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brodneys t1_izx02jn wrote

Reply to comment by SemanticTriangle in Low-cost battery built with four times the capacity of lithium by BlitzOrion

I'm going into battery tech as a mechanical engineer and I also keep seeing novel new chemistries show up all over the place with people fawning over it being the next big thing. I saw the same thing with some vanadium redox flow battery, and obviously the fine print was that it was a redox flow battery, and was only really suitable for maybe large scale power grid batteries.

I think the truth is probably just that we need to use whatever a) works decently b) has useful properties (durability, stability, form factor, cheap to produce etc.) And c) we have a lot of. There are tons of metals that are theoretically (or more recently, practically) decent for battery technologies if you can squeeze multiple ionization states out of them, it's just a matter of implementation

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UrbanGhost114 t1_izxb2bz wrote

I have been watching battery tech since the batteries dies on my game boy. This is always the story. Some crazy new tech is announced, and never heard from again, because it's not commercially viable compared to what we already have, or to get it to market to begin with.

Edit to add: This is not to say we shouldn't be researching this stuff, just saying to temper expectations.

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rushingkar t1_izxj7x9 wrote

And when something does come to market, it happens gradually enough that we as consumers don't really notice. Batteries gave gotten better over time, but devices have also gotten more power hungry so it's a balanced curve. Imagine how long a game boy would last on a modern cell phone battery

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big_trike t1_izxueyx wrote

Your game boy batteries were probably nickel cadmium. That technology took a long time to charge, had a low energy density, and relied on toxic cadmium. The technology has improved quite a bit since then.

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WhiteHelljumper t1_izycbv0 wrote

Sodium sulfur batteries aren't anything new. The main issue with them is they need to be kept at like 300 degrees Celsius to work. This article is claiming a working sodium battery at room temperature.

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Drusgar t1_izxr5a4 wrote

I'm sure someone complained about the viability of lithium batteries, too. It's the nature of invention, right? Lots of trial and error. Eventually you get a decent process and product. And then it gets replaced.

It would be nice to see some technology that utilizes a metal that's more abundant and cheaper than lithium. So I guess they keep experimenting.

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brodneys t1_izxu58k wrote

Well yeah, I think I remember that happening actually, and at the time they were correct: a lot of work had to go into lithium batteries to get them to the commercially viable state that they're at today. I'm glad that work was done, and that people were excited about it, but I am slightly concerned about the broader trend of the public/journalists not being able to simultaneously a) be excited and b) understand that even a big breakthrough is more than nothing but less than everything.

Also I'm actually gonna be working on that exact technology and I'm extremely excited about it!!

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Drusgar t1_izyqn6b wrote

Hey, we've got people buzzing about cold fusion again. They've been talking about that since I was a kid in the 80's.

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Malkor t1_izzyfn9 wrote

Yeah, but for real this time!

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