The only liquid metal I know is mercury.
The definition of liquid metal is "mercury". The rest have a standard solid state and do not classify as liquid metals.
Did any of you watch the video? This is about batteries which could be used for renewable energy, electric vehicles, and other energy stoarage applications. The folks at MIT have been working on this for yearrs and should have something in 2020.
You folks are are all interested in renewable, aren’t you?
Grid storage systems using these kind of batteries are already available.
Who else feels like saying loudly,,
When i can go on your webstore and order 10 liquid metal batteries then we will talk, not before.
I have seen a number of his videos before, I feel that heat loss and heat induced corrosion is a big problem
I did some back of envelop calculations, to keep the molten battery active @600C. assume 8 boxes of 1m cube with 12inch glasswool equiv insulation. his molten salt battery MAY leak heat at a rate of 4kW (2 foot insulation maybe 2kW? not 100% sure, but something close I think). A lithium 1MWh size maybe with 5% leak per 30 days works out to 0.07kWh loss. If I rely on web numbers again, SLA deep cylers if assumed to have 15% self discharge, this only works out to 0.21kWh loss rate. not sure power consumption of battery management, but I do not think they are in kW rates. I have many unknowns and used many assumptions here, and one more to add is the self leakage of the molten salt at 600C operating temp, that loss adds to the heat loss.
edit : his recent video suggests a 1/3 std cargo container sized battery
edit : I wondered, is his concept of battery self discharge so high that it self heats the battery at kW heat rates? a very high current short? otherwise, how will the battery self maintain the heat?
I apologize if these numbers seem too inaccurate, but since we all know the types of insulation material are finite, and it is impossible to stem heat loss, the heat loss ballpark numbers of a few kW may not be too far fetched.
edit : after watching the recent video, it struck me that Sadoway never fails to hurl spit crap and shit at the idea of lithium batteries (and other chemistries as well, like solid polymers), he has no good words for it in nearly every lecture or presentation (except his own molten salts).
in his recent video, he want to take all the money put into gigafactory (producing lithiums) and he will make 2 huge iron foundries. I fail to understand his logic here.
I have seen a number of his videos before, I feel that heat loss and heat induced corrosion is a big problem
I did some back of envelop calculations, to keep the molten battery active @600C. assume 8 boxes of 1m cube with 12inch glasswool equiv insulation. his molten salt battery MAY leak heat at a rate of 4kW (2 foot insulation maybe 2kW? not 100% sure, but something close I think). A lithium 1MWh size maybe with 5% leak per 30 days works out to 0.07kWh loss. If I rely on web numbers again, SLA deep cylers if assumed to have 15% self discharge, this only works out to 0.21kWh loss rate. not sure power consumption of battery management, but I do not think they are in kW rates. I have many unknowns and used many assumptions here, and one more to add is the self leakage of the molten salt at 600C operating temp, that loss adds to the heat loss.
edit : his recent video suggests a 1/3 std cargo container sized battery
edit : I wondered, is his concept of battery self discharge so high that it self heats the battery at kW heat rates? a very high current short? otherwise, how will the battery self maintain the heat?
I apologize if these numbers seem too inaccurate, but since we all know the types of insulation material are finite, and it is impossible to stem heat loss, the heat loss ballpark numbers of a few kW may not be too far fetched.
edit : after watching the recent video, it struck me that Sadoway never fails to hurl spit crap and shit at the idea of lithium batteries (and other chemistries as well, like solid polymers), he has no good words for it in nearly every lecture or presentation (except his own molten salts).
in his recent video, he want to take all the money put into gigafactory (producing lithiums) and he will make 2 huge iron foundries. I fail to understand his logic here.
edit : I wondered, is his concept of battery self discharge so high that it self heats the battery at kW heat rates? a very high current short? otherwise, how will the battery self maintain the heat?
Good reply, you bring up some interesting points which is the purpose of the post. I think he mentioned they would have something in 2020 which is next year.That;s less than one year but not more than two years from now. It would be interesting to see if Gates and others will give him money if he needs it.
gates is already a backer iirc, sadoways molten salt business is called "ambri". sadoway is the key patent owner iirc, I think it is the key reason why he keep on talking bad about other batteries. but now if you are an investor and you tell them the batteries run at 410C - 800C, I think they will just turn away and not even hear the full specs. I think in desperation, sadoway develop a 410C molten salt iteration that uses lithium and lead. hmmmmm lithium? no how can it be ? lithium bad ! sodium good ! but really I dont know, I think he is desperate, cos just simply lithium titanates can do 20k to 30k cycles, trashy china lithium titanates could make his molten salt batt look bad.
