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Grid-Scale Bubble Batteries Will Soon Be Everywhere
(spectrum.ieee.org)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
On their website (energydome.com) they claim “75%+” round trip efficiency, so not a bad guess!
That’s a hell of a lot better than most other systems. If true, and if scalable, this is a huge innovation.
compressors, turbines (like steam turbines), piping, some of which heat-resistant (500C), container for liquid carbon dioxide, lots of plastic for the bubble, something for thermal storage, dry and clean carbon dioxide, these aren't unusual or restricted resources, don't depend on critical raw materials or anything like that
Compressed air without heat recovery is more like 30%, so this is huge
Carbon dioxide can be liquefied relatively easily which is what i guess makes this efficient
I was just about to bang out that they must lose a lot of heat from the compression. But apparently not! That’s amazing.
I’m struggling to think of systems that would significantly outperform “75%+”. Chilled superconducting coils? Those are expensive, and would fail rather catastrophically.