Posted on 03/31/2021 9:27:40 AM PDT by Red Badger
Scientists have made a massless structural battery 10 times better than before.
The battery cell performs well in structural and energy tests, with planned further improvements.
Structural batteries reduce weight and could revolutionize electric cars and planes.
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In groundbreaking new research, scientists have made a structural battery 10 times better than in any previous experiment.
What’s a structural battery, and why is it such a big deal? The term refers to an energy storage device that can also bear weight as part of a structure—like if the studs in your home were all batteries, or if an electric fence also held up a wall.
In the new paper, researchers from Chalmers University of Technology and KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden reveal how their “massless” structural battery works.
The main use case is for electric cars, where a literally massive amount of batteries take up a ton of room and don’t contribute to the actual structure of the car. In fact, these cars must be specially designed to carry the mass of the batteries. But what if the frame of the car could hold energy? “Due to their multifunctionality, structural battery composites are often referred to as ‘massless energy storage’ and have the potential to revolutionize the future design of electric vehicles and devices,” the researchers explain.
To make the new structural battery, the scientists layered a buffer glass “fabric” between a positive and negative electrode, then packed it with a space-age polymer electrolyte and cured it in the oven. What results is a tough, flat battery cell that conducts well and holds up to tensile tests in all directions.
The battery’s combined qualities (or “multifunctionality”) make it 10 times better than any previous massless battery—a project scientists have worked on since 2007.
Chalmers University of Technology writes in a press release:
“The battery has an energy density of 24 Wh/kg, meaning approximately 20 percent capacity compared to comparable lithium-ion batteries currently available. But since the weight of the vehicles can be greatly reduced, less energy will be required to drive an electric car, for example, and lower energy density also results in increased safety. And with a stiffness of 25 GPa, the structural battery can really compete with many other commonly used construction materials.” This content is imported from {embed-name}. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
The scientists say the next step is to improve the performance even more, replacing aluminum foil in the electrode with carbon fiber material and thinning out the separator. This could result in a battery that produces 75 Wh/kg of energy and 75 GPa of stiffness, setting more records for massless batteries and also greatly reducing their weight.
Besides electric cars, the study team mentions e-bikes, satellites, and laptops as technologies that could use massless batteries. There could be further applications that we don’t think of as electric at all today.
One of the most exciting potential uses is in aircraft, which scientists are struggling to turn electric because of the huge weight of existing battery tech. Regular airplanes as well as vertical take off and landing vehicles could turn electric by using massless batteries. They could even combine massless structural batteries with solar panels in order to store what they soak up for later use.
VIDEO AT LINK...........................
I really dislike that marketing term “massless”.
“I wish everyone had electrical/electronics knowledge so that they could understand your brilliant statement.”
I’ll submit a request for billions in stimulus dollars to finish my research. I’m sure AOC will support it. I”ll call my company “Solyndra Too, Electric Boogaloo”
The energy density of Lattice Enabled Nuclear Reactors and Enhanced Coulomb Repulsion devices is about 5,000X that of gasoline.
Mitchell Swartz hooked up his NANOR device to a small Stirling Cycle Engine and ran it for months. Battery technology at the time would run the small device for mere hours.
Enhanced Coulomb Repulsion isn’t free energy, it’s just high density cheap energy.
Gasoline has an energy density of 46.4 MJ per kilogram. 3.6MJ = 1 kWh. So 12.9 kWh per kg. Batteries are not even close.
I once spent a few days on a large ranch. It had high voltage power lines running across it.
One day the rancher got in trouble. The power company landed a helicopter on his property.
Turns out that his sons & friends were goofing off and laid the irrigation piping end to end for over a mile.
Such a long line parallel to electrical wires does induce an electric current in the secondary ‘wire’.
They were playing around with static electricity buildup and spark gaps and even whether you could hear banging on the pipe a mile away [nope, not even with a stethoscope].
At any rate, the rancher got fined for stealing electricity.
The power company was claiming that the pranksters even risked the lives of the helicopter crew due to the much increased likelihood of a static discharge when the flew their inspection flights between the power lines and the irrigation pipe, which struck me as bullshiite.
Is that something like a flux capacitor?
No. Search the terms for yourself and ask Google is spending $10M/yr on ECR. Or why NASA calls it Lattice Enabled Fusion.
I don’t see Google spending more than $2 on Flux Capacitor research.
I don’t see any products using these theoretical modes. So at the moment they’re just like batteries with the same energy density as fossil fuels, practical fusion energy, and flux capacitors - science fiction. All of which is irrelevant to this article which is touting batteries with a pathetic 0.22% of the energy density of fossil fuels as a great breakthrough.
If you’re ONLY considering products then why even bother reading about research? Apples to oranges comparison.
There is research and then there’s vaporware which is design to suck in investment dollars and grant money with no chance of ever producing a viable product. Some fools are always taken in if there’s enough technical sounding gobbledegook in the description and a multi syllable title. And the government is always ready to throw money at things that makes no sense - like electric cars.
So now you’ve moved from your apples-to-oranges onto the standard vaporware criticism of research without addressing the original fallacy. Trying to hide your tracks, to obfuscate, to change the subject.
All of which has nothing to do with batteries having a miniscule fraction of the energy density of fossil fuel.
The energy density of Lattice Enabled Nuclear Reactors and Enhanced Coulomb Repulsion devices is about 5,000X that of gasoline
Nice titles for a scam.
Oh and BTW since neither of these things actually exist, how do you know the energy density of them?
That is NOT a personal attack
It is a comment on your lack of capability to avoid logical fallacies.
If that was your bet then my bet about you is that you waited to see what others said before weighing in, because you do not think for yourself.
Those things do exist, have been replicated hundreds of times in peer reviewed journals. Are you saying that the $10Million/year that Google is pouring into this, and the effort NASA is pouring into this... that those 2 things are a scam?
You really DON’T know how to think critically for yourself. Take a critical thinking class.
Dude. “ Since it’s not a personal attack”... followed by “your willingness to personally attack”.
You simply do not know how to reason. Take that critical thinking class.
You apparently don’t recognize sarcasm either
Unlabelled satire is very often craptire.
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