Mr chu from dept of energy is very interested, because, in missile systems that sit long and dormant, molten salt when cold do not degrade (or so it seems? maybe slower corrosion?). this is also the reason why, ARPA-E granted US$7m to sadoway in 2009 for research? maybe? not sure too, but it seems to connect logically. but in order to grow in business, ah damn, elon musk power wall is in the way ! damn you power wall !At 25% round trip efficiencies you've got lots of spare heat energy, 333W per kW is a lot of heat and once it's up to the proper operating T you only need to keep it there (to compensate insulation losses). I would not be surprised if in reality at the end it needed some sort of refrigeration.
the 2018 pdf paper about the 410C lithium lead molten salt says the round trip is around 71%
At 25% round trip efficiencies you've got lots of spare heat energy, 333W per kW is a lot of heat and once it's up to the proper operating T you only need to keep it there (to compensate insulation losses). I would not be surprised if in reality at the end it needed some sort of refrigeration.
the 2018 pdf paper about the 410C lithium lead molten salt says the round trip is around 71%. but again, the entire paper did not say if the heating energy is included or was not :/. a 2015 diagram shows a representative box, insulation and external heaters. in all of the papers I have seen, none of them, said the battery will power the heater. they always say, the battery is heated in stages, then finally operated at temperature x. not a word on cooling too or as much as I could recall. what is most interesting is, there is 2 or 3, 200- 300 page pdf about the economics of operating it (and why it is cheaper than other cells)
At 25% round trip efficiencies you've got lots of spare heat energy, 333W per kW is a lot of heat and once it's up to the proper operating T you only need to keep it there (to compensate insulation losses). I would not be surprised if in reality at the end it needed some sort of refrigeration.
the 2018 pdf paper about the 410C lithium lead molten salt says the round trip is around 71%. but again, the entire paper did not say if the heating energy is included or was not :/. a 2015 diagram shows a representative box, insulation and external heaters. in all of the papers I have seen, none of them, said the battery will power the heater. they always say, the battery is heated in stages, then finally operated at temperature x. not a word on cooling too or as much as I could recall. what is most interesting is, there is 2 or 3, 200- 300 page pdf about the economics of operating it (and why it is cheaper than other cells)
He (sort of) explains it in the video IIRC, 3 kWh is a lot of heat, for every 10 kWh.
My comments on the video :
a lot of exageration.
@4:33 : "CdTe solar cells won't scale" Exagerated. You need approx. 50x more Si. than Te to make the same amount of solar output in a PV cell. So the cost of a trace material like Te is not that critical. As with Lithium mining, supply slowly scales with demand.
@5:55 "platinum is OK for the jewlery market, but not for widespread use in automobiles" : LOL. That's completely wrong. Nearly half of the Pt mined today is eaten up by the automobile industry, to make catalythic converters ! His point on cost of FCEV still is valid, but exaggerated.
For once I agree with f4eru.
Without taking the quantities into account using 'cheap materials' is a totally meaningless claim. The specific energy (energy stored per kg) of the sodium-sulfur battery is more than twice of that of a Li-ion battery. That (roughly) means that a sodium-sulfur battery needs mining, transporting and processing twice the amount of materials.
Who else feels like saying loudly,,
When i can go on your webstore and order 10 liquid metal batteries then we will talk, not before.
Friend isn’t that what this website and form is all about? Discussing electronics, the design of electronic circuits, and future products? Only point in discussing a finished is product is doing a tear down. But let’s see if the professor gets a product before ripping it apart. He is a chemist, and if you learned anything about chemistry and half-cell potentials in freshman chemistry you would quickly realize this guy is on to something that’s far more realistic than free energy.
Who else feels like saying loudly,,
When i can go on your webstore and order 10 liquid metal batteries then we will talk, not before.
