Solid state batteries come in several flavours. Most of them don't stop dendrites.<p>The flavour you want is polymer, single ion conducting solid state with an ion transport activation energy below 10kJ/mol at room temperature and no phase transitions from -40C to 80C.<p>That is the holy grail of SS batteries.
I'll just take one that charges at ridiculous speeds and can't burn my house down.<p>I wish BYD could bring their new infra to the US - it looks pretty ::ahem:: <i>solid</i>!
Lithium Titanate batteries can do this now, somewhat. I have some 35 Ah batteries that claim they can charge in 9 minutes (compared to traditional Lithium Ion, that would take hours).<p>I don't have a charger that can supply the necessary 350 Amps though.<p>They also have ridiculous amount of charge cycles. 10x higher than regular Lithium Ion IIRC.<p>They are more expensive and are larger and heavier for the same stored energy though.<p>And, while they CAN still catch fire, they are apparently way harder to do so.
> The flavour you want is polymer, single ion conducting solid state with an ion transport activation energy below 10kJ/mol at room temperature and no phase transitions from -40C to 80C.<p>what makes it so? I don't know anything about this subject, I'm really curious now about what the perfect battery would be.
No idea why polymer single ion conducting would stop dendrites (I know people are looking for it, I don't know why).<p>But 10kJ/mol of activation energy is another way of saying less than 100mV of internal loses, and avoiding phase transitions means that your battery won't stop working on that temperature range.
I’m still a novice on the material science behind it, but what is QuantumScape lacking here if anything, and why is it a dealbreaker?
The only thing different from this list is the ceramic separator. It’s not polymer. However, the ceramic is ultra thin to the point that it’s flexible so volume expansion isn’t a problem and it solves the dendrite problem.<p>Perhaps a polymer will be invented that can’t be pierced by dendrites. But existing polymers need to be heated for ion transfer efficiency and are combustable.<p>Technically, QuantumScape also uses an organic liquid catholyte inside the cathode. So it’s not “pure” solid state.
Are anyone building the battery you described?
their benefit boiled down (sic) to flammability, or the lack thereof, right ?
"no phase transitions from -40C to 80C."<p>Well that's fine for terrestrial use but aerospace needs that range to be expanded a little in both directions, otherwise it won't be much of a holy grail if it won't cover the needs of one of the largest growing industries.
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Please don't attack another user like this, no matter how wrong someone is or you feel they are. It only makes things worse.<p>I believe I get the positive intention behind your post, btw - to defend conversation against shallow dismissals - and of course appreciate that. But if you'd please express it in a respectful way in the future, then you'll be contributing to good conversation rather than degrading it further.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html">https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html</a>
To be fair, the poster said “holy grail” which implies perfection.
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Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse.<p>If you know more than others do, that's great! But please contribute by sharing some of what you know, so the rest of us can learn, rather than putting others down.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html">https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html</a>
How does someone with such short temper get to work in the aerospace industry? You know we are just a bunch of random strangers on the internet and telling someone to "sit down" just comes across as funny more than authoritative. And I don't think telling someone "I know exactly what the fuck I'm speaking of" has ever had the desired effect on the internet, it just screams insecure - if you're really an expert make it show through your words not by trying to intimidate people.
"How does someone with such short temper get to work in the aerospace industry?"<p>My temper is very even. I simply do not tolerate bullshit from nobodies who are speaking garbage. And I get to work in aerospace because it seems that out of the millions of people that tried to get my job I'm the only one with the relevant mixed-domain expertise to realize what a company wants to do and get it done.<p>I have hardware in orbit, I can with 4-sigma certainty guarantee the poster trying to chide me does not.
Right, so were you like this before you started working there, or was putting hardware into orbit what made you behave this way in internet comments? I mean I imagine it must be a huge ego boost, but I don't know, I've done some really cool stuff too but I don't go around telling people to sit down when they try to talk about my domain.
If you know a bit about electronics, you might be a bit surprised by the term 'solid-state battery'. It's a poor analogue to the more common usage of solid-state with semiconductors, integrated circuits, etc. -- a "solid-state" cell is still a chemical cell. It's not a paradigm shift on the level of, say, replacing a relay with a MOSFET.
I think "solid-state" is a marketing term which means you need to use Fermi-Dirac statistics to model your device, vs. vacuum tubes where you can use Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics. I think you can use Maxwell-Boltzmann at least for the ions in the electrolyte.. but maybe have to use for Fermi-Dirac for all conductors in a solid-state battery.
I thought it meant your database was singly responsible, open for extension but closed for modification, Liskov substitutable, interface segregated, and dependency inverted.
Non-solid-state batteries have liquid/gel electrolyte.
Wood is a solid-state battery.<p>The term has obviously been selected because of how revolutionary solid-state electronic devices were/are.
And it's not like they selected it <i>after</i> a revolutionary energy storage device was introduced. Solid-state batteries (<i>cells</i>) are an incremental improvement, at best.<p>And because this is the web: I am not being negative about the technology. I happen to be of the radical opinion that incremental improvements are good, actually.
The word "battery" is a stand-in for electrochemical cell, which wood obviously isn't. Quite some advantages are expected from batteries that don't involve liquids or gels, whether incremental or not.
I don't know what more I can say to convince you that I'm not trying to put down the technology. I'm interested in it, that's why I think it's a shame to curse it with a used-car salesman marketing name.<p>As for wood batteries,<p>Most usage of the term 'battery' is independent of technology, outside of usually wanting electricity as the interface. The fact that most batteries people talk about <i>happen to be</i> electrochemical cells is incidental -- it's irrelevant to whatever they are actually talking about. So yes, a lot of the time 'battery' happens to refer to electrochemical cells, but it also refers to energy storage devices in general, which wood obviously is.<p>The problem with wood being a "solid-state battery" is surely the <i>solid-state</i> part.<p>Q: I mean how does that even work, solid-state combustion?<p>A: No, it's still obviously a normal chemical cell. You do a chemistry and these special "electrodes" turn the result into electricity.<p>Q: Can you recharge it?<p>A: Well, not in your own home, but in your backyard, maybe sort of.<p>If we are to use the term 'solid-state' to refer to anything that is <i>solid</i>, as in "solid-state battery", and we can get electricity from burning wood, I don't see the problem with referring to wood as a solid-state battery.
