Graphene batteries

[electrofelon]

I can't stand people who claim that EV's are just as convenient and capable as ICE cars under all circumstances. .

Are people actually saying that? I have never heard such a thing. Not sure where/who you guys are hearing some of this stuff from.

 

[fastline]

That's a pretty broad brush. Just because some tech did not work out by no means implies that they are all or even mostly all dead ends. Most of us are not experts in battery tech or petroleum geopolitics; there is a lot of opinion expressed as fact being thrown around in this thread, but I guess that is what we do.

I guess I have personally torn into some corporation nuts and bolts of several of these "innovative startups" and realized there is a lot of smoke and mirrors that all pivots on a financial strategy. I am in the tech field and we 100% need to pursue energy storage solutions, but some of this gets really cloudy!

The general strategy is at the core, there is one or more scientists/experts that truly understand the tech and trying to do good. They get drowned by investor types that basically gut it before it can fly by building a corporation around it, and pooling money for investors so even if the tech works, it will become too expensive to be viable. The key players contractually take over most of the stake in the company.

In one that I investigated years ago, the name escapes me, there was a NASA engineer that developed a "water battery" that uses nothing more than brine water as the electrolyte. The company flatlined and patents ALL sold to CHINA for near nothing. It was said that the battery was going to be too expensive! Salt water was more expensive than mining Lithium.

One thing I am certain of, there will be a separation between stationary and mobile storage devices. They differ in their requirements. As stationary, flow battery tech IMO shows the most promise as a stationary device as it scales well and at the core, should be affordable, while giving up some energy density.

 

[winnie]

@fastline has a point about battery technology research.

_Most_ tech research is a dead end. And once you start working on a project you are rather obliged to see it through even when you are pretty certain that it is a dead end. So people are out there beating their dead horses and asking for funds to allow them to really pummel the greasy mess.

But I disagree that this is a bad thing. Most tech research is a dead end because if you are trying new things you _must_ make wrong turns and drive down blind alleys. If you are thing to do 'tech' and trying to push new ideas, you have to know going in that 9 out of 10 of those ideas will be bad, and you won't know which until the far end.

And even when you have a good idea, the implementation of something new will have tons of failures. Lots of investors lost their shirts funding trans-Atlantic telegraph cables. That was a good idea (there was a substantial market that would pay for the service, the underlying technology was known to work) but the implementation has lots of failures. So people would raise funds, try to lay a cable, something would fail, and everyone would lose their money. Then they'd try again. And again. Finally it worked. And then the cables advanced; telegraphy then voice then high frequency stuff. Now fiber optic. _Now_ the business is old hat understood tech.

We know energy storage is essential to the lives we want to lead. That fossil fuel stuff we argue about? Very very low efficiency solar energy storage with zero initial capital investment. We depend on energy storage. Now lots of people are looking at alternative energy storage schemes. Most of those schemes will fail. Some are horrible ideas. Some are good ideas that won't get over the implementation hurdle. Some will achieve market penetration only to be supplanted by something better.

And all will be oversold by the marketing folk.

-Jon

 

[Joethemechanic]

Have you guys seen the diesel hybrid logging trucks this guy is building?

 

[ggunn]

@fastline has a point about battery technology research.

_Most_ tech research is a dead end. And once you start working on a project you are rather obliged to see it through even when you are pretty certain that it is a dead end. So people are out there beating their dead horses and asking for funds to allow them to really pummel the greasy mess.

But I disagree that this is a bad thing. Most tech research is a dead end because if you are trying new things you _must_ make wrong turns and drive down blind alleys. If you are thing to do 'tech' and trying to push new ideas, you have to know going in that 9 out of 10 of those ideas will be bad, and you won't know which until the far end.

And even when you have a good idea, the implementation of something new will have tons of failures. Lots of investors lost their shirts funding trans-Atlantic telegraph cables. That was a good idea (there was a substantial market that would pay for the service, the underlying technology was known to work) but the implementation has lots of failures. So people would raise funds, try to lay a cable, something would fail, and everyone would lose their money. Then they'd try again. And again. Finally it worked. And then the cables advanced; telegraphy then voice then high frequency stuff. Now fiber optic. _Now_ the business is old hat understood tech.

We know energy storage is essential to the lives we want to lead. That fossil fuel stuff we argue about? Very very low efficiency solar energy storage with zero initial capital investment. We depend on energy storage. Now lots of people are looking at alternative energy storage schemes. Most of those schemes will fail. Some are horrible ideas. Some are good ideas that won't get over the implementation hurdle. Some will achieve market penetration only to be supplanted by something better.

And all will be oversold by the marketing folk.

-Jon

I agree with a lot of that; many times there are a whole lot of failures in the path to success. I wish I had learned that lesson when I was much younger. Baseball is a good analogy; a player that gets put out 70% of the time he steps up to the plate throughout his career is considered to be exceptionally successful and likely destined for the Hall of Fame.

