New Liquid Battery

Bill,

The reason the researcher says it is not for cars is that liquids slosh. This battery does look interesting but the elevated temperatures may put it in the commercial use only category.

JeffD

 

May make a great home charging station. It would be used for electric cars, just not in the car.

 

Hi All,

Liquid Magnesium and sparks would be quite a fire hazard if exposed to air. Definately in the commercial energy storage catagory. The battery room would probably have to be maintained in a CO2, or Nitrogen atmosphere, and the battery canisters would need to be air-tight gasketed, with pressure regulating controls.

 

What happened in a collision, it would explode and burn furiously when ruptured. That's why it is not for cars nor EV.

 

Sometimes you just need a better mousetrap ....

This liquid battery would be ideal for off-grid EV installations, and installations with wind or EV tie-in

The safety comments posted above are very real.

 

Oh, I don't know. The Russians had good luck with liquid sodium cooled reactors.

Tom

 

Sorry to nitpick, but the Russians used Lead Bismuth for their liquid metal reactors.

http://www.nr.titech.ac.jp/coe21/eng/events/Ines-2/pdf/3B1/116_Toshinsky.pdf

 

I thought you were pulling my leg

Fast Breeder Reactors

Ok, the rooskies probably didn't use it

 

Right you are. It was the U.S. that used liquid sodium. We only used it in one submarine, the USS Seawolf (SSN-575).

Pratt & Whitney considered liquid metal cooled reactors for nuclear powered aircraft. How would you like to have one of those crash in your back yard?

Tom

 

It's all good because we desperately need high-capacity *storage*
for centralized and fixed-distributed generation facilities so
they can continue cranking out power after the sun goes down
or the wind subsides. Having it in the electrical domain already
instead of screwing around with heated sodium or water pumped
uphill is probably a win.
.
_H*

 

It would be exciting, to say the least

Although very hush-hush at the time, the Atomic Energy Commission - now the Department of Energy - did research into nuclear powered spacecraft. Projects Rover and NERVA contributed to the design of spacecraft and even aircraft nuclear propulsion systems

Rocket science ::

http://area51specialprojects.com/nerva.html

NUCLEAR ROCKET PROPULSION - THE 1960S - Nuclear Thermal Propulsion

In hindsight, am pretty glad we don't have to worry about fallout raining down after every rocket launch

 

That is the ideal facility to use such a battery. A properly engineered and maintained battery complex at such a facility would be far safer than allowing it in a home PV environment

 

Actually when I was at the Idaho National Labs decades ago, I had lunch with an old timer. He described the initial testing of the nuclear powered airplane engine. In one static test, there was a fuel element failure. The unique aspect of a airplane reactor fuel element failure is that is spreads the stuff like it was being blown out of a jet engine.....(er, scratch the word "like".) This resulted in setting off just about every radiation alarm at every site at the lab. Fortunately, the whole setup is in the middle of nowhere. It's amazing some of the craziness pursued back then.

 

the concept is good for certain applications and its a start towards a better solution for cars.

the concerns over "sloshing" is somewhat valid, but in a container if the liquid and "moltened" components can be thicken up a bit, and airspace removed (if possible) i think it could be a workable solution.

granted, the thickening process may reduce electron movement and reduce current capacity, but a halfway solution for performance and safety maybe viable... heck, 5 times better than Li is not as good as 10 times but i would consider it

 

The problem you describe is referred to as a "free surface problem" in the world of marine engineering. Removal of airspace and tall, narrow containers are the general solution to this problem. Baffles inside of larger tanks are an example of this. They convert the large tank volume into a number of smaller, more narrow volumes.

Tom

 

oic??.... well "tall and narrow" would be a pretty tough challenge im afraid.

to be honest with ya, i actually tried this this morning... now granted, it was with by son's breakfast so not completely scientific, but one thing i noticed (now this may change over a much greater period of time) was that semi solids of different densities, especially when separated by a liquid (milk) dont really mix when vibrated like you would see in a car. in fact it required a lot of vertical shaking, something i would think is minimal in a car.

now granted, if in a high speed chase, it maybe different and with safety regs aimed at the extreme and not the norm, i can see this having to undergo extremely rigorous testing, but i still think (with my very non-scientific mind) its worth investigating

 

Did I overlook something, how do you keep liquid metal a liquid? Magnesium has a melting point over around 1200 °F, don't know about the other "molten metals" in the thing, but I can't imagine that this would be useful in any way except perhaps research on the technology even with the most insulated of containers, keeping the metals in that "molten" state has to use tremendous energy.

 

It's not really a problem for a large, stationary application.

Tom

 

You can keep metal at a temperature of 1200+F for long periods of time? (and by you of course I'm being general). Hell my hot water maker has to kick on every few hours to keep water at around 150°F or whatever it keeps it at.