There is a nine box chart with x-axis of doctrine or how it is used and y-axis of structure; each axis has three values, purist, neutral and radical.<p>For the purist in doctrine and structure, wood is not a battery. If one is somewhere between neutral and radical, then wood is a battery that was built by its integrated disposable solar cells.
The article gives the technical reasons that answer the headline question (e.g. potential for better energy density)<p>I am surprised they didn't point out the literal "killer app" - military drones. Energy density is king for any airborne power source. And dendrite growth during charge/discharge cycling isn't as big a deal for that application (how many times would you need to charge a disposable weapon?)
For disposable applications like that, aren't there single-use chemistries that are better already? I'm thinking by analogy to things like:<p>- WW2 proximity fuzes that had batteries where the electrolyte was in a vial that got smashed by the G-forces of being shot out of a cannon providing power to the radio inside for the 10 seconds it needs to get to the incoming aircraft<p>- Hearing aid Zinc-Air batteries, that are extremely energy dense because you only have to actually manufacture the anode, the cathode is the entire atmosphere of the Earth<p>- Missile batteries, which are often Lithium-silicon/Iron Disulfide batteries that borrow some thermal energy from the rocket motor to get a molten salt electrolyte
If the thing is going to blow up anyway, does it need to be light? Wouldn't you rather have more cheaper drones?
Less weight (all else being equal) is the same thing as more battery for drones. I.e. better range, payload mass, and/or flight time. You probably want both cheap and poor performing as well as expensive and high performing available.
The lighter the further range or more explosive payload.
We need way more research on batteries. People cant ingine what is possible if we make battery 10x energy dense.
I can - it’s called a bomb. Some of the problems with batteries are heat dissipation (one of those problems that superconductors would mostly solve), fire safety, and end of life disposal. Higher energy density makes it even worse.<p>A good place to start would be a BMS on individual cells that monitors them for general degradation, unexpected discharge, unexpected temperature changes, and can remove a failing cell from the array.
Gasoline has 10x the energy (MJ/Kg) than TNT, but it's not a "bomb". Being a "bomb" is about energy release <i>rate</i>. A battery is still controlled by its chemistry.
Liquid gasoline does not have anywhere near the energy of TNT, or even a battery for that matter. It contains basically zero releasable energy. It needs oxygen or another oxidizer to react with to actually release any energy. TNT and batteries' energy density calculations include the oxidizer and the oxidizer is in close proximity to the fuel (molecularly so in the case of TNT). If you 10x the "energy content" of gasoline it's still rate limited by access to oxygen. If you 10x the energy density of a battery (the type with the oxidizer contained within the battery, not a fuel cell or metal air battery) you've got 10x the energy ready to be released quickly if oxidizer and fuel mix in unfortunate ways
It's an interesting discussion, because if you assume access to atmospheric oxygen, gasoline is MUCH more energy dense.<p><pre><code> TNT.....: 4 kJ/gram and 7 MJ/liter
Gasoline: 43 kJ/gram and 33 MJ/liter</code></pre>
The previous point is fair though. What is the energy density of gasoline in a stoichiometric mixture with its oxidizer and not already detonated? That's where TNT beats it by a long shot. The mixture with any chance of being stored would be some relatively low pressure gas.<p>Edit: Or, a fair closed-system comparison to a battery would need to include a liquid oxygen tank or similar so you have the two components stored but can control the delivery...
In the context of the conversation, it doesn't actually refute the point though, which is that explosive danger is contingent on a much broader set of relations than simple energy density. Gasoline just demonstrates the disconnect. Tacking on additional conditions to make high-density batteries dangerous is exactly what the engineering goal should be.<p>As a stupid example, if we have a high density battery technology that never explodes unless, say, under magnetic forces only seen being produced by magnetars, that's a pretty safe battery.
Gasoline + LOX beats TNT on energy density per unit mass <i>and</i> per unit volume, no?
There's a reason that kerosene+h2o2 is a classic rocket fuel, and TNT is not.
It's usually kerosene + O2, not H2O2. But H2 + O2 is another classic liquid rocket fuel that has higher specific energy (energy per mass), but lower energy density (energy per volume) than kerosene, and is used mostly as a 2nd stage fuel (where mass is most important). Its lower density and the need to keep it very cool mean heavier tanks, and it's also hard to work with due to being such a small molecule that likes to leak, which causes development costs to be higher.
> The previous point is fair though. What is the energy density of gasoline in a stoichiometric mixture with its oxidizer and not already detonated? That's where TNT beats it by a long shot. The mixture with any chance of being stored would be some relatively low pressure gas.<p>eeeh that still doesn't matter really. Gasoline is safe(r) because it needs conditions to explode (spreading into area then ignition), instead of just detonator. Diesel even more so<p>A damaged gasoline tank that's near empty <i>might</i> explode but more likely it will just leak and start burning, and probably at that moment be still extinguishable. Explosives, well, you won't have time to blink.<p>Batteries ? Zero chance to extinguish, gonna let it burn thru. THAT is the problem
Air is usually quite available though.
That's a huge assumption that won't always be the case though. A gasoline tank with a small hole in it is a lot safer than a liquid-electrolyte battery with a hole in it.
