies compare?
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The highest capacity 18650 cell, the NCR18650G, clocks in at
| around 75mAh/g.
| hulitu wrote:
| Yes. Room temperature. Automotive (body) is between -40 degC
| and + 85 degC. The garage is normally not heated.
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