Lithium-air batteries can store energy for cars, houses and industry

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://fapesp.br/week2019/london/news/lithium-air-batteries-can-store-energy-for-cars-houses-and-industry

Lithium-air batteries can store energy for cars, houses and industry

Growth in the offer of renewable energy sources will mean increased demand for devices optimal for energy storing; São Paulo and UK researchers presented advances in new battery development at FAPESP Week London.

By André Julião, in London | Agência FAPESP – Current lithium ion battery technology will probably not be able to handle the coming decades’ huge demand for energy. It is estimated that by 2050, electricity will make up 50% of the world’s energy mix. Today that rate is 18%. But installed capacity for renewable energy production is expected to increase fourfold. This will require batteries that are more efficient, cheaper and environmentally friendly.

One of the alternatives being studied today in many parts of the world is the lithium-air battery. Some of the Brazilian efforts in the search for such device were presented on Day Two of FAPESP Week London, held February 11-12, 2019.

“There is a lot of talk today about electric cars. Some European countries are also thinking about banning combustion engines. In addition, renewable sources like solar energy need batteries to store what is generated during the day through solar radiation,” said Rubens Maciel Filho, a professor at the School of Chemical Engineering of the University of Campinas (UNICAMP).

The lithium-air battery, currently functioning only on a laboratory scale, uses ambient oxygen as a reagent. The battery stores additional energy through an electrochemical reaction that results in the formation of lithium oxide.

…

[NNadir]

1. Despite all the horseshit about the growth of so called "renewable energy," it "grew" at...

...less than 1/4th the rate of dangerous natural gas in 2017. Dangerous natural gas grew by 4.19 exajoules to a total of 130.08 exajoules, making it the the third largest source of energy on this planet after coal, 157.01 exajoules and oil at 185.68 exajoules.

By contrast, all the so called "renewable energy" represented by solar, wind, tidal, and geothermal on the planet grew by 1.21 exajoules, to a grand total of 10.63 exajoules.

I note that in 2017, world energy demand grew 7 times as fast as so called "renewable energy" by 8.88 exajoules to a total of 584.98 exajoules.

2018 Edition of the World Energy Outlook Table 1.1 Page 38 (I have converted MTOE in the original table to the SI unit exajoules in this text.)

A battery is a device, according to the 2nd law of thermodynamics which cannot be wished away by happy horseshit about lithium and air, that wastes energy.

Before so called "renewable energy" is in a position to waste energy by storing it, it should be capable of making significant amounts of it.

It hasn't been, it isn't and it won't be.

We're at 412 ppm as of this morning at the Mauna Loa carbon dioxide observatory, despite more than half a century of bullshit about so called "renewable energy" and storing it.

When do we wake up? When will the people handing out this horseshit actually look at something called "data?"

[progree]

2. Q1. Is Table 1.1 Page 38 available without paying 120 Euros?

Just wondering, you keep citing it. I'm wondering if I will find it online if I just look harder. The county/city libraries don't have the report.

Not that I'm doubting your energy figures -- there are graphs that they make available where one can hover over lines/points on the graph and it will pop up a little box showing the MTOE. (For example the graph shown on your link https://www.iea.org/weo/ ) Just wondering. After converting, I get very close to the exajoules you cite (I didn't bother checking the numbers in the above, but I have in the past). What do you use as a MTOE -> exajoule conversion factor?

Q2. I saw your comment in another posting today about MTOE (millions of tons of oil equivalent) being "silly", and I agree. It baffles me how an INTERNATIONAL organization would use that as their primary unit of energy in their reports.

I can believe the U.S. would use such an asinine unit, since the U.S. is about the only country in the world that has not gone on to the metric system -- a tremendous shame, almost as embarassing as Trump being president.

But for an international one to use such an asinine unit? Or does the U.S. have such a strong influence on them that they use stupid U.S.-style units rather than argue?

On another subject, you repeatedly make a big issue of how small renewable energy was in 2017. And current growth rates in energy units. But what scares me most is the end year of that graph -- even in 2040, 21 years from now, (a whole human generation) under the very optimistic (to me) New Policies Scenarios (described next to that graph), is that "other renewables", which encompass solar and wind, will be only 1223 MTOE (51 exajoules), compared to fossil fuel of 13,139 MTOE (550 exajoules), summing up oil + coal + natgas. IOW in 2040, the "other renewables" will be 9.3% of the fossil fuel total. https://www.iea.org/weo/

Edited to add:
Or to represent it graphically: in 2040:
the first line on the bar graph below is other renewable which includes solar and wind
the second line is fossil fuels

##
#####################

And oh, another note on the fossil fuel totals from the graph: 2017: 11,292 MTOE (473 exajoules). 2040: 13,139 MTOE (550 exajoules). Under the optimistic New Policies Scenario.

[NNadir]

3. To my knowledge, the full World Energy Outlook is not available online.

In some years they, the IEA, do release "Key Findings" on line.

