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commandersprocket t1_j7jumk4 wrote

Reply to comment by PARANOIAH in New battery seems to offer it all: lithium-metal/lithium-air electrodes by nastratin

lots of dead ends are a sign of *healthy* innovation. If you look at the last 20 years of solar panels you can see the same cycle of hundreds of proposed new types of cells and variations. The result is that many of those have useful understanding of what *not* to do, that corpus of information guides the research that allows for cheaper/better production over time.

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LordOfDorkness42 t1_j7jw1s2 wrote

Not to mention, today's useless trivia night just be tomorrow's billion dollars industry.

Like look at bauxite. Before electricity it was literally considered mine poison that made the ground near useless.

Nowadays it's our main source of aluminium.

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earthwormjim91 t1_j7l43vj wrote

Well, nowadays our main source of aluminum is recycled aluminum. Mining new bauxite and extracting the aluminum is more expensive than just recycling.

Which is how it ultimately will be for a lot of the rare earth metals and stuff for batteries. It will eventually be cheaper and easier to just recycle the batteries than it will be to mine new lithium, cobalt, etc.

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ResponsiblePoet0 t1_j7kyfji wrote

That's actually really comforting. I get so discouraged looking at all these failures, or theoretical technologies that never make it to production, so seeing it in this different light is really nice. Thanks.

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datwunkid t1_j7l01n4 wrote

Not to mention research accumulates knowledge that can be tapped into later.

If it can't get out of the lab and onto the market today, there could be separate breakthroughs in the future that could help it.

Think of all those headlines of creating things with graphene and carbon nanotubes.

It's hyped up as this big revolutionary material that will change our society, but we can't make it at a cost effective scale.

If we ever do make it at scale, then we have so many practical uses ready to try out.

Or if we can't make it at scale, maybe we can find a very niche, but viable use for them that is worth the extremely high cost of them.

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ShadowDV t1_j7ltbyx wrote

They aren’t failures, they are steps along the way to innovation

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TimmJimmGrimm t1_j7qgf7v wrote

I was taught that each amazing break through is often in one dimension of the battery problem-set: expands-when-charged, holds-charge, charge-time, heats-when-(dis)charged, explosive/leaky, max-charge, etc, etc.

When each new technology is added into the meta-loop, it often adds 1% more overall efficiency. This is huge if you can do this ten times in ten years.

Engineering is a tough job, but it certainly sounds like a job that makes a huge difference to society.

Edit: here is an article from Ars Technics from 2021 - batteries have improved over a decade.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/eternally-five-years-away-no-batteries-are-improving-under-your-nose/

I bet that this continues to happen every year, the tortoise trying to win the tech-race.

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