Free Republic

From key fobs to remote for toys, lithium batteries are everywhere in our homes, but many parents are not aware of just how dangerous they can be for children; Chris Martinez reports for CBS2. Video at site.

Waste fibers from hemp crops out-perform graphene for a thousandth of the cost, according to new researchIs there anything hemp can’t do? A year after hemp became legal to grow in the United States, we’ve seen its power to make better clothing, better buildings and better medicine. Now, there’s something else hemp appears to be better at – making batteries. Most auto batteries today are made from lithium-ion, an expensive, quickly disappearing material. A team of American and Canadian researchers have developed a battery that could be used in cars and power tools using hemp bast fiber – the inner...

For the longest while I have been asking, “Where do environmentalists and Democrats think all these batteries for our oil-free transportation fleet are going to come from?” It seems they think there is a Battery Fairy out there somewhere who will magically supply the ginormous battery capacity, and additional supply of electricity to charge them, in order to deliver us to our blessed fossil-fuel-free future. So kudos to Wired magazine on “The Spiraling Environmental Cost of our Lithium Battery Addiction,” which reminds us that there are, you know, tradeoffs between various kinds of energy systems we might use: Demand for...

Part funded by King’s College London, the study is a meta-analysis of three decades of research in Austria, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, UK, Japan and USA. It concludes that lithium’s “protective” abilities could be further tested by “randomised community trials of lithium supplementation of the water supply” in communities with high prevalence of mental health conditions and risk of suicide. Deliberately lacing the water supply with a mind-altering chemical in some zones might seem like something out of a science fiction novel [duh], but the authors of the report...think it’s an idea worth experimenting. You cannot blame scientists for thinking outside...

For communities with a low rate of depression and suicide, there may be something in the water, according to a new study. A comprehensive analysis of findings from previous studies has revealed that regions where the public drinking water contains a high level of naturally occurring lithium — a mineral used most often for the treatment of depression and bipolar disorder — also boast a lower rate of suicide than other areas. The review included all prior research on the effects of lithium, as well as regional water samples and suicide data from 1,286 locales in Austria, Greece, Italy, Lithuania,...

Naturally occurring lithium in public drinking water may have an anti-suicidal effect - according to a new study. [From about 1950-1990, lithium was usually the first choice for severe bipolar disease - clinical depression is a major risk factor for suicide]

A schematic showing lithium battery with the new carbon nanotube architecture for the anode Credit: Juran Noh/Texas A&M University College of Engineering Cell phone batteries often heat up and, at times, can burst into flames. In most cases, the culprit behind such incidents can be traced back to lithium batteries. Despite providing long-lasting electric currents that can keep devices powered up, lithium batteries can internally short circuit, heating up the device. Researchers at Texas A&M University have invented a technology that can prevent lithium batteries from heating and failing. Their carbon nanotube design for the battery's conductive plate, called the...

A new type of battery is coming onto the market that can store multiple days’ worth of energy, that doesn’t degrade, can’t possibly explode and is up to five times cheaper than lithium-ion, claimed its developer as it prepares to pilot the technology in New York state. The zinc-air hybrid flow battery developed by Canadian company Zinc8 has the potential to disrupt the entire energy-storage market — making wind and solar farms baseload and even replacing the need for transmission grid upgrades in many places. “For large-scale energy storage, lithium-ion can’t touch us on cost,” says chief executive Ron MacDonald,...

KIST researchers developed cathode material of carbon-silicon complex by simply mixing and heating silicon mixed with oil with green ingredients corn and sweet potato starch. If batteries made of this material are installed in electric vehicles, the driving range will more than double. Credit: Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) _______________________________________________________________________________________ Dr. Hun-Gi Jung and his research team at the Center for Energy Storage Research of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST, President Lee Byung Gwon) have announced the development of silicon anode materials that can increase battery capacity four-fold in comparison to graphite anode materials and...

Lithium is expensive, environmentally questionable in large volumes, and tends to catch on fire from time to time. It's the best solution we've currently got for EV and device battery storage, but other alternatives are starting to surface, and one that could actually make a fair bit of sense is the potassium metal battery.