Energy <i>capacity</i> vs. energy <i>release rate</i>, or <i>energy</i> vs. <i>power</i>, tends to follow an inverse relationship, <i>at least within similar domains</i>.<p>The fuels which afford the highest rates of <i>storage</i> tend to release it <i>more slowly</i>. Chemical <i>explosives</i> typically have about 1/10 the <i>energy</i> storage capacity (by mass) of fuels, as several people have pointed out.<p>Similar relationships exist for other forms of energy storage. For electricity, fuel cells, chemical cells ("batteries"), flywheel / reaction storage, and capacitors tend to offer a trade-off between total storage capacity and reaction time. Capacitors can react at intra-phase rates (that is, within a single 60Hz power cycle), whilst batteries and flywheels can take longer to come online.<p>See for example: "Battery Parameters" <<a href="https://www.monolithicpower.com/en/learning/mpscholar/battery-management-systems/introduction-to-battery-technology/battery-parameters" rel="nofollow">https://www.monolithicpower.com/en/learning/mpscholar/batter...</a>>.
"Liquid gasoline does not have anywhere near the energy of TNT,"<p>Energy density of gasoline is approximately 44 to 45 megajoules per kilogram.<p>Energy density of TNT is approximately 4.184 megajoules per kilogram.
Gasoline, when in liquid form, is not mixed with oxygen and burns, releases energy slowly. In comparison with TNT which is both the fuel and oxidizing agent releases energy very fast, it has detonation velocity of 6,900 m/s.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_explosive_detonation_velocities" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_explosive_detonation_...</a><p>There is a way how to use the energy density of gasoline for explosive purposes, Thermobaric weapons.<p>"A fuel–air explosive (FAE) device consists of a container of fuel and two separate explosive charges. After the munition is dropped or fired, the first explosive charge bursts open the container at a predetermined height and disperses the fuel in a cloud that mixes with atmospheric oxygen (the size of the cloud varies with the size of the munition). The cloud of fuel flows around objects and into structures. The second charge then detonates the cloud and creates a massive blast wave."<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric_weapon" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric_weapon</a>
A snickers bar has nearly 5× TNT’s energy per kilogram—TNT merely has the habit of being extremely impatient about releasing it.
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One of the problems with gasoline is its explosive nature, which the fuel storage and delivery system of a car attempts to mitigate. It has a better profile for burning off than a battery though since it will spill out and burn away from the vehicle.
Gasoline isn't that explosive. You can shoot up a gas tank and it will just burn. What you see on TV is movie magic. Gasoline vapor can explode, but you need the right air to fuel ratio and a spark.
Uh… gasoline has a super high vapor pressure. If you start out at the wrong ratio, it does what it can to make that ratio right.<p>I’ve seen a few gasoline fires that start by burning, and then much more rapidly expressing potential.
Requires a good mix though. The parent is still correct.
Mythbusters spent a long time trying to get cars to blow up in a dramatic hollywood fashion in various episodes and determined that under most conditions it wouldn't happen.<p>They did get it to happen, they just had to try really hard.<p>In most accidents the gas tank will not blow up.
"Fast X: why cars don’t really explode when they crash"<p>"Petrol and diesel can only explode when under pressure and mixed with air and in the case of petrol, have a small amount of energy added in the form of a spark or a flame. Engines pressurise the fuel/air mixture in the cylinder and so produce small, confined explosions which turn a crankshaft and drive the wheels."<p>"When cars are involved in collisions, fuel lines are often torn and petrol leaks out onto a hot engine. Liquid petrol can catch fire in the presence of air. But it can’t explode because it’s not under pressure and is in the liquid phase rather than a vapour."<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/fast-x-why-cars-dont-really-explode-when-they-crash-205068" rel="nofollow">https://theconversation.com/fast-x-why-cars-dont-really-expl...</a>
> Gasoline ... it's not a "bomb"<p>My teen years would beg to differ, when some neighborhood friends and I decided to experiment with gas and bleach. The neighborhood residents, fire department and local police also had an opinion, too. (We all got into BIG trouble. Definitely one of the dumber things I did as a teen.)
Bleach? What does that do?<p>My high-school crowd stopped just short of building a multistage FAE device. I left early for college and everybody else was short of cash, and that was the end of our neighborhood R&D program. All pre-9/11, needless to say. It's a lot less fun when the possible punishment goes from detention at lunch to waterboarding in Gitmo.
We used to take a half-full can of gas, then get a ping pong ball, drill a hole in it, fill it with bleach, then put tape over the hole. Drop the ping pong ball in the gas can, screw the lid on really tight, then wait. It used to take about 10 minutes for the gas to eat its way into the ping pong ball, but when it did, and the bleach mixed with the gas... boom! The scary part is only worked, maybe, half the time. So there would be cans of gas/bleach just sitting in a field, waiting to explode or release really harmful chems into the air. We were kids, young and stupid.
Poorly stored gasoline can spontaneously combust, though. So more like a firebomb.
No it can't. To combust it needs ~ 500F. If you left it out uncovered in the open and allowed the it to vaporize with a spark nearby, it might explode, but thats not spontaneous combustion. Gasoline sitting in a sealed container wont spontaneously combust.
Gasoline doesn't do that. Perhaps you're thinking of the following?<p>What it does do is slowly polymerize, becoming useless as an ICE fuel in time, typically in a year or two. This is why backup generators should run on propane, which has no degradation mechanism.
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Some heavier elements have hilariously high energy densities and aren't bombs (on their own), but the catch is the energy release is a trickle. Point is it's not an automatic follow that high density = high discharge.
LiFePO4 batteries are close to the dangerous lithium ion, but they're not even close to bombs. You can cut one in half or throw it in a fire (I think) and it doesn't explode.
Have a look at Electric impedance spectroscopy- <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dielectric_spectroscopy" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dielectric_spectroscopy</a><p>Theres a handfull of Tier 1 BMS chips that support it already. though, half of them are meant for traction/EV packs instead of BESS.
Making it require air (or some other kinetic / transport process) would help with that. E.g. zinc-air battery.