Friend isn’t that what this website and form is all about? Discussing electronics, the design of electronic circuits, and future products? Only point in discussing a finished is product is doing a tear down. But let’s see if the professor gets a product before ripping it apart. He is a chemist, and if you learned anything about chemistry and half-cell potentials in freshman chemistry you would quickly realize this guy is on to something that’s far more realistic than free energy.
Chemists have cried wolf too many times regarding new battery tech.
No cracking or other disintegration of cells since they are liquid? Really?
The case is made of steel, or stainless steel, so it doesn't melt.
The blue-ish/gray-ish thing is an insulator too. And steel isn't a good conductor has lots of resistivity that adds to the i2r losses.
The blue-ish/gray-ish thing is an insulator too. And steel isn't a good conductor has lots of resistivity that adds to the i2r losses.
that is the conductive molten salt
it is kind of irony I think, to make a better cell, it needs lower internal resistance, but the edges also self discharge faster
Maybe but there is a lot of steel in the outer casing so the total resistance shouldn't be that high.
"easy to come by" can be quite misleading.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prices_of_elements_and_their_compounds
I hope nobody will protest the use of wiki prices?
if I/we assume economically abundant = under $10/kg, list of economically abundant under $10 elements
Zn, Si, Sa, O2, N2, Mn, Pb, La, Fe, H2, Cu, Ce, Cl, Cd, As, Ar, Sb, Al (the 2 most expensive of the $10 bracket are H2 (liquid) and Cu).
sulphur ($500), sodium ($250), at $250 (+/- $50) also sits our famous friend lithium and tellurium.
I thought that carbon should be really cheap, but carbon is $24/kg, similar as Sn.
The case is made of steel, or stainless steel, so it doesn't melt.
The issues to solve are probably more those of amalgaming, contamination, and secondary unwanted reactions among all the materials present.
Im not sadoway sir , that drawing is everywhere everytime you search "molten salts"
Metallic sodium is priced at about 15 to 20 cents/lb in quantity. Reagent grade (ACS) sodium in January 1990 cost about $35/lb. On a volume basis, it is the cheapest of all metals.
Cost per kilogram is one metric for battery materials, but for the primary reactants it seems that cost per mole would be more pertinent. The point is how many electrons per dollar are contributed, not how many per kilogram. I put together a short table of the top performers from this point of view. It is sorted by the cost/mole metric and clearly shows differences from a cost per kilogram metric.
The prices you find are for salts or oxides. Obviously Sodium Chloride is dirt cheap, as are other forms. An industrial scale user of sodium would set up the refinery on site and include that as cost of manufacture
Metallic sodium is priced at about 15 to 20 cents/lb in quantity. Reagent grade (ACS) sodium in January 1990 cost about $35/lb. On a volume basis, it is the cheapest of all metals.
The prices you find are for salts or oxides. Obviously Sodium Chloride is dirt cheap, as are other forms. An industrial scale user of sodium would set up the refinery on site and include that as cost of manufactureYes. Successful chemical industries find ways to use all the byproducts so it's hard to get an accurate cost estimate. If you were to produce sodium from NaCl you would e.g. have to add the cost of dissociation and subtract the profits from selling the chlorine gas (or you would use the chlorine as a reagent in some other process). There are many different raw materials and processes that you could get metallic sodium from which would yield different byproducts that could be used to produce a number of other chemicals. The industries using it probably won't divulge what it costs them either for business reasons. I.e. it would be very hard to figure out the real cost. But I'm pretty certain that metallic sodium will be very cheap.
This website even says it's the cheapest of all metals:QuoteMetallic sodium is priced at about 15 to 20 cents/lb in quantity. Reagent grade (ACS) sodium in January 1990 cost about $35/lb. On a volume basis, it is the cheapest of all metals.https://www.radiochemistry.org/periodictable/elements/11.html
Well if you want to go that direction, hydrogen is technically a metal and by volume is by far the cheapest. Having a low density may or may not be the proper pricing metric.
Brain didn't register the on "volume part"! Hydrogen would be cheaper in gas phase at least.
I was just saying sodium is cheap, and as the guy said, battery tech based on it will likely scale well because both Na and S is abundant here on earth.
Found attached graphs from iea, shows share of storage technologies except pumped hydro (which is about 10x the others combined). But new battery installations mainly use lithium-ion technology.
