Posted on 09/20/2018 8:32:44 PM PDT by Red Badger
Most of today's batteries are made up of rare lithium mined from the mountains of South America. If the world depletes this source, then battery production could stagnate.
Sodium is a very cheap and earth-abundant alternative to using lithium-ion batteries that is also known to turn purple and combust if exposed to water—even just water in the air.
Worldwide efforts to make sodium-ion batteries just as functional as lithium-ion batteries have long since controlled sodium's tendency to explode, but not yet resolved how to prevent sodium-ions from "getting lost" during the first few times a battery charges and discharges. Now, Purdue University researchers made a sodium powder version that fixes this problem and holds a charge properly.
"Adding fabricated sodium powder during electrode processing requires only slight modifications to the battery production process," said Vilas Pol, Purdue associate professor of chemical engineering. "This is one potential way to progress sodium-ion battery technology to the industry."
The study was made available online in June 2018 ahead of print on August 31, 2018 in the Journal of Power Sources.
This work aligns with Purdue's giant leaps celebration, acknowledging the university's global advancements made in health, space, artificial intelligence and sustainability as part of Purdue's 150th anniversary. Those are the four themes of the yearlong celebration's Ideas Festival, designed to showcase Purdue as an intellectual center solving real-world issues.
Super cheap earth element to advance new battery tech to the industry Purdue researcher Jialiang Tang helped resolve charging issues in sodium-ion batteries that have prevented the technology from advancing to industry testing and use. Credit: Purdue University Marketing and Media Even though sodium-ion batteries would be physically heavier than lithium-ion technology, researchers have been investigating sodium-ion batteries because they could store energy for large solar and wind power facilities at lower cost.
The problem is that sodium ions stick to the hard carbon end of a battery, called an anode, during the initial charging cycles and not travel over to the cathode end. The ions build up into a structure called a "solid electrolyte interface."
"Normally the solid electrolyte interface is good because it protects carbon particles from a battery's acidic electrolyte, where electricity is conducted," Pol said. "But too much of the interface consumes the sodium ions that we need for charging the battery."
Purdue researchers proposed using sodium as a powder, which provides the required amount of sodium for the solid electrolyte interface to protect carbon, but doesn't build up in a way that it consumes sodium ions.
They minimized sodium's exposure to the moisture that would make it combust by making the sodium powder in a glovebox filled with the gas argon. To make the powder, they used an ultrasound—the same tool used for monitoring the development a fetus—to melt sodium chunks into a milky purple liquid. The liquid then cooled into a powder, and was suspended in a hexane solution to evenly disperse the powder particles.
Just a few drops of the sodium suspension onto the anode or cathode electrodes during their fabrication allows a sodium-ion battery cell to charge and discharge with more stability and at higher capacity—the minimum requirements for a functional battery.
Yep - a science teacher dropped a BB-sized piece of Sodium into an aquarium set up for the purpose and it took off zooming around when it hit the water...
Um, “turns purple” ?
Are they thinking of potassium?
Yes,but then we’ll Have one hell of a fresh water lake won’t we?/Sarcasm.
I think this experiment has been done before, although the only evidence I have seen was a letter over 50 years ago. Supposedly my brother & friends confiscated a significant quantity of sodium, sealed it in a canning jar, floated it out on a pond and triggered it with a 22 rifle shot to the jar. Would have liked to seen that, but was too young to tag along.
There's been 100 years of intense search for better battery technology, and lithium has been the only thing to show promise, but at high cost in resources and safety.
Fuel cells work where cost is comparatively of low concern, but where is that?
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Come the fall of 2024, there will be no more “6 years away” ever again.
That would have been wild.
Turn off location services, and it probably will last all day.
Oh, they're off. Believe me. The fact that it's over 2 years old does not help, either.
How do you figure that?
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The “Day of Trumpets” beginning the fall of 2024 will be the end of “The Kingdoms of Men.”
There will be no more earthly governments from that day onward. The sham that enabled those tyrannical cabals and all that comes with it will fall in total fecklessness.
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Get a “Power Bear” battery.
They easily last two days.
What could go wrong?
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You’re on the right track!
This is feckless chest thumping, show us production within workable cost limits.
Ok, I’ll just go ahead and repeat myself. How do you figure? Who TOLD you we only have until fall of 2024?
After the most recent update, my battery barely lasted a day. I went to SETTINGS, APPS, and found GOOGLE PLAY SERVICES. It had all sorts of services turned on that I didn’t use. I turned them off, and now my battery lasts for many days.
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The clear prophecies in the word of Yehova tell us that.
The display at sunset in 2017 at the beginning of the seventh Biblical month marked the beginning of the “70th Sabbath.”
The new moon at the beginning of the seventh month will be the end thereof, and the gathering of the kehillah on the sea of glass mingled with fire.
The word is really not that hard to understand unless you are trying to support Hal Lindsay.
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Yep, Google is very intrusive.
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