The past 20 years have made lithium ion 2-3x more dense, both because of some chemistry changes and because of better pack level design.<p>And it's still improving at about 5% per year.
Generally a >10x is easily achievable if we use a chemical reaction that uses oxygen - which we do not have to carry around, that's why things like hydrogen fuel cells have a theoretical energy/mass that we can pretty much assume is best possible with a chemical reaction.<p>Unfortunately the problems with hydrogen storage and the fuel cells have prevented them from really taking off.
I don't think 10x density is possible without getting into nuclear, at least not with the chemistries we know of today, everything at a certain point becomes an explosive.<p>Speaking of nuclear, getting tons of the material that powers mars rovers and putting them in every home would generate enough power for decades... At the cost of being able to build a nuclear bomb in a garage.
The next revolution will be small scale generation. Fuel cells, extremely efficient cheap solar, even smaller modular reactors, etc.<p>I live in western Pennsylvania and have both natural gas and electric service, a roof and 1/3 acre of land to utilize. I would love to get rid of at least one of my utility bills and I’m becoming more interested in decoupling from the electric grid than natural gas service. I dream of a future where competition comes to monopoly utilities by way of direct competition with each other as there is a not so far off future where I can utilize solar, batteries and a natural gas fuel cell to cut ties with my Electric Utility. If that kind of competition can exist then the game is on for those utilities to start fighting for customers.
With modern heat pumps and induction stoves getting off of natural gas is fairly easy for most people and saves money in the long run. Meanwhile the grid is switching to renewables so getting off gas is your best investment. You can get of electric too, but on your 1/3rd acre that probably means significant lifestyle compromises - I will be impressed if you are willing to live with them.
Batteries are cheap enough to build (using a commercial installer completely kills the economics, because you're paying five to ten times the actual cost in the US) a reasonable size personal battery bank (~100+ kwh), paired with some overkill solar, to totally replace the grid in a lot of cases. GP isn't limited to rooftop solar with 1/3rd an acre, so they can do it quite cheap if they want.
> love to get rid of at least one of my utility bills<p>Some places don't allow going off-grid. They force everyone in neighbourhood to pay for gas and/or electricity infrastructure even if you're not using it.<p>So many people have gone offgrid solar in Pakistan that it is causing severe issues for their electricity market and existing infrastructure.
The problem with the stuff that powers mars rovers (RTG) is that gives off constant power. If your RTG gives off 100W, you will always get 100W, no more, no less, until it progressively decays on the scale of decades. You can't even turn it off.<p>The energy density is great, but the power density is really bad. For most applications, you still want a battery in addition to the RTG.<p>I don't know how easy it is to make a nuclear bomb from them, it is not the right isotope. You can probably make a nuclear exploding thing, like a dirty bomb, but not the nuclear bombs we know.
The hard part of enrichment is getting to around 20%, after that it actually becomes easier. They're slow-decay isotopes yes, but I am fairly sure you can build a multi-stage device to create a superheated plasma to release all that energy in a fraction of a second since they are capable of chain reactions and it is largely dictated by heat.<p>Last time I looked into this was 5 years ago so my memory is a bit fuzzy, take it with a grain of salt.<p>And yah, batteries would still be needed to even out the load, but it is extremely predictable and can be offset with preheating water and other things during valleys of usage, also those rovers actually have 500w of power!
It is actually the opposite, RTGs use plutonium-238, which is much more radioactive than the plutonium-239 used in bombs. And it is a problem because it will blow up before you can assemble enough of it to make a big nuclear explosion. In addition, it is not as fissile as plutonium-239.<p>I don't know about production, it is a hypothetical and I just assumed you had a bunch of plutonium-238 available, but as I understand it, rather than being an enrichment problem as with uranium-235/238, it is just not made using the same process as plutonium-239 to begin with.
I seem to remember recent advances in TMSR research and construction. Those tend to e much safer and have safer byproducts than uranium or plutonium fueled water-cooled reactors.
In term of dual use nuclear seems culturally radically different from everything else, wondering why.
Agreed, but I think people can imagine and companies are very motivated: powertools, phones, laptops, watches, backup UPS, cars, hospital equipment... there's high demand for durable, long-lasting batteries. I think the research is there, it's just complex chemistry. We'll get there. Impressive to see the progress in EV batteries and they've actually turned out to be more durable than first feared.
I think, apart from finding better Batteries altoghether, we should build multi-tier batteries inspired by biology.
Humans have bloodsugar, sugar in the Liver and then fat. All of them have their respective properties with availability and amount. This way, engineering tradeoffs could be allocated much more fine grained.
For example, a while ago I read about a startup building an energy storage where they heat up large amounts of sand to store the surplus of renewables. This could serve analogous to the fat in humans.
CATL is kinda doing that for EVs. They're making battery packs that are a blend of sodium-ion and lithium-ion.<p>Sodium-ion isn't as energy dense as lithium-ion and it has a slightly smaller power efficiency, but it's a lot cheaper, has better cold resistance, and can deliver more power at low states of charge.<p>Use the two together and the thinking is you can get a sweet spot that performs better across a wider range of conditions your cars are likely to experience.
Biological power is marvelous, but really inefficient. All that sugar and fat in entire human body only generates 50-150 Watts.
Humans do that because we're big and extra complicated. The closest analogue is probably a hybrid car, though ideally you'd want one that can create synthetic fuel from its battery. But I suspect cellphones are properly analogous to e.g. bacteria that have much simpler energy storage.
I look to a future of regularly servicing the immune system of my battery.