2019 provided us with a number of battery breakthroughs that could change how we power our grids, our devices and also our modes of transport SergeyNivens/Depositphotos View 7 Images Many corners of society stand to gain from advances in battery technology, from automakers, to manufacturers of consumer electronics to all that care about the environment. This year offered a little something for everybody with an interest in this area of science, bringing us tech that could charge electric vehicles in 10 minutes, batteries that suck carbon dioxide out of the air and news that the world’s biggest battery is set...

Link Only in Post 1 due to copyright complaint Essentially Russia helped Morales cheat. Rosatom agreed to build a nuke plant in Bolivia. All of this was so Rosatom could mine the massive Bolivian lithium deposits.

For every soldier on the battlefield, electric car battery or guts of a smartphone or solar panel, there is lithium to help power them. Now, a Williamsport-based company has been able to extract the mineral right beneath the region’s feet. Through a patented process, Eureka Resources, headquartered at 454 Pine St., has developed a technique at its Bradford County plant to extract the rare earth mineral — in high demand and short supply in the United States — from wastewater flowback used in the hydraulic fracturing process in the Marcellus Shale. “We’re excited our company that purifies water, salt and...

While most reconfigurable materials can toggle between two distinct states, the way a switch toggles on or off, the new material's shape can be finely tuned, adjusting its physical properties as desired. The material, which has potential applications in next-generation energy storage and bio-implantable micro-devices, was developed by a joint Caltech-Georgia Tech-ETH Zurich team in the lab of Julia R. Greer. Most materials that are designed to change shape require a persistent external stimulus to change from one shape to another and stay that way: for example, they may be one shape when wet and a different shape when dry—like...

LOS ANGELES — One of the crew members aboard the dive boat Conception hadn’t been asleep long when a noise jolted him awake. He swung open the door of the wheelhouse — the top level of the 75-foot boat, located just above the galley — and was greeted by flames. As the fire raged in the predawn hours of Labor Day, the vessel’s captain made a frantic mayday call to the Coast Guard. Then he and four crew members jumped from the wheelhouse and climbed into a dinghy to get help from the Grape Escape, a fishing boat anchored nearby...

2018 was a terrible year for commodities, but few sectors fared as badly as lithium. The crucial battery metal, also known as “White petroleum”, struggled through a 50 percent price correction as supply soared and demand fears spread like wildfire. But it isn’t time to give up on lithium stocks just yet. The rising stars of the hard-rock lithium space are transforming the industry with their remarkable ability to extract lithium at a lower cost and faster pace than the lithium majors can from their brine deposits. In short, there’s a new caliber of producer in town and - with...

Lithium is a potent psychiatric drug, one of the primary prescribed medications for bipolar disorder. But it’s also an element that occurs naturally all over the Earth’s crust — including in bodies of water. That means that small quantities of lithium wind up in the tap water you consume every day. Just how much is in the water varies quite a bit from place to place. Naturally, that made researchers curious: Are places with more lithium in the water healthier, mentally? Do places with more lithium have less depression or bipolar or — most importantly of all — fewer suicides?...

This image shows the schematic structure of a new battery cell with lithium metal electrodes developed at Yale and Donghua University. Credit: Yale University ________________________________________________________________________________________ Researchers at Yale and Donghua University in China have developed a new process for creating lithium metal that may boost the energy and capacity of rechargeable batteries. Lithium metal is considered the best option as a material for anodes in high-energy batteries, the researchers said, because of the metal's high potential for providing large amounts of energy and capacity in a given mass. Yet existing lithium metal electrodes, limited by low capacity and utilization efficiency,...

Do you see my child I am calling you to meet me heart to heart for only as our hearts become one can we then walk together as one for I desire a convening of hearts as Emmaus and Truly your heart will burn and hunger for what I shall reveal " The Hidden Manna" that is yours to partake of freely for you have overcome much but there is more. Luke 24:13–35 On the Road to Emmaus 13 That very day ytwo of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles1 from Jerusalem, 14 and they...

Brookhaven National Laboratory scientists have observed an unexpected phenomenon in lithium-ion batteries – the most common type of battery used to power cell phones and electric cars. As a model battery generated electric current, the scientists witnessed the concentration of lithium inside individual nanoparticles reverse at a certain point, instead of constantly increasing. This discovery, published in the journal Science Advances, is a major step toward improving the battery life of consumer electronics. Esther Takeuchi, a SUNY distinguished professor at Stony Brook University and a chief scientist in the Energy Sciences Directorate at Brookhaven Lab said, “If you have a...