Liquid Battery: ...a novel battery that could allow cities to run on solar power at night.

MIT Technology Review ^ | March/April 2009 | Kevin Bullis

[Reaganesque]

Discharged, charging, charged: The molten active components (colored bands: blue, magnesium; green, electrolyte; yellow, antimony) of a new grid-scale storage battery are held in a container that delivers and collects electrical current (left). Here, the battery is ready to be charged, with positive magnesium and negative antimony ions dissolved in the electrolyte. As electric current flows into the cell (center), the magnesium ions in the electrolyte gain electrons and form magnesium metal, which joins the molten magnesium electrode. At the same time, the antimony ions give up electrons to form metal atoms at the opposite electrode. As metal forms, the electrolyte shrinks and the electrodes grow (right), an unusual property for batteries. During discharge, the process is reversed, and the metal atoms become ions again.
Credit: Arthur Mount

[Gaffer]

You mean like a lead-acid battery? What is new about ‘liquid’?

[DBrow]

These liquids are simply molten metal- a nice safe battery running at the melting point of magnesium.

I think a thermionic nuclear reactor may be safer.

[grey_whiskers]

Like, *PING*, dudes.

Cheers!

[jabchae]

In this case, the electrodes themselves are conductive liquids, such as metals or metalloids. The reactions at the electrodes are very fast.

[BenLurkin]

The electrodes are molten metals, and the electrolyte that conducts current between them is a molten salt.

YIKES!

[Gaffer]

Yeah! I'm sure that I want one or more of these sitting downstairs next to my gas water heater and gas furnace.

[IbJensen]

Wow.

Plug it in.

[George from New England]

Don’t knock this new stuff — it has run the batmobile for years.

[Nateman]

Most hot materials are lousy conductors. Seems like you’d lose a lot of energy due to internal resistance.

[hoosierham]

Molten magnesium?

A container failure will be spectacular!

[Phillipian]

Doesn’t matter. The environuts will stop this, though they may wait until this stops what we have now. It’s the electricity and progress that they hate because it enables men to become independent from gov’t.

[ElkGroveDan]

The Luddites will find a way to terrorize the public and demonize this technology.

I’m looking out my window at the distant towers of former nuclear power plant on the horizon that was closed in its first year of operation through a political campaign of fear and hysteria. $2 billion down the drain.

[Gaffer]

No thank you. I'll stick with my litium ion exploding iPhone battery. I prefer the smaller inflammatory outbreaks that give me time to run and grab the pictures of stuff I used to have (for the insurance claim) in the house....

[SouthTexas]

Charging it would require solar farms of unprecedented size, ... The first systems will probably store energy produced during periods of low electricity demand for use during peak demand,

Solar panels work real good at night.

[marktwain]

It looks as though it would only work for fixed applications. There might be some fancy ways of allowing for turbulence, but it would make everything much more expensive.

[Reaganesque]

An acid battery has some solid parts. This has none. At least, that’s what I understood from the article.

[G Larry]

And these solar farms will be located where?

And the battery farms will be located where?

The batteries will be disposed of how? Where?

Quit screwing around and go NUCLEAR!!!

[Gaffer]

Hey, I resemble that remark...I just used the term ‘Luddites’ in another thread....did you thread-jack me? Regardless, some technologies don’t go well with the general human condition. I think gas stoves, furnaces, etc. are enough of a gamble for the public homes at large. I don’t think they need to be overly complicated with obviously problemmatic devices like this.

[Candor7]

The researchers add molten raw materials: antimony on the bottom, an electrolyte such as sodium sulfide in the middle, and magnesium at the top.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

And where will the disppose of the used materials , Yucca Flats?

Buahahahahhahahahahha!