Posted on 08/25/2020 6:44:53 AM PDT by Heartlander
California company NDB says its nano-diamond batteries will absolutely upend the energy equation, acting like tiny nuclear generators. They will blow any energy density comparison out of the water, lasting anywhere from a decade to 28,000 years without ever needing a charge. They will offer higher power density than lithium-ion. They will be nigh-on indestructible and totally safe in an electric car crash. And in some applications, like electric cars, they stand to be considerably cheaper than current lithium-ion packs despite their huge advantages.
The heart of each cell is a small piece of recycled nuclear waste. NDB uses graphite nuclear reactor parts that have absorbed radiation from nuclear fuel rods and have themselves become radioactive. Untreated, it's high-grade nuclear waste: dangerous, difficult and expensive to store, with a very long half-life.
This graphite is rich in the carbon-14 radioisotope, which undergoes beta decay into nitrogen, releasing an anti-neutrino and a beta decay electron in the process. NDB takes this graphite, purifies it and uses it to create tiny carbon-14 diamonds. The diamond structure acts as a semiconductor and heat sink, collecting the charge and transporting it out. Completely encasing the radioactive carbon-14 diamond is a layer of cheap, non-radioactive, lab-created carbon-12 diamond, which contains the energetic particles, prevents radiation leaks and acts as a super-hard protective and tamper-proof layer.
To create a battery cell, several layers of this nano-diamond material are stacked up and stored with a tiny integrated circuit board and a small supercapacitor to collect, store and instantly distribute the charge. NDB says it'll conform to any shape or standard, including AA, AAA, 18650, 2170 or all manner of custom sizes.
And so what you get is a tiny miniature power generator in the shape of a battery that never needs charging – and that NDB says will be cost-competitive with, and sometimes significantly less expensive than – current lithium batteries. That equation is helped along by the fact that some of the suppliers of the original nuclear waste will pay NDB to take it off their hands.
Radiation levels from a cell, NDB tells us, will be less than the radiation levels produced by the human body itself, making it totally safe for use in a variety of applications. At the small scale, these could include things like pacemaker batteries and other electronic implants, where their long lifespan will save the wearer from replacement surgeries. They could also be placed directly onto circuit boards, delivering power for the lifespan of a device.
In a consumer electronics application, NDB's Neel Naicker gives us an example of just how different these devices would be: "Think of it in an iPhone. With the same size battery, it would charge your battery from zero to full, five times an hour. Imagine that. Imagine a world where you wouldn't have to charge your battery at all for the day. Now imagine for the week, for the month… How about for decades? That's what we're able to do with this technology."
And it can scale up to electric vehicle sizes and beyond, offering superb power density in a battery pack that is projected to last as long as 90 years in that application – something that could be pulled out of your old car and put into a new one. If part of a cell fails, the active nano diamond part can be recycled into another cell, and once they reach the end of their lifespan – which could be up to 28,000 years for a low-powered sensor that might, for example, be used on a satellite – they leave nothing but "harmless byproducts."
In the words of Dr. John Shawe-Taylor, UNESCO Chair and University College London Professor: “NDB has the potential to solve the major global issue of carbon emissions in one stroke without the expensive infrastructure
projects, energy transportation costs, or negative environmental impacts associated with alternate solutions such as carbon capture at fossil fuel power stations, hydroelectric plants, turbines, or nuclear power stations. Their technology’s ability to deliver energy over very long periods of time without the need for recharging, refueling, or servicing puts them in an ideal position to tackle the world’s energy requirements through a distributed solution with close to zero environmental impact and energy transportation costs.”
Indeed, the NDB battery offers an outstanding 24-hour energy proposition for off-grid living, and the NDB team is adamant that it wishes to devote a percentage of its time to providing it to needy remote communities as a charity service with the support of some of the company's business customers.
Should the company chew right through the world's full supply of carbon-14 nuclear waste – a prospect that would take some extremely serious volume – NDB says it can create its own carbon-14 raw material simply and cost-effectively.
The company has completed a proof of concept, and is ready to begin building its commercial prototype once its labs reopen after COVID shutdown. A low-powered commercial version is expected to hit the market in less than two years, and the high powered version is projected for five years' time. NDB says it's well ahead of its competition with patents pending on its technology and manufacturing processes.
