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Noe_b0dy t1_ix2hlls wrote

Reply to comment by saveable in Super-hot salt could be coming to a battery near you by Apart_Shock

It's molten-salt again, next month they bring back the old "cold fusion is only 20 years away" bit.

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Turksarama t1_ix32eb9 wrote

It's kind of different though, molten salt "batteries" before this were really thermal storage, while this is regular old chemical storage. That means no moving parts, just sit it in place and use it like any other chemical battery.

The downside compared to most other batteries though is that the operating temperature is hundreds of degrees. The batteries need to be "thawed" before use, and if they ever freeze (which they will if they aren't used, they are insulated but still need to use the waste heat from charging/discharging cycles) they need to be thawed again. You can do this just by running power through them, but it takes a lot of energy.

These could be legitimately groundbreaking for 24 hour cycling if coupled with solar in regions with very few cloudy days, but they can't be used for anything the way lithium can.

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GodG0AT t1_ix4qyi5 wrote

Molten salt batteries are nothing new they just have low energy density and have long heating phases. But very cheap and efficient like the article states. But theyve been around for years before liion

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hey_rjay t1_ix4euzd wrote

Is this more efficient than some kind of fly wheel energy storage

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mcoombes314 t1_ix2vjqu wrote

I thought it was normal fusion being 20 years away*, with cold fusion being further?

*I know fusion has been achieved but it doesn't go on long enough to produce meaningful amounts of energy yet

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SirButcher t1_ix32sfb wrote

> with cold fusion being further?

Cold fusion is in the realm of "impossible" with an asterisk of "kind-of possible but not the way people think" as muons can be used for fusion, but creating muons uses way more energy than the fusion they can create.

Cold fusion as in getting two regular atoms like H + H to fuse together without having mind-blowingly high pressure and/or heat is not possible.

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[deleted] t1_ix338go wrote

Normal fusion was 50 years away to begin with, in the 1950s. In the 90s, people were saying 25 years. Now they're saying 10. The facetious jokes and reality are converging on a point about 15-20 years away.

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HenryTheWho t1_ix3jtwg wrote

ITER which is never going to produce energy to grid isn't planned for full operation until 2035. So it's gonna be up to next phase to actually build reactor that will produce electricity. Fusion isn't gonna be reality until at least 2080

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[deleted] t1_ix3va13 wrote

Who's talking about ITER? Compact spherical tokamaks are racing ahead, due to the scaling law P ∝ B^4 * r^3 (oversimplification, but those are the proportions). High temperature superconductors have increased in current density and come down in cost so much since ITER was specified in the 90s they couldn't have anticipated the leapfrogging currently going on. STs can iterate faster for the same because their magnets are more powerful, so can be more compact for a given target power output. While ITER won't ignite for decades, Tokamak Energy and the like have already built several experimental reactors and Q > 1 in the lab within 10 years.

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HenryTheWho t1_ix45fm1 wrote

Don't get me wrong I want fusion to happen asap but what I'm trying to tell is to curb your expectations

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[deleted] t1_ix4wbsi wrote

And what I'm telling you is you're being too pessimistic. I'm not coming at this from an uninformed position, I do understand the challenges and the progress being made.

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