I think I've heard of sodium, lithium hybrids. But that's only 2, what's the fat? Gasoline, LPG hybrid? Shit gets expensive fast. Probably 2x cost of just a sodium or ion EV? The human body is too amazing.
sorry in advance , but my POV is .<p>Most of the things that we copy directly from humans do not work in terms of robustness.<p>Its like instead of harddrive use human DNA to store the data for 3T years,but no-one is mentioning the bandwidth speed here(which is the most important thing) etc,<p>I know it has some usecases.Also "one spoon butter is more energy dense than a battery"<p>but how we are gonna use butter(I dont know enough bio) but it is way harder to convert energy .
The good news is that humans already exist, so you can already use them. It will give them something to do with AI replacing them elsewhere.<p>You might not like the efficiency of that type of battery, though.
I think people can imagine lighter cars and laptops and things. Is there something bizarre that’s unlocked like battery powered space launches or something?
High density batteries allows us to have dramatically cheaper electricity. Think of it like this, what happens when electricity is 1/10th the cost? Beyond what others have pointed out (electric airplanes, cars that drive thousands of miles), costs for everything would drop as energy is a core driver of it in every good you consume. If you can pull energy where it's very cheaply available and store/transport it anywhere the world millions of lives would be saved. For example;<p>If energy is cheaper than the price of water you can pull water out of thin air (dehumidifiers).<p>If energy is cheaper you can grow food in areas you normally couldn't.<p>When you can transport anything for cheap you can move food to areas that are vulnerable to food insecurity.<p>If you can store energy at large scale you can nearly eliminate grid failures, savings lives in the summer and winter.<p>Costs for transporting food would go down significantly, imagine groceries being 10-15% cheaper.<p>Assuming airlines have competitive pressure you could expect plane flight costs to drop 20-30% improving everyone's mobility.
Energy density doesn't matter for electricity since the storage batteries don't move and there is plenty of space for them. Cost per energy stored is what matters. Density is important for transportation especially planes.<p>Sodium ion batteries have worse energy density than lithium ion but they have potential to be cheaper and more reliable. Iron air batteries have poor round trip efficiency but could be even cheaper.
Batteries are not power sources, but storage. The energy still has to come from somewhere, and power generation won't magically become 10x cheaper overnight. No matter how cheap battery storage becomes.<p>But it IS crucial for removing bottlenecks & replace fossil fuels.
Imagine for a moment that batteries with decent shelf lives are free.<p>You build a power plant on a geothermal vent in Iceland. The electricity it produces is plentiful and cheap. You run it full tilt charging batteries.<p>You ship those batteries to wherever you need cheap power, and send them back empty. This works with hydro, wind, solar, ...<p>Batteries do drive down energy costs because even ignoring transmission lines, they let you move energy in both space and time, pushing all energy costs towards the cost of the cheapest means of generation on its best day.
Aviation, drones with hours+ flight range, more solar power usage as storage gets easier/cheaper, phones that last more than a day, robots with actually useful battery life, smaller IoT devices. A lot of current tech is severely limited by battery capacity.
Electric long distance passenger planes. Possibly requiring the help of EMALs.<p>Electric long distance container ships.<p>Useful portable laser, coil- and rail- guns.<p>Even longer range drones.
What point is there in gasoline if we can get better energy storage in batteries?
How is billions every year on R&D not enough, especially when you measure consistent improvement year over year in the technology?<p>10x energy dense does not mean 10x safer. Gasoline is still widely used because it is considered one of the safest options around!<p>The problem is more nuanced than just "let's do all the battery density"
The article says $4B was put into solid state research/companies as of 2025 in the US alone. Seems like they are working on it
maybe, but not enough.<p>but if there is level 1 to 10 and the chips are level 10, from transistor to today.<p>the battery would be level 2-3 .
if this continues the battery cant keep up with more advance tech,where energy density matters like flying cars,BCI etc .<p>like people are selling two same products to the same person(same time), because the battery life is bad.
It should be relatively straightforward to imagine — we already have that in gasoline-powered internal combustion engines.<p>The Watt-hours per kilogram of good Lithium Ion batteries is around 250-280 Wh/Kg; for Lithium Iron Phosphate it's about 180 Wh/kg, and for Sodium-Ion about 170 Wh/Kg.<p>The raw energy in gasoline is about 12,300 Wh/Kg but automobile internal combustion engines get only about 20-30% efficiency yielding about 2500-3600 Wh/Kg. For aviation piston engines it is a bit better at 25-30$ so 3000-3600 Wh/kg.<p>So, the batteries, instead of being 10-12X the weight of the gasoline for the same net driving/flying range, could weigh about the same as the gasoline. So, a typical car with maybe a 16 gallon tank and 30 miles per gallon fills up with 128 pounds (58 kg) of gasoline to get 480 miles of range. The Li-Ion battery for that range would weigh something like 1300 Lbs (590 kg). That is a substantial additional weight for a car that could be 2800-3800 Lbs in ICE configuration, so 35-45% added weight (a bit less because of savings on the ICE engine, etc). This requires everything else to also be heavier, from the structural frame, the suspension system, and even the wheels and tires (which is also unsprung weight, further impairing performance).<p>With a 130Lb/60kg battery instead, and saving the weight of the ICE engine and fuel system, the overall car design could go much more lightweight, regaining a lot of performance and range, all while gaining the huge torque of electric motors.<p>In aviation, a battery systems of that weight would enable all-electric aviation to go from small performance niches to the default for general aviation.<p>So yes, it would be a HUGE benefit to achieve 10X energy density batteries, and we do have reference points for people to imagine it.
> With a 130Lb/60kg battery instead, and saving the weight of the ICE engine and fuel system, the overall car design could go much more lightweight, regaining a lot of performance and range, all while gaining the huge torque of electric motors.<p>I think you're <i>underselling</i> it, even. A typical like-for-like modern EV is only marginally heavier than the ICE equivalent. If we were able to drop the weight of the battery by a thousand pounds, cars would be lighter than they have been in decades while retaining all the modern safety and convenience features we've come to expect. And if density improved along with weight, we could make EVs with the same form factor as today but with over a thousand miles of range. Not that we need that, but it is just as a tiny example of how mind boggling the game change would be.<p>As it is I've only recently internalized the notion that the most powerful electric tools are battery powered (what can I say, I grew up when rechargeable batteries were NiCad and they basically sucked). And it will just get better and better as time goes on.