 

[hbiss]

The only people forcing gas to be expensive are overseas producers, mainly the Saudis.

A few years ago, when gas prices were low we didn't depend on anybody else.

Just saying.

-Hal

 

[electrofelon]

A few years ago, when gas prices were low we didn't depend on anybody else.

Just saying.

-Hal

I don't follow. Are you saying we didn't import petroleum for a period a few years ago?

 

[winnie]

A few years ago, when gas prices were low we didn't depend on anybody else.

Just saying.

-Hal

According to the Energy Information Agency, the US is a net exporter of petroleum, at least it was in 2022:

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

www.eia.gov

I _think_ that the US imports more crude then it exports, but that the US also exports refined products.

-Jon

 

[jaggedben]

A few years ago, when gas prices were low we didn't depend on anybody else.

Just saying.

-Hal

That's just absolutely not true. Until the last couple years the US depended on imports for your entire adult life (unless you're over 90). US Crude oil exports were actually banned until 2016. (Obama made a deal with Congressional Republicans that year to extend the solar and wind tax credits in exchange for lifting that ban.

Here's a good graph.

Readers Write: Let’s discuss U.S. oil production, consumption, imports, exports, supply, prices, geopolitics - Readers Write - The Island 360

From 1950–70 consumption outpaced domestic production, increasing from 6-14+ million barrels of oil per day (MBOPD). Production peaked in the 1960s at 8MBOPD) and began to decline, the U.S. began […]

www.google.com

(I don't necessarily endorse the text but a brief skim tells me the author is living in reality. Unlike, say, people who think that presidents deserve credit or blame for gas prices.)

Think about how this all proves that our gas prices are set by the global market. Not to mention how we're f---d on the climate because we (humanity, not just the US) can't kick this stuff.

 

[retirede]

According to the Energy Information Agency, the US is a net exporter of petroleum, at least it was in 2022:

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

www.eia.gov

I _think_ that the US imports more crude then it exports, but that the US also exports refined products.

-Jon

This is complicated by the differences in crude oils…light vs heavy, sweet vs sour. They have different uses and require different refining equipment. For decades, we’ve built refineries geared toward processing the cheap, heavy crude that’s extracted in the Middle East and South America. Most domestic production is light, sweet that we don’t have the capacity to refine all we produce thanks to newer extraction technologies (such as fracking). The net effect is that we can produce enough domestic crude to meet all of our demands, but we can’t refine all of it, and thus have to import crude to feed our refineries.

 

[jaggedben]

Random thought thinking about the way markets work, the way renewables are growing, and the way environmental regulations and incentives develop:

I predict that in the next 10 years, we will see synthetic liquid fuels produced using renewable hydrogen (electrolytic hydrogen powered by PV or wind) combined with carbon from coal.

This will happen because PV incentives will make electrolytic H2 very cheap, but we will not have success transitioning away from liquid hydrocarbon fuels.

Because our reserves of coal are so huge, we will combine this hydrogen with coal as the cheapest way to get the hydrocarbon fuels. The net environmental benefit will be zero, but there will be huge economic benefit.

This will fund the development of lots of cheap but not well distributed electricity. The transition to low carbon technologies will follow as people find cheaper ways to use the electricity directly.

Jon

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that at the very least your timeline is off by decades.
The energy return on electrolysis is pretty low, even if you just fuel cell it back to electricity, and I'm pretty sure that it will be even lower if the H is used to sythesize hydrocarbons. (Entropy, ya know.) In fact right now hydrocarbons are used to synthesize hydrogen, the exact opposite. (It's a way of greenwashing hydrocarbons, but I digress...) So that would obviously have to become unprofitable or get banned before going the other way were to get done at scale.

Add to this that very few grids are yet at a point where PV or wind needs to be stored. There are decades of build out left in those industries just to serve electricity demand. And then when saturation starts to be reached the next step is grid storage initially to manage ramping. Long term storage for grid use, even for a week (perhaps by electrolysis, or perhaps just more batteries) isn't even a thing yet. So basically all that low hanging fruit would have to be picked first before there would even be excess energy.l available. And then there would have to be a lot of it around for anyone to find it profitable to incur an additional energy and price penalty to convert that energy to hydrocarbons.

Meanwhile, fossil fuels aren't going away fast. And demand destruction in that area will be hampered by a falling prices feedback loop. Or perhaps a fossil supply cliff will be reached, but I don't see any reason to bet on that within 10 years. Not to mention the development time for your idea is about that long anyway.

All in all, perhaps we'll see your idea in a hundred years, if we can avoid civilizational collapse due to climate change, the oil is all gone, there's still a need for hydrocarbons that goes beyond hobbies, and there's still available coal, and people still think it's okay to burn it.

 

[ggunn]

Add to this that very few grids are yet at a point where PV or wind needs to be stored.

