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
Your pants will always fit.
Gamma radiation does amazing things...
When is it for sale at Walmart? .................... Forget Walmart, you probably will find them on Wish for $1 including shipping.
A whole lot of:
“...will be..,.”
“...stands to be ...”
etc
This is what I call a hype push.
Has anyone seen kevmo?
This sounds like what was used to power the six million dollar man’s bionics.
28,000 years before a recharge? Okay... ... and used car lots and battery containers will last that long? Or only fourteen thousand years?
Wow...portable perpetual energy!
So, if it moves it’s creating energy than can be harvested? Ok, and what kind of shield will this have? One that will last the full 28,000 years?
Read the article. This is harvested carbon-14, which undergoes beta decay, NOT gamma. It releases an anti-neutrino, which by definition interacts with nothing, and an electron, which is captured by the carbon-12 shielding to produce electricity.
All of the other hot constituents of the waste are removed in the process of making the diamond particles.
Bruce Banner always wore stretchy pants.
Otherwise, people would have seen the REAL green monster.
From the reactors powering Trump Base Alpha on the moon and the reactors powering Musk’s Terraforming Mars projects. Fab the chips in space on another reactor based platform.
They are doing crappy math. The half life of C14 is 5000 ish years so after 5000 years your power output is already half and decreasing by half again every 5000 years after 5 Half-Lifes your power would be negligible. That part is pure hype. There have been other specialize betavoltaic batteries used to power things hard to reach like seafloor devices and or space payloads all of which are likely still classified. They would be used where the power to weight ratio of a RTG is prohibitive or the heat would compromise stealth or its mission. C14 is no where near the best isotope nickle 63 is vastly superior.
Bingo!
NDB - N is not for Nano, it's for NUCLEAR! Ahhhhhh!
Anti Green. Heresy. Ban it now and forever, despite being safe and revolutionary. This is like Star Trek innovation - Ban it before it takes root.
Betavoltaics and photovoltaics both work on the same principles a high energy particle impacts a semiconductor and knocks free electrons that are at an elevated energy level these electrons then flow across a bandgap layered semiconductor to a layer with electron receptors in solar panels these layers are rhe PN layers in this device the semiconductor is not PN silicone as in solar cells its crystalline diamond which is a very good semiconductor. Beta particles have low penetration unlike gamma rays. Beta particles can be stopped by a sheet of aluminum foil not much thicker than Reynolds wrap. The case of the device would be more than enough to stop any stray beta electrons the whole point is to.encase the radioactive isotope in diamond semiconductor layers which will stop every particle that’s what drives the current flow to begin with.
Why dispose of it when it can be reprocessed and recycled? Even France can do it!
Diamonds burn. Containing the carbon 14 is not likely.
The current of these batteries would have a very low average, but they would be good for intermittent or low current applications.
That line strikes me as Funny as Hell!
Thanks for the explanation.
Makes this much more interesting.
Kevmo has been purged.
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