> we could make EVs with the same form factor as today but with over a thousand miles of range. Not that we need that<p>I think this is the way to go. For most people (you can never please everyone) 1000 miles is enough to cover a full day car trip.<p>Then 8 hours of charge time while you sleep.<p>Charging while you sleep requires more distributed, lower power infrastructure compared to a 10 berth service station trying to juice cars in 5 minutes as seems to be commonly touted. I haven't run the numbers but juicing 10 cars in 5 minutes has to require significant electrical infrastructure!<p>Side bonus: never having to go to a service station.
> juicing 10 cars in 5 minutes has to require significant electrical infrastructure!<p>I believe it is becoming fairly common to use batteries as a buffer at fast chargers. The demand charges for bursting megawatts of power from the grid are apparently really steep, so it makes sense to put in a big battery and steadily draw a lower amount of power and then just charge cars from the battery.
Some people might need that range. If you cannot charge at home and you don't have good public charging infrastructure then you might want enough range so you only have to deal with charging once or twice a month.
Yes, underselling a bit for sure! I didn't even want to get into the optimizations available if cars were really designed for lightweight when the entire motors+battery is only 100-150kg, and the battery can be low and centered.<p>We could go for performance, trading off some battery for four inboard motors (fully sprung weight) with half-shafts and CV joints, steel space-frame chassis and carbon fiber body — it could put many supercars to shame.<p>Going for range, same light-weighting, but less powerful motors and adding more battery, the range could get silly long at something like 1000 miles for 100kg of battery.<p>For the kind of long range options another poster mentioned, with 100 kg for 1000 miles, a few 10-kilo swappable battery packs could make it easy to trade luggage space for range, or bring them to a charge station only occasionally, but not lug them around for most in-town trips.<p>No question, we could go wild!
An EV doesn't need to have 480 miles of range. Nobody is driving that distance daily. 98% of trips are under 50 miles. Only 0.8% of the trips are over 100 miles!<p>Also, EVs use regenerative braking. That should help a little bit.<p>EVs should be built with 100 - 150 mile range. All families with 2 cars can immediately switch one of their cars to a daily driver EV and the other vehicle is a minivan. There are lots and lots of people for whom an EV works perfectly well and if they need to go longer, US has a robust rental car industry. What would help is to let people charge anywhere they park. All workplaces should offer free charging, and companies can negotiate to get paid for charging their employees cars. The price of electricity goes negative because of lack of demand, and this is something that they can offer to the grid, demand as a service.
> EVs should be built with 100 - 150 mile range. [..] if they need to go longer, US has a robust rental car industry<p>As an EV owner myself, no. Absolutely not.<p>The reason is simple: The <i>mere existence</i> of low-range EVs <i>hurts overall EV adoption</i>, because people aren't going to rent a car just for a road trip. You're talking about adding $100+ per day on what's supposed to be a cheaper method of travel compared to flying.<p>ICE-holes don't think critically. They don't care that long range EVs exist. They'll just see one that only gets 100-150 miles of range and go "See? EVs have short range. They're not appropriate for road trips. That's why I'll never get one.", despite plenty of 250+ mile options.<p>Now, I suppose you could argue that this type of person would simply <i>never</i> get an EV and would just come up with a different reason, and you'd probably be right. But the general point still remains: People want a car that satisfies ALL their needs and won't settle for something that works "only" 98% of the time.
Not only that, but with a longer range, you have more flexibility in planning recharging. It may take more time to top up from 50 km left to 500 km, but you have more flexibility about when to do it. Something that needs a daily charge is going to be interfering with your schedule.
Exactly.<p>Having only a 100 mile range is plenty for your daily driving, but if you can't charge at home, it becomes very disruptive.<p>Short range EVs typically only support J-1772 which only charges at up to 19.2 kW, and many cars only even support 11.5 kW. You'll be charging for at least an hour.<p>At least with a 300 mile range, <i>most</i> people could get away with charging for just 20 minutes/week.
"The reason is simple: The mere existence of low-range EVs hurts overall EV adoption, because people aren't going to rent a car just for a road trip. You're talking about adding $100+ per day on what's supposed to be a cheaper method of travel compared to flying."<p>Just wait for people to be priced out of ICE cars. EV's should be and will be significantly cheaper to buy and manufacture.
>> 98% of trips are under 50 miles. Only 0.8% of the trips are over 100 miles!<p>Sure, ubiquitous charging will be enormously helpful to adoption, and universal rapid charging also. But the reality is it doesn't yet exist.<p>Until then, just because long trips are lower frequency does not mean they are less important or can be ignored as a requirement, particularly if a person/family has only one vehicle.<p>The long trips may be the most important trips, maybe to see family only a few times a year...<p>Plus, even though you might be able to rationalized away the long range requirement, generations of people are accustomed to cars yielding 4-600 miles between fill-ups. It is not only the ability to drive on a long trip, but also the need to only fill up your car every 1-3 weeks instead of every day or two.<p>Desirable Range between fill-ups is also a human-factors issue. You want the range of the car to be at least, indeed around, the distance people can drive in a single stint. If you can drive 350 miles in 4.5 hours, and your car gets that distance, you're probably OK resting and filling up. If it goes 1000 miles between fill-ups, that isn't a big advantage. But if the car makes you stop before you feel you need to stop, that will feel like the car is not good enough for your needs.<p>So, sure, if we suddenly got 2500 Wh/kg batteries and could easily make cars with a 1000-mile range, and manufacturers offered 1000, 500, and 100-mile ranges, I'd expect the most sales to be in the 500-mile units.