That's not necessarily true. It's not simply because of energy supply and demand, but also because of the necessity to maintain grid stability as renewables jump on and off the grid due to environmental changes. Large scale storage would be a great asset for grid maintenance; I once went to a presentation by an ERCOT engineer where he outlined the balancing act they have to be doing all the time with switching gas generation plants on and off to keep the Texas grid stable because of the small size of the grid and how much solar and wind is connected to it. Large scale storage would smooth out the abrupt changes from renewables and make their job a lot easier.

 

[jaggedben]

That's not necessarily true. It's not simply because of energy supply and demand, but because of the necessity to maintain grid stability as renewables jump on and off the grid due to environmental changes. Large scale storage would be is a great asset for grid maintenance; I once went to a presentation by an ERCOT engineer where he outlined the balancing act they have to be doing all the time with switching gas generation plants on and off to keep the Texas grid stable because of the small size of the grid and how much solar and wind is connected to it.

Yes, some grids are at this point. But AFAIK very few, as a percentage of balancing authorities. Especially if you think globally and not just the US. And yes, you're correct that storage is an effective tool for management of intermittency. (FIFY above.) But that doesn't mean there's a ton of excess cheap energy to be stored long term, or that it would be cheaper to offload it from the electricity grid than to find a way to inject it back in. (For one thing, the expensive grid connections become dual use and therefore more cost effective.) My understanding is that much of services provided by grid storage right now occur on timescales of minutes or hours. Most of my understanding comes from looking at CAISOs graphs.

 

[Joe.B]

As stationary, flow battery tech IMO shows the most promise as a stationary device as it scales well and at the core, should be affordable, while giving up some energy density.

I am curious to see if flow batteries make their way into EV design. It would be a challenge infrastructure wise, but theoretically you could pull into a gas station at a separate pump station and have your electrolyte drained and refilled with charged fluid. Might not be quite as fast as filling up a tank with gasoline because you'd have to drain first. But it would be pretty darn fast compared to waiting hours at a charger. Pull in on empty and 5 minutes later you're driving away with a full charge.

 

[ggunn]

Yes, some grids are at this point. But AFAIK very few, as a percentage of balancing authorities. Especially if you think globally and not just the US. And yes, you're correct that storage is an effective tool for management of intermittency. (FIFY above.) But that doesn't mean there's a ton of excess cheap energy to be stored long term, or that it would be cheaper to offload it from the electricity grid than to find a way to inject it back in. (For one thing, the expensive grid connections become dual use and therefore more cost effective.) My understanding is that much of services provided by grid storage right now occur on timescales of minutes or hours. Most of my understanding comes from looking at CAISOs graphs.

At SPI a few years ago I had lunch with a grid administrator for Puerto Rico; he told me that a large PV system that the US Air Force had recently installed on their base was playing hell with grid stability on the island.

 

[jaggedben]

At SPI a few years ago I had lunch with a grid administrator for Puerto Rico; he told me that a large PV system that the US Air Force had recently installed on their base was playing hell with grid stability on the island.

Yes well islands are among those grids that already need storage. Hawaii too. But islands are not going to be great sites for Jon's idea either.
Perhaps 'very few grids' was not precise wording but counting them one by one was not the point of the original post. 'Very little grid energy' percentage wise.

 

[ggunn]

I am curious to see if flow batteries make their way into EV design. It would be a challenge infrastructure wise, but theoretically you could pull into a gas station at a separate pump station and have your electrolyte drained and refilled with charged fluid. Might not be quite as fast as filling up a tank with gasoline because you'd have to drain first. But it would be pretty darn fast compared to waiting hours at a charger. Pull in on empty and 5 minutes later you're driving away with a full charge.

I have my doubts that such a thing would be viable. It takes two large reservoirs of fluid to make a flow battery work and the individual cell voltage is very low.

 

[ggunn]

Yes well islands are among those grids that already need storage. Hawaii too. But islands are not going to be great sites for Jon's idea either.
Perhaps 'very few grids' was not precise wording but counting them one by one was not the point of the original post. 'Very little grid energy' percentage wise.

What was Jon's idea again? I forget.

Widespread economical energy storage that could make a solar or wind farm resemble a gas fired power plant to the grid would be a good thing for any grid, IMO.

 

[jaggedben]

I am curious to see if flow batteries make their way into EV design. It would be a challenge infrastructure wise, but theoretically you could pull into a gas station at a separate pump station and have your electrolyte drained and refilled with charged fluid. Might not be quite as fast as filling up a tank with gasoline because you'd have to drain first. But it would be pretty darn fast compared to waiting hours at a charger. Pull in on empty and 5 minutes later you're driving away with a full charge.

It's a neat idea but I don't think the energy densities are good enough. Range would not be competitive.

 

[jaggedben]

What was Jon's idea again? I forget.

Using excess PV and wind to breaker water down to get H2 and then reacting the H2 with coal somehow to get gasoline or diesel. My point was we don't have that kind of excess PV and wind and won't for quite a while. Right now storage acts mainly to avoid curtailment and ease ramping.