Should this pan out as promised, it's hard to see how this won't be a revolutionary power source. Such a long-life battery will fundamentally challenge the disposable ethos of many modern technologies, or lead to battery packs that consumers carry with them from phone to phone, car to car, laptop to laptop across decades. NDB-equipped homes can be grid-connected or not. Each battery is its own near-inexhaustible green energy source, quietly turning nuclear waste into useful energy.
Sounds like remarkable news to us!
We spoke with several members of the NDB executive team. Check out the full edited transcript of that interview for more information, or watch the cartoon video below.
VIDEO: Nano-diamond battery explainer
A small percentage of the carbon in your body is carbon-14.
for later, maybe forever
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Precisely. (FWIW, I was one of the pioneers in the "SMT " ['Surface Mount Technology'] Electronics Packaging Revolution" back in the late 1970s-early 80s -- that made the pictured DIP package virtually obsolete now.)
If that image is truly representative of the new technology, we'd best not be getting excited about it, yet:
Methinks this fits into the category of "We've just observed a minuscule physical effect -- wonder what we could claim to do with it..."
TXnMA
Automatic watches have been around for decades. I have 3 that don't need batteries, and are wound just by wearing them.
I had one of those one time.
I ride motorcycles.
It wound itself into a garbage can..................
IOW, the "CMOS Battery" in laptops...
SSD storage (as in "flash drives") has mostly eliminated that need...
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nonethless, I would expect for some worthwhile use to be found for this effect.
Automotive EV batteries -- that might just take a while...
TXnMA
Excellent post.
I note that proponents carefully avoid any discussion of actual current delivery capacity. However, even keeping everything in Joules, the problem is obvious.
If an AA “diamond battery” is going to contain 1 gram of carbon-14, delivering 15J / day, that’s just not going to cut it for most applications. Running the number provided for an alkaline AA cell, 20 grams @ 700J/g gives you 14,000 Joules of energy storage.
As a “practical” application, I consider a small, not particularly bright AA LED flashlight I keep handy. I’ve never timed it precisely, but I believe it will provide useful light for about a day, if powered by a fresh alkaline AA battery. This is right in the alkaline battery’s wheelhouse, efficiency-wise. Average light output over the 24 hours is probably 5 lumens at best. The flashlight used 14,000 Joules in that day to do it.
15 Joules per day for the diamond battery is going to be kinda dim...
The “out”, as you suggest, is to use the diamond battery to charge a capacitor, which can discharge at a high rate. So... one adds the capacitor, and assuming the 1g carbon-14 element still fits in, in full, what one has is, in effect, a self-charging battery. However, at 15J/day, it takes 933 days to fully charge to run my flashlight for a day. That’s neglecting charge losses, self discharge of the capacitor, etc.
This leaves, as you stated, “interval” usage — something that pops once a day at moderate current, for example, and low drain uses. How low?
As a very rough comparison, that 14,000 Joule alkaline cell AA battery mentioned earlier likely has a capacity of 2500 mAh if used ideally. That relationship applied to the diamond battery gives us about 2.68 mAh available per day, essentially until something else breaks down. If used continuously, that’s about 0.110 mA.
Did you know that there is a new miniseries called “Red Dwarf - The First Three Million Years”?
News to me.
I will look into it.
Thanks.
Girlfriends gonna love this .....
Unfortunately, each one likely has to be encased in 1285 pounds of lead to protect your health.
Is it better than a flux capacitor? It will power hour voice capacitor & can be reenergized by your Interocitor.
Auto correct is a real thrill
She’s insured
But the head scientist in the cartoon is a person of color...
It wound itself into a garbage can..................
I ride as well. Not sure of the correlation, unless you had something that wasn't water resistant and went through a heavy shower.
When I ride I use a divers watch that is good to 300m. The dial us useful to cue me for when it's time to pull off for a couple of minutes to stretch.
It over-wound itself until it broke.
It was a Waltham self-winder in 1973.
I remember I paid about $50 for it at the PX on base. That was a good chunk of change in 73 especially for a E-1.........................
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_decay
One neutron decays to become a proton, an electron and an anti-neutrino. The proton stays in the nucleus as the carbon-14 becomes nitrogen-14.
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