If we stop considering ICE , its still a whole new world would created by smaller batteries .<p>could be some bad examples(right now in mind),correct me .
but smart ring , BCI systems is not possible with oil.
Not all batteries need to be mobile.<p>A 1 GWh grid scale battery takes up about 4 hectares at the moment. The UKs total energy use is about 2,000GWh a day.<p>It would need to use 240,000 hectares to store all energy requirements (eletric, transport, heating etc) for a whole month. Even in extreme cold conditions it would last a couple of weeks.<p>That would be about 1% of land use.
Storing a month of energy use doesn't make any sense when it comes to renewable grids. Since you don't have to mine/extract and transport an inventory, far far less storage is required.
A month is probably excessive, but there are large regions of the world where its not uncommon for both solar and wind power to be running at <5% for multiple weeks in a row.
There's an engineering tradeoff between having excess generation capacity, for that seasonal minimum, and having more storage. The cost optimal decision on that tradeoff will be determined by the ratio of excess generation cost and storage cost for rarely-used storage.<p>Until that ratio falls by at least 3x to 5x in favor of batteries being cheaper than generation, extra generation is going to be the way that grids actually get built out. Batteries and generation are both falling in cost fairly quickly, but generation still has the overall edge in learning rate. Cost decreases won't bottom out for at least a decade, because there's been no slow down yet, so I wouldn't expect this ratio to change for a minimum of 20 years, which means that pretty much a full energy system interchange will have happened by the time that this price ration changes.<p>So there's at least a few assumptions about the current industry and it's future development that underlie my assertion that a month of storage makes no sense, but I'm confident enough that I'd place money on the bet, and there's very very few things I'd bet on.<p>Edit: one thing that would break my assumption is the industrial development of storage that's super cheap for once-per-year usage. Most storage now needs to be cycled about 300x per year to make economic sense. "Long duration" storage is actually better defined as "economical storage at few battery cycles per year". There's nothing like that in the research hopper, but that doesn't mean it couldn't appear tomorrow and be deployed within a decade. Something that only gets used once or twice a year has to be <i>dirt</i> cheap, even if you could get 10x or 20x normal electricity prices for it.
Which just emphasises the point -- density and thus land use isn't really a major concern<p>You could store an <i>entire years</i> worth of energy (not just electricity) for a fairly dense country like the UK and still have 95% of the country left for other usage.
Definitely! However I frequently encounter people on energy discussion forums that assume that we need 2-3 months of battery storage, perhaps because they see natural gas or other storage and assume that batteries need exactly the same thing, so I'm perhaps overly eager to respond to claims about month-long battery storage.<p>I had previously been hopeful that battery storage would allow more shared used of land, but the fire risks of batteries have been pretty severe. And since the land usage requirements are fairly low, there's no need to enhance the risk by putting batteries, say, in enclosed spaces of former natural gas generation facilities [1].<p>I'm hopeful that we'll see a lot more storage, say a shipping container's worth, at the end of distribution feeders, which helps suck up residential solar with minimal resources, but solving the problem of "who pays for the benefits for all" when the utility is incentivized to keep grid costs high means that nobody is knocking down doors to make that happen...<p>[1] <a href="https://www.utilitydive.com/news/moss-landing-fire-battery-storage-industry-lithium/741283/" rel="nofollow">https://www.utilitydive.com/news/moss-landing-fire-battery-s...</a>
You'd have to compare the fire risk of a high density battery vs a substation.<p>But the beauty of battery and solar/wind is that it can be far more distributed. This of course means far harder to take out -- a wildfire near a nuclear power plant could knock out 3GW of capacity, a wildfire near one of 50x 60MW solar plants would knock out 60MW of capacity.<p>Solar might not be the only solution in a country at a high latitude, but for the contiguous 48 states even in winter solar produces more than enough power per hectare that when coupled with an appropriately sized battery can generate the entire needs.<p>1 hectare in sourthern california generates about 3.5MWh a day in December. In North Dakota about 1.5MWh a day, battery size for that is a tiny amount of land.<p>To generate enough solar energy to power the entire US electric needs, on a bad winter day, the US would have to have 60,000 square km of solar+battery.<p>The US currently uses 150,000 sqkm just to grow corn ethanol<p>You'd need a decent HVDC connectors from the southern states to the more demanding northern ones.<p>But even factoring in current prices of wind, solar, battery, and grid, it would only cost somewhere in the $6T range. Over 30 years that's $200b a year, or about $80 per MWh<p>New nuclear is about $150 per MWh before decommissioning costs
Doesn't that depend on the sources of energy though? Pretty much constant short and mid term supply like geothermal, hydro, tides, etc vs unpredictable or variable in the short term like wind and solar.<p>As a society relying on solar, I'd want to have more of a buffer than one that relies on hydro.
you don't want industry going down coz there has been bad weather for few days in a row. And other alternative is burning gas.<p>If we want to get out of fossils, we will have to store for longer. Or built a ton of atomics
Even if it doesn't work for the UK. Australia could do this easily.<p>Proportionally less population, less snow covered territory and general coldness = easier requirements.<p>Land coverage? To say Australia has plenty of land is an understatement.<p>To amp up(excuse the pun) this mental exercise (don't mind the practicalities of building it!) a bit:<p>If efficient super-long distance power transmission was a thing, we could have batteries and solar for the whole world and locate it where few people would ever see it.<p>If placed into a single contiguous blob though, I imagine the solar panels would cause their own microclimate by sucking 20% of the suns energy out of many hectares/acres of land... so that may be a problem.
Instead of batteries, why not green hydrogen or green ammonia? Ammonia is needed for fertilizer, storage/logistics are a solved problem. Emergency plants around that can use ammonia as fuel can solve the dunkelflaute problem?<p>Another option is natural gas peaker plant on a ship/barge. Have a fleet of these around that can dock at any port and supply electrictity. A peaker powership is essentially a mobile, marine-class version of an onshore peaking power plant.<p>What would be best long term if we have a few hundred - few thousand nuclear ships/subs that can go anywhere and supply power.<p>It can be the sharing economy for clean power at scale.
