Posted on 08/17/2009 8:37:19 PM PDT by rawhide
In a modest building on the west side of Salt Lake City, a team of specialists in advanced materials and electrochemistry has produced what could be the single most important breakthrough for clean, alternative energy since Socrates first noted solar heating 2,400 years ago.
The battery breakthrough comes from a Salt Lake company called Ceramatec, the R&D arm of CoorsTek, a world leader in advanced materials and electrochemical devices.
Inside Ceramatec's wonder battery is a chunk of solid sodium metal mated to a sulphur compound by an extraordinary, paper-thin ceramic membrane. The membrane conducts ions -- electrically charged particles -- back and forth to generate a current. The company calculates that the battery will cram 20 to 40 kilowatt hours of energy into a package about the size of a refrigerator, and operate below 90 degrees C.
Ceramatec says its new generation of battery would deliver a continuous flow of 5 kilowatts of electricity over four hours, with 3,650 daily discharge/recharge cycles over 10 years.
With the batteries expected to sell in the neighborhood of $2,000, that translates to less than 3 cents per kilowatt hour over the battery's life. Conventional power from the grid typically costs in the neighborhood of 8 cents per kilowatt hour.
Five kilowatts over four hours -- how much is that? Imagine your trash compactor, food processor, vacuum cleaner, stereo, sewing machine, one surface unit of an electric range and thirty-three 60-watt light bulbs all running nonstop for four hours each day before the house battery runs out.
How do you recharge? By tapping your solar panels or windmills. It's just like plugging in your cell phone or iPod, only you plug in your house.
Ceramatec's battery breakthrough now makes that possible.
(Excerpt) Read more at heraldextra.com ...
bump
Household lights and appliances: downgrade to lower voltages where possible. Imagine a whole wall of your home lighting up gently gradually changing colors/patterns at 12v. But some stuff needs to cook. (Go nookyooler.) It can be done.
I like these innovations, but not at all in line with global warming alarmists. Makes for good capitalism. Sign me up as a salesman or CSR. I *doo* know how to spell.
Plus the cost of the solar cells, plust the cost of the wind generator, plus the cost of the special wiring, plus the cost of the capital to invest in ten years of energy bills all up front at the start of the home, plus whatever environmental fee is added on to the thing for what must be a very dirty mining/manufacturing operation in creating the thing.
cool for out in the boonies but I bet there will be the old “if only” statement following this up. Maybe I’m just in a bummer mood...
Indeed... Now all I need is to get one of these and one of those nuclear reactors the size of an old hot-water heater.... *Bwa-haa-haa-ha*
..not to worry, the government will kill it
modesty bump.
BTT
So you would need to buy six of these little babies at $2,000 per unit, or $12,000 total, plus a rechaging power source to make it pay off.
Interesting.
ex animo
davidfarrar
I catch that being said about the sun a lot.
It’s funny.
How bout micro-mini nuke power plants..
A giant refrigerator-sized object that produces 5 kilowatts of electricity every four hours will be sitting in your backyard or basement/garage. I would imagine the government will require one of these on the side:
Imagine your kids having fun with it:
Pure sodium is perfectly safe as long as you keep it away from any source of water, including the moisture in the air.
High-capacity electricity storage could be very useful for shifting demand to off-peak hours (and by extension, surviving the inevitable Obama blackouts).
It would probably be hermetically sealed and thus fairly safe; but if the seal should happen to break, head for the hills.
If it doesn’t have a picture of Moleface, AKA Granholm standing atop of the behemoth it is not worthy.
I hate to be a spoil sport but how long does this take to recharge and how many to run a real house?
One would only need a bank of about 5 of these at a time to run a house with modest AC and depending on the recharge time would need additional banks in rotation to keep up the power.
Sodium is a little twitchy in the presence of moisture as one writer noted.
Now about that electric car?
Sort of like the car-buying rule of never getting the first year of a new model and waiting a couple of years until they get the bugs out. I’d just as soon not have any of my immediate neighbors trying it out either. A couple of pounds of pure sodium and a block of sulfur could quickly reduce the value of your house.
What reference do they have of this. Especially since Socrates left nothing in writing? I've read most of Plato, and Xenophon and do not recall this.
20 cu. ft is quite large compared to other battery technologies.
Lion batteries can produce 100kw per cu ft.
Price ($2000) is half of competitive batteries.
90°C sodium and sulphur, quite combustible and toxic.
Solid sodium metal is a toxin and it explodes in the presence of water.
While they might have a good idea with storage and release, energy production might be a real problem. The typical solar panel will give you only about 10W per square foot at optimal times. So you need 100 square feet for a single Kilowatt, and a regulator to even out the DC output. And a DC to AC converter.
And in summer, optimal time for solar power is maybe 8-10 hours a day.
ping
It takes a few seconds to explode. Time enough to flush it down a toilet. Does quite a number on the plumbing.
Ah, high school.
bmflr
Some interesting technology here
thanks, bfl
Daniel Nocera, an advisor and mentioned in the story, and Matthew Kanan from MIT found a new catalyst for the hydrolysis of water last year. I thought I recognized his name.
Metallic sodium battery about the size of a refrigerator. The casing on the thing had better be armour-plate. If significant water ever comes in contact with the sodium the house would be destroyed.
1) how much does a solid chunk of battery the size of a refrigerator weigh?
2) will the average floor joists support it?
3) what do you do with it at the end of its 10 year life?
4) if you live in a colder part of the USofA, will this thing die in the winter?
btt
...would deliver a continuous flow of 5 kilowatts of electricity over four hours, with 3,650 daily discharge/recharge cycles over 10 years. With the batteries expected to sell in the neighborhood of $2,000, that translates to less than 3 cents per kilowatt hour over the battery's life. Conventional power from the grid typically costs in the neighborhood of 8 cents per kilowatt hour. Five kilowatts over four hours -- how much is that? Imagine your trash compactor, food processor, vacuum cleaner, stereo, sewing machine, one surface unit of an electric range and thirty-three 60-watt light bulbs all running nonstop for four hours each day before the house battery runs out.Unfortunately, recharging takes nine and a half years. ;')
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.