Yes most (>95%) hydrogen produced today is from fossil fuels:
https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2016/07/f33/fcto_hydrogen_production_fs.pdf
Not sure how cheap it is, from what I can tell it cost about $10/kg to refuel fuel cell EVs in California. The actual production costs are probably lower though.
Hydrogen is normally nonmetalic, but at extreme pressures it's theorised it can exist in a liquid metal phase, inside a gas gigants for example.
There are lots of theories out there which is why we have science. At this time is it fair to say hydrogen is a non-metal but has been theorized to be a metal under extreme conditions?
There are lots of theories out there which is why we have science. At this time is it fair to say hydrogen is a non-metal but has been theorized to be a metal under extreme conditions?I would say it's likely true, but I don't think it has ever been confirmed experimentally.
That's why we call it a theory. Might be true; but then again might not or we might find something else unexpected.
btw, which of these molten salts is your favourite to become widescale commercial and why?
There are lots of theories out there which is why we have science. At this time is it fair to say hydrogen is a non-metal but has been theorized to be a metal under extreme conditions?I would say it's likely true, but I don't think it has ever been confirmed experimentally.That's why we call it a theory. Might be true; but then again might not or we might find something else unexpected.
There are lots of theories out there which is why we have science. At this time is it fair to say hydrogen is a non-metal but has been theorized to be a metal under extreme conditions?I would say it's likely true, but I don't think it has ever been confirmed experimentally.That's why we call it a theory. Might be true; but then again might not or we might find something else unexpected.Yes, but it's not black and white either. For example, I am very confident that if if I throw a rock a few meters on the moon (i.e. in a vacuum) it will approximately follow a parabolic path, even though I never have tried doing that. But that is what established theory predicts. So basically we can have more confidence in what an established and well tested theory predicts.
In this case the standard model predicts that there is a metallic phase of hydrogen which could exist inside of Jupiter. That means more than if the prediction was based on string theory (it should really be called string hypothesis then, shouldn't it ). So, it's not black and white; just because we haven't seen metallic hydrogen in a lab, it's still more likely that it exists than it does not I would say. (Although I really have no idea what the confidence level for it to exist would be).
string theory sounds a bit crazy. But then who would have thought the electron entanglement experiment would have "worked". Or that quantum computers would be possible?
string theory sounds a bit crazy. But then who would have thought the electron entanglement experiment would have "worked". Or that quantum computers would be possible?String theory can't be tested at the moment so it should be put in the hypothesis category.
Quantum entanglement and quantum computers are predicted by quantum physics (very solid and thoroughly tested theory) and thus were expected to be true by most physicists. If you can make a practically useful quantum computer is still an open question though.
Population-reducer (less-polite term: murderer)
Do not hold your breath.
Batteries....the ones we have NOW...and having half a clue about efficiency and self-sufficiency ...can do wonders for anyone intent on freeing themselves from the Slave Networks. These guys obviously have the intent to make grid electricity cheaper to produce and store and distribute to the Home Slave while the Home Slave pays through the nose for the privilege....just like they have implemented in all countries where solar is popular: the highest cost of electricity on the planet....with Slave daily service charges guaranteeing record profits even if you don't turn a thing on.
They are intent on keeping the Little Guy outregulated so as to not set foot on their turf. Guaranteed returns for them.
That all seems a bit harsh.
In particular...Population-reducer (less-polite term: murderer)I would say if we don't reduce global population now, we are murdering future generations.
They keep ramming this " cheap. clean. renewable power " crap down our throats while power prices have become the highest in the world..... and our grid fast becoming some of the least reliable.
Hasn't quite got to the stage of unreliability here, but electricity costs four or five times as much as gas.
Thing I don't understand is, can our politicians not do basic arithmetic? If so, why have they not looked at the cost vs returns figures for wind and solar over the world, and realised that this is going nowhere except to financial ruin?
I now have a wind turbine visible from my workshop window. Fortunately far enough away to not be a nuisance, but to me this is ominously like spotting the tanks of the 7th Panzer Division on the horizon. Stand by to be invaded. Resistance is futile.
I'd rather see an actual paper ... we've been through this shit before with power lines. Hypochondriacs will hypochonder.