Molten metal batteries to be clean energy reservoirs

[n2doc]

09 April 2010 by David C. Holzman

A BATTERY able to match the output of those used in cellphones from 1/20th of their electrode area may have you dreaming of more talk time.

But putting it in your pocket would be a bad idea - it's full of molten metal. Instead, its inventors hope it will provide much-needed storage capacity for electricity grids.

Grid-scale batteries would boost efficiency by allowing solar energy to be used at night, for example, or excess power from a nuclear plant to be stored for later.

Engineers led by Donald Sadoway at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were inspired by the way aluminium is smelted using electricity. They created a similar but reversible process that can either consume or release energy.

more

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627555.500-molten-metal-batteries-to-be-clean-energy-reservoirs.html

[kristopher]

1. Sounds interesting but no key information provided. K&R nt

[NNadir]

2. Amory Lovins claimed in 1976 that this sort of thing was "just around the corner."

There have been lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of "molten salt" papers published in the journal Solar Energy, for instance, and I sometimes reference them in connection with serious work.

For example, here is one from 1978: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V50-497TCGN-1CF&_user=10&_coverDate=12%2F31%2F1978&_alid=1288755246&_rdoc=9&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_cdi=5772&_sort=r&_docanchor=&view=c&_ct=383&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=0fd2a8594091b1ce0eb00a0b6f8f1e1e">Solar Energy Volume 20, Issue 4, 1978, Pages 313-319

I would guess - though we're not sure - in the 32 years that passed since that paper was published, solar heated molten salts have not saved us.

The idiot Lovins claimed that every suburbanite would have a molten salt tank in their backyard by the year 2000. That would have been wonderful for groundwater, I'm sure, but it seems not to have happened.

The molten metal proposed for this sort of thing is sodium.

I mocked this sort of proposal almost two years ago on another website: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/7/31/19158/5645">Solar Energy Researchers Propose Liquid Metal System, Cite Anonymous Reference, and Bash...

[kristopher]

3. Nuclear sucks a big glowing root.

[NNadir]

4. Your level of discourse has not changed in any degree for many years of

claiming "solar and wind will save us."

This twaddle has not saved the atmosphere, and basically the bulk of humanity, which operate 440 reactors and is building more, couldn't care less what light weight bloggers with weak intellects and no education think.

The solar thermal storage scheme is hardly a new idea. It's been around for decades, as I point out, and it has failed humanity, because it doesn't work.

Here's a 1965 reference with the same scheme: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V50-497TBPY-16C&_user=10&_coverDate=06%2F30%2F1965&_alid=1289218019&_rdoc=144&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_cdi=5772&_sort=d&_st=13&_docanchor=&view=c&_ct=145&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=dd1f409b66b343ebc177617b0f296717">A possible regenerative molten-salt, thermoelectric fuel cell

Since 1964, no matter what a bunch of lightweight uninformed bloggers think, solar energy has not become more than a trivial form of energy, neither has wind. Nuclear energy on the other hand has become the largest source of climate change gas free primary energy, outstripping wind, solar, geothermal, tidal combined.

Mutter and curse like a typical anti-nuke, engage in toxic denial of what is happening to our planet, what works and what doesn't: It's all the anti-nukes got, all they ever had.

They're denialists idiots to a man and to a woman, and happily, though it may be too late to save much, their ideas are being seen around the world for what they are and what they have always been: Pure garbage.

[Dead_Parrot]

5. Aw, be nice...

...he thought that sentence up all by himself - no copy and paste at all.

It's a huge leap.

[kristopher]

6. It IS difficult...

But I do the best I can to respond at your level; I just prefer to use fewer words.

[Sal Minella]

7. I wish we could harness the energy you put into vituperative personal insults.

That is all . . . . .