Since this data is important to all humanity, I personally believe this material should be open sourced, but nobody cares what I think. Certainly the data therein should be sobering to anybody who thinks that the trillions of dollars squandered on solar and wind was a good idea.

It wasn't.

The earliest WEO in my files is from 1995. I have 2000, which is amusing, since it makes predictions about 2020. I also have 2007, and 2009-2018. The WEO editions I have were obtained at Princeton University, where I pay for library access. Rutgers University allows State residents (and perhaps out of state people) two hours a day. I use them as well. Between Princeton and Rutgers, I can access about 90-95% of the world's scientific journals, and a huge assortment of books, many of which are happily available electronically. Princeton has excellent full text searchable scanners. They're a huge blessing. Rutgers has expensive scanners that I don't use.

I spend a lot of time in university libraries, generally 5 hours at minimum, but on average, probably around 10 hours a week. I once took a week's vacation to spend all the time in the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory's library.

I see you are in Minnesota from your profile, and I don't know the policies of universities there or their subscriptions. I know that the University of Colorado has very limited access at Boulder but there is some, three open computers out in the back of the library. The University of Wisconsin at Madison allows free access at certain computers, but they will not let you bring a chair to those computers. You can stay as long as you can stand. UC Davis doesn't allow access. There are three computers for free access at MIT up near the famous dome; MIT is the only library I know of that gives access to all of the American Nuclear Society's journals. Neither Rutgers nor Princeton carries these, but my son's university carries a few of them, and at times I hit him up for papers. His library is only open to the University Community. Rutgers carries the Elsevier Nuclear Journals, my most recent post here was from one of them. Princeton's libraries are at war with Elsevier, although they do have some Elsevier journals. Years ago they had them all.

I'm lucky to live in New Jersey, I think; my life would be far less fun in many other places.

I subscribe to Nature. They offer reduced rates from time to time, and my wife buys me subscriptions for my birthday, even though she hates it that we have to get the paper copy as well as the on line copy. The paper copies are good to bring to places where you think you'll have to wait, dentist's offices, doctor's offices, etc.

My ACS membership allows me to download 50 papers a year; this covers emergencies when I can't get physically to a library; usually this is necessary during a crisis at work, when someone needs an answer in ten minutes or less.

Spending as much of my life in libraries as I do has changed my life, in many ways, the most important being that I have lost patience with wishful thinking, others being that I've gotten better at my job, I'm able to test my imagination easily, and I find it easier and easier to talk to anybody about anything pretty much, although I'll never know the history of Ballet and things like that.

The 2018 WEO has the conversion factor for MTOE to TeraJoules. It is 4.1868 X 10^4 TJ to an MTOE. I personally think in ExaJoules, and whenever I am dealing with IEA documents, I import them into a spreadsheet, run the conversion, and never go back to MTOE. MTOE is not an English unit however. It's a stupid unit, but not an English unit. The "ton" in million tons oil equivalent" refers to the metric ton.

I have certain links that I use all the time here in a word document, in DU HTML format. I just cut and paste them now when encountering the usual oblivious stuff, so called "nuclear waste," Chernobyl, Fukushima, blah, blah, blah and I often paste them in my posts as well. The reference to WEO is one. Usually I no longer call up the WEO text, but just open the spreadsheet I made from the data therein.

I don't believe that so called "renewable energy" will ever reach 51 exajoules. If it does, it will be an environmental disaster of the first order, because of the nature of the required materials and the short lifetime of this junk, including, but not limited to the crap that goes into batteries. I've been hearing "100% renewable by 'such and such a year'" my whole damned adult life. I'm not young. I'm old. This "by 'such and such year'" crap is contemptible, inasmuch as it assumes that future generations - from whom we've robbed so much - will do what we ourselves have refused to do. It's all about as useful as attempts to cure the plague with prayer was in the Middle Ages. That didn't work either.

Magic battery posts make me sick. Regrettably this stuff shows up in the primary scientific literature quite a bit; I attribute it to the need to get grants by appeal to the popular fantasies.

One thing is for certain. So called "renewable energy" will do absolutely nothing to address climate change. It will only make it worse. There is experimental evidence for this, which is the beginning of the 21st century up to now, wherein trillions of dollars have been "invested" in this stuff - this on a planet where billions of people lack access to even primitive sanitary facilities - and the rates of increases in fossil fuel waste accumulations in the planetary atmosphere are going through the roof.

This horseshit began with the undeserved popularity of that cretin Amory Lovins, the myopic bourgeois consumption promoter, who said in 1976 that we'd all have molten salt tanks in our suburban backyards to store our wonderful solar energy. He also said we'd be conserving energy like anything. In 2000, world energy demand was 420.6 exajoules. In 2017 it was 584.95 exajoules.

He imagined that the Chinese, the Indians, and the Africans would all agree to remain unimaginably impoverished so assholes like him could tool around in hydrogen HYPErcars. While the ethics of this fantasy are appalling, it didn't happen anyway, which in my view, is a damned good thing.

Thanks for asking.