Posted on 07/10/2014 8:45:45 AM PDT by PoloSec
Sand-based batteries may soon replace the standard graphite-based battery, potentially tripling the industry standard for charge capacity.
"This is the holy grail – a low cost, non-toxic, environmentally friendly way to produce high performance lithium ion battery anodes," said Zachary Favors, a graduate student working at University of California, Riverside, whose research was published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports this week.
Graphite has long been the standard material for the anodes in lithium ion batteries, but scientists have wrung nearly all they can from it. Many have moved on to experimenting with nanoscale silicon as a replacement, but The Economic Times reported that "it degrades quickly and is hard to produce in large quantities."
Looking to overcome these barriers, Favors searched for a way to make silicon cheaply, and ended up at the beach.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
Crap... Now the Saudi’s are gonna lord battery power over us as well....
Cause they got a lot of sand...
Beach sand is very heavy. Try to lift a bucketful of it.
they need to hurry it up. Can’t wait for all batteries/tesla like cars on our road. No more reliances on foreign oil. We could just produce electricity locally using cheap gas/oil/coal/nuclear
Beach sand / Tesla
Is this why the people living in beach towns drive the fancy Teslas?
WOO HOO!
MY YARD IS A GOLD MINE!.................I live in Florida..............
Yeah...
If the manufacturing process involves “pounding” in any way, we are doomed!
So many around here have been telling them to pound sand for years!
Some envirowacko is probably working right now on a plan to have sand declared to be endangered.
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Heck I live in New Mexico and except for a few mountains the whole place is a beach!!! Without any water of course. ;-)
Where I used to live in the Tularosa Basin the beach regularly blew right past me . . . .
How cool!
Costco always used to carry rechargeable batteries (the AA and AAA kind) but I didn’t see them there the last couple visits. And I, a heavy battery user, wonder why anyone would still buy alkaline batteries.
Here on the Gulf Coast, our sand is sugar white. We take great pride in it and keep it clean as possible. The BP disaster hurt bad, but it’s mostly all gone now, with only a few tar balls washing up every now and then. We have beach cleaning crews that sift the sand on the beach at night for trash and debris, even before the BP debacle....................
I wish I had a dollar for every new battery technology I’ve seen reported, but never made it to market.
“sand” is a particle size in the realm of mineral substances.
Is the sand herein referenced composed of quartz? If so, does the presence of trace amounts of impurities affect its utility for this purpose?
We don’t have to shit the sand here, because as Cap Huff posted the wind does it for us!
We have to sift the sand for cigarette butts, and other trash that the touristas leave behind. Glass bottles and pets are not allowed on the beaches at all. There are trash cans but people don’t seem to know what they are for......................
OK, I'll bite. Why would you burn oil to charge a cars battery, instead of using it for gasoline? If its for the novelty, why not use the electricty to run giant fans on the highways that will blow along sail powered cars? ;-)
That’s gotta hurt.
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