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August 18, 2009
Warm Sodium Battery
There is some amazing news in the world of high energy batteries. Coors Ceramics thinks they have a way to make Sodium-Sulfur batteries that can operate at 90° C ( 194° F which is below the boiling point of water)and charge-discharge once a day for ten years. The battery breakthrough comes from a Salt Lake company called Ceramatec, the R&D arm of CoorsTek, a world leader in advanced materials and electrochemical devices. It promises to reduce dependence on the dinosaur by hooking up with the latest generation of personalized power plants that draw from the sun.One small quibble. Unless this technology can be used to make liquid fuels at a lower cost than oil, its uses in transportation will be limited. One drawback is that it needs to be kept around 90C for the battery to deliver juice. It will be hard to maintain that temperature with low losses in a Chicago winter. Enough of the caveats. How about some more techno porn. Inside Ceramatec's wonder battery is a chunk of solid sodium metal mated to a sulphur compound by an extraordinary, paper-thin ceramic membrane. The membrane conducts ions -- electrically charged particles -- back and forth to generate a current. The company calculates that the battery will cram 20 to 40 kilowatt hours of energy into a package about the size of a refrigerator, and operate below 90 degrees C.My favorite caveat in projects like these is logistics. Or in layman's terms "how soon can they ramp up production once they have a working battery." Grover's brother, John K. Coors, is CEO of CoorsTek, the manufacturing company that applies what the scientists at Ceramatec dream up. Their nephew, Doug Coors, oversees R&D.Of course once that source is gone they will have to pay full price for their sodium. Fortunately neither Sodium nor Sulfur are too hard to come by. And what does all that talk about time to scale up mean? Here are my guesses. About a year and a half to pilot plant production. A year for battery testing and scale up. Another year to get a full production plant operating. So optimistically about 3 and 1/2 years. Realistically 5 years. Pessimistically 7 years. And very pessimistically never. What would this technology mean? For one thing, besides its uses for wind and solar, it would be very handy for shaving peak loads. It costs the utilities a lot less to deliver steady power than to deliver power that varies a lot over the course of a day. Think of it as having a peaking plant and some backup power (for the refrigerator and furnace) in every home. Of course superflywheels [pdf] might be a competitive technology capable of even more charge discharge cycles at roughly equivalent energy density. H/T R. Dave Talk Polywell Cross Posted at Power and Control posted by Simon on 08.18.09 at 02:10 PM
Comments
NO grid-based electric storage technology will advantage wind and solar. Only the most reliable and least costly generation (coal and nuclear) would benefit. Here's the numbers: http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article_display.cfm?a_id=1808 Whitehall · August 19, 2009 05:18 PM Whitehall, Wind is still coming down the cost curve. So the numbers in the future will not be as pessimistic as your site shows. And PV is still coming down the cost curve. In 20 years the numbers may be very different. M. Simon · August 19, 2009 05:33 PM Even if the per-kilowatt-hour cost for solar and/or wind fell below coal or nuclear, the unavailability of production to charge the storage means that the capital cost of the storage means would have to amortized over a smaller amount of output. In other words, build a storage battery and have no wind or solar electricity to charge it means you've wasted your money for the battery. Look at the physics and the engineering principles of power production - real-world wind and solar PV are hardly likely to fall much in price. Talk to me in 20 years - bet nuclear and coal will still be cheaper, barring stupid government interventions. Whitehall · August 19, 2009 08:47 PM Even if there is no solar or wind in the system, load leveling (peak shaving) may have sufficient value to make it worthwhile. Don't forget - the personal auto is idle better than 90% of the time and engine life runs in the 2,000 to 4,000 hour range. And yet such an investment is considered valuable. So to say that idle capital is wasted may not be exactly true. It all depends on its value in the system. I can tell you fairly exactly what the learning curve for wind is. Every doubling of turbine size lowers turbine costs by 1/3. The same curve that was found for electrical plant size from 1900 to about 1950. For the same reasons. Maximum turbine size is expected to be in the 10 to 15 MW (peak) range. With 3 MW jobs in series production expect the cost of wind to come in at about 1/2 current costs. Putting it at about 1/2 coal or nuclear at the best sites and equal to coal and nuclear at the worst sites contemplated. I'm a fan of all types of power production. i.e. nuclear is fine with me. Coal is fine. Natural gas is good. PV has its uses. And when it comes to fusion, I like Polywell Fusion. I would like to see the subsidies for PV and wind zeroed out over a 10 year period. They have served their purpose. M. Simon · August 19, 2009 11:28 PM Post a comment
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There was a bit on this on Modern Marvels, too. It was in the "salt" episode.