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China develops iron battery 80 times cheaper than lithium that can last 16 years. It provides a budget-friendly, high-endurance answer for the world’s massive energy storage needs. (interestingengineering.com)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/technology@slrpnk.net
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/46526992

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2095495622003485

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[–] 2 points 6 months ago* (12 children)

I don't care about batteries becoming cheaper. What I care about is them becoming safer.

I had far too many sudden spicy pillows in devices this year, I'd prefer something that isn't as dangerous as Lithium-Ion.

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  • [–] 6 points 6 months ago* (9 children)

    It's going to be a key to unlocking proper grid-scale energy storage.

    For example, in my country, there's decent solar output from about april to october at most. November to February we just sit in the dark, the sun barely rises at all. With li-ion, the cost to store enough energy in the summer months to use it in the winter would be at least 100x for the batteries compared to the solar panels themselves. Not the least of our issues is that energy usage in winter is significantly bigger than summer, largely due to increasing number of heat pumps and the fact that EVs require way more electricity in the winter for the same distance as well.

    Wind helps out in the winter, but mostly we're at the mercy of fossil fuels, whereas in the summer we have nothing to do with our plentiful solar energy so the price often goes negative, meaning if anyone accidentally sells their power to the grid, they have to pay for the privilege.

    Personally I don't significantly care about batteries becoming safer. I do care about them becoming cheaper. I've not had a single spicy pillow on anything I've owned, only seen them at work when I refurbished laptops.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago (8 children)

    In the medium term, I'm hopeful for technology like this:

    https://www.photoncycle.com/

    That's mostly interesting for flat places that can't use pumped hydro to store energy, like the Netherlands or Denmark....

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    Netherlands nd Denmark can use hydro-storage in Norway.

    They don't have a closed national grid.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    How good is the link?

    Here in Estonia, two problems we face are that the two Estlink cables connecting us to Finland (which has a nuclear plant! yay!) are sometimes down for maintenance, and also they're sometimes fully saturated in the winter. In fact when that happens, power prices go up a lot because our national consumption can reach 1600 MW (actually new record this February was 1723 MW) and when the main shale burning plant is down for maintenance (which is about once a week for 8 days at a time in the winter when it would be useful) we're pretty much at the mercy of wind and and the Finnish nuclear plants. Oh and since we're the bridge between the rest of the Baltics and Finland, we don't really keep all of what is transferred over Estlink, the Latvians and Lithuanians are part of the same grid so their demand gets added to ours.

    Point being, our grids might not be closed, but particularly when talking about overseas connections, there are bottlenecks.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Compared to alternatives on the market, there is no high upfront investment - you can start saving money and CO₂ from day one. When ordering the system, you pay a refundable deposit. Monthly, you pay a fixed fee, which will be reduced by the revenues from energy trading. It is estimated, that you can save between 10 to 50 percent of your current energy costs with Photoncycle subscription.

    Yeah, subscription model innovation, just what I need. The "technology" also looks sketchy to me, some vague talk about solar power, hydrogen generation by electrolysis and underground storage.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    Well the solar power you'll have to provide yourself (or apparently they'll also rent panels to you?). The technology doesn't seem too far-fetched, but the economics of it don't make sense for me at least.

    Technology itself should be simple. Use excess solar power throughout the summer to produce hydrogen (not difficult), store it safely (more difficult - they claim to store it in solid form which makes me wonder how that would take place in an automated fashion underground). Then in the winter, turn hydrogen back into electricity and use waste heat for heating water.

    But the fees exist all year round. If I had solar panels, electricity would be nearly free to me in the summer (at peak we get 18 hours of sunlight in the summer... and 18 hours of darkness in the winter). The annual cost of this system would pretty much add up to what my energy costs are already without any solar panels though. If I just got myself solar panels and a battery that can last me ~12 hours in the spring or fall, I'd only REALLY need to be paying for electricity for about 6 months a year.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (2 children)

    Looks like a savage idea. Unfortunately it's also subscription based.

    Monthly, you pay a fixed fee, which will be reduced by the revenues from energy trading. It is estimated, that you can save between 10 to 50 percent of your current energy costs with Photoncycle subscription.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    Monthly base fee starts at 300€, which will be reduced by [...] which can amount to up to 150€

    Yeah if it was more than the 10 MWh they've mentioned on their website, perhaps it would be good enough for my house. But I think I reached over 2000 kWh of electricity consumption a month this winter thanks to my heat pump and possibly more than that in briquettes that I use for my central heating furnace. The 10,000 kWh they talk about is sadly not enough for my soviet-era built house, nor is my roof big enough for a meaningful amount of solar (it's complicated... big house, small roof, not all of the roof useable for solar). If I'd have to get 2 or 3 units and they end up costing me significantly more than the 300€ a month? No thanks. My highest electricity bill in the winter was about 330€ and yes, I also burned about 500€ worth of wood briquettes that month, but in the summer I pay less than 100€ and this was a freakishly cold winter, so normally it wouldn't cost as much (and I'm also now older and wiser and will keep a bigger stockpile because the prices do go up in the winter, something I've experienced before).

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago*

    Iron redox flow batteries are inherently safer than vanadium redox flow batteries.
    All types of redox flow batteries - in difference to lithium ion batteries of the NMC (nickel manganese cobalt) type - can't have thermal runaway; lithium iron phosphate batteries, which are typically used for grid/home storage are safe from thermal runaway as well.

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  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago

    I'd prefer something that isn't as dangerous as Lithium-Ion.

    There are several different lithium ion chemistries, each with different safety profiles.

    The spicy pillow bulge comes from delamination, which can be prevented with more rigid cell containers. Delamination itself is dangerous because it changes the electrical characteristics of the battery in a way that increases the risk of thermal runaway, where the increased heat speeds up the reaction that causes more heat, in a feedback loop.

    Another related danger is the actual flammability of the electrolytes and cathode/anode materials. Several of these chemicals can react with oxygen, especially when hot, to cause intense fires or explosions. And these batteries tend to already contain their own oxygen, so that the fires can't be quenched.

    So the engineers needs to design cells that are more physically resistant to physical deformation, to implement safety features like current interrupt devices (that disconnect the internal cells when certain conditions are met), use chemistries that don't have as high a risk of thermal runaway to begin with, and use chemistries that don't rely on flammable components.

    Many lithium ion chemistries already accomplish most of these. In recent years, lithium iron phosphate batteries (LFP) have been taking over on car batteries, because they're much safer on all these fronts: they can withstand much higher temperatures before hitting thermal runaway, and the characteristics of thermal runaway in an LFP battery are more subdued (the oxygen in an LFP battery is more tightly bound in a crystalline structure so that fewer oxygen molecules jump out to feed an ongoing fire).

    And as it turns out, LFP is cheaper than the other common Lithium Ion battery chemistries. So the incentives to use this chemistry has caused it to jump ahead in market share in vehicles.

    People are working on it. Safety is obviously important. But lithium itself isn't necessarily any more dangerous than anything else.

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