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consider the implications for a post scarcity future (slrpnk.net)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Actually a modern "sand battery" does have to be sand or at least a granular material. The difference between a sand battery and thermal mass is that you use a conveyor to superheat small fractions of the sand, allowing the isolation of high grade heat.

If you have a single kWh to store and 1 ton of sand to work with, you could heat 1kg of sand to hundreds of degrees (sand battery), or 1 ton of sand by one degree (thermal mass).

1 ton of slightly warm sand is useless, while you can extract the high grade heat from the 1kg and get your 1 kWh back.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Interesting, thanks for sharing that!