An Old Coal Miner

Looks at

Renewable Energy

Again

Ah science!  Just when you think it’s darkest, comes the dawn--someone who actually knows how to do something,  actually doing it.

Euler’s study of refraction leads to Zoom.

 Rosalind Franklin gives her life to the xray diffraction study of DNA and we get the medicine-changing new technology of the new vaccines and monoclonal antibodies .

Donald Sadoway reverses magnesium smelting to produce the new liquid metal battery.

Ah the new liquid metal battery!

This is likely the technology which makes renewable energy possible.  The wind doesn’t blow all the time and the sun doesn’t shine at night.  A cheap, safe, sustainably produced, and  long lasting battery is the most important piece of the puzzle.

Lithium ion batteries will never get very big because they easily become explosive.  That’s why they appear only in flashlight battery size or smaller  ( I understand the Tesla has about 8000 batteries  in there somewhere--a car riding on 8000 little bombs).

“if you want to make a battery that’s dirt cheap, make it out of dirt,” opines Dr.  Sadoway (John F. Elliottprofessor of Materials Science at MIT).

Batteries with solid metal electrodes have limited life because the solid metal  changes character over time.  Most die at around 1000 charge cycles, which is three to five years in the power grid (1000 nighttime discharges).

The liquid metal battery changes all the time, so non-conductive deposits don’t form.  The battery is still the same after thousands of cycles.

There are no worries about what happens when the electrode gets too hot, because it is already molten!

The technology solves so many problems at once:  power storage, long life, expense (literally dirt cheap),safety, portability,  low environmental impact, indestructable charging and discharge (may you never find out what happens when a Li-ion cell goes below 2.8 volts or your frozen car battery is charged too fast).

Dr  Sadoway has taught the most popular class at MIT, has developed a ton of world changing technology, has started companies (Ambri--I want some stock myself), and is funny as hell (check his stuff on YouTube).

I never thought people from Toronto were so entertaining.