Capital costs and round-trip efficiency are the primary reasons. Even at constant utilization, electrolyzers are expensive enough that it's hard to replace fossil-fuel generated hydrogen at the moment.<p>Once you 2x-10x the cost of electrolyzer capital by only using it rarely, more generation and throwing away the excess electricity often makes the most sense.<p>Nuclear ships are similarly super super expensive. The only reason we build them at all are for their unique and wonderful operational capabilities, as in not needing to surface or refuel. Using nuclear ships for power would so expensive that we may need to up our GDPs 10x before such wasteful use makes sense. (Though I'm hoping we do reach such future luxurious lifestyles!)
> Another option is natural gas peaker plant on a ship/barge. Have a fleet of these around that can dock at any port and supply electrictity. A peaker powership is essentially a mobile, marine-class version of an onshore peaking power plant.<p>Why would you want this?
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This article seems to confuse lithium-ion and lithium-metal batteries. Lithium-ion batteries intercalcate lithium ions into pre-existing electrodes and that doesn't form dendrites. Dendrites are a phenomenon of lithium-metal batteries, where lithium ions tend to be reduced to metal at the tips of the dendrites.<p>You can get lithium metal forming on lithium-ion electrodes, which could go on to form dendrites, but the failure there is the metal formation, not the dendrite formation.
Definitely being unreasonable, but that's one of the reasons I don't have an electric vehicle yet. I'm paranoid of that thing catching fire in my garage. Which is ironic since one of my random electronic devices with li-batteries probably could catch fire regardless in my house. At least with a gasoline it seems we are better equipped to deal witg such fires.<p>Overall my end goal is to have a seperate storage for the e-vehicle.. Plus it be easier to slap some solar on that structure.
I understand the paranoia, but it is definitely emotional reasoning overriding facts. Gasoline powered vehicles are vastly more likely to go up in flames. Even when you adjust for age and mileage. Even if you only look at cars that spontaneously ignited when parked. The wiring in a gas car is exposed to a tremendous amount of heat and vibration.<p>EVs spontaneously igniting are newsworthy partly because politics, but also because it is novel. Gas vehicles burn daily, the odds are pretty good that a couple are burning somewhere right now.
fun fact: there is already a Sodium-battery with a solid electrolyte - but the operating temperature is above 300^C [0] [0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium%E2%80%93sulfur_battery" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium%E2%80%93sulfur_battery</a>
It seems the solid state battery is the long awaited answer to ev development. Where we will see range of 1000km and super fast charging and reasonable battery replacement costs. Currently in the market with battery failures it is cheaper to buy another ev rather than replace the battery.
YouTuber "NightHawkInLight" just made a flow battery from common materials. Why would I want a solid state battery when I could have a battery whose capacity expands just by duct taping plastic water barrels to it?
For storage at the level of a home or a grid-level battery, absolutely.<p>Li-Ion is dominating because of the amount of inertia and economies of scale it has. But if we assumed equal amounts of R&D and investment you'd expect a future of solid state batteries for mobile applications and flow batteries for stationary applications
What's the energy density for that?
Something that works doesn't mean something is desirable
I find the fact that the military here is setup orthogonal to the civilian sector fascinating- for the military- a unified energy carrier - that can be everything, battery, fuel, explosives is the golden grail.
Bonuspoints if you can squeeze that liquid through a fuel cell.<p>So, Methanol + doseable hydrogenperoxide or something similar it is. If it can drive your drone, power its onboard compute and fire a gun or convert into explosives at the end of the journey, thats pure victory.<p>Bonuspoints again, if you can standardize your whole setup into machine assembleable legobricks, creating changeable drones on demand, that can iterate in hours through, where normal military industrial complexes take months, years, generations. Every drone, every rocket just a stack of coke cans, foil-wrapped, going for a walk, a fly.
Aren't sodium batteries close to production and a lot cheaper and safer?<p>Ambri was working on large scale batteries which seemed like a pretty good idea (looks like they ran out of money): <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambri_Inc" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambri_Inc</a>.
Depends on the application - each battery technology has a trade-off between energy density, cost, lifetime, safety, scalability, etc. Sodium may have a place in grid storage, although iron-air is being deployed today and is even cheaper and safer (but poor energy density, which doesn't matter much for grid storage - <a href="https://formenergy.com/technology/battery-technology/" rel="nofollow">https://formenergy.com/technology/battery-technology/</a>)
Sodium ion batteries are already being mass produced in China. CATL actually just started producing their second generation sodium ion batteries. In the US, Peak energy is doing storage solutions based on sodium ion.<p>Anyway, you are comparing apples and oranges. While solid state sodium ion might become a thing at some point, it so far isn't. The lithium based solid state batteries currently being readied by several battery companies for mass production around 2028 or so tend to have up to 500-600 wh/kg densities. Sodium ion batteries are currently at or below 175 wh/kg typically. LFP is a bit better, and some high end NMC batteries might do 250ish wh/kg. That would be just the first generation solid state batteries. Densities might improve after that. The theoretical limit is a lot denser than that and there is a lot of money going into researching ways to do better than that.<p>Of course energy density is just one thing you might optimize for. Other properties you might look at are operating temperatures, amount of charge cycles the battery can handle before it degrades below 85% of its original capacity, the speed at which it can cycle, fire safety, cost, etc. Mostly sodium ion scores very well on all of this except density.<p>High energy density usually comes at a price. Both in dollars and in compromises with these other things. Think lower lifetime, more constrained temperature ranges, etc. Worth it if weight and volume are really constrained. Like in anything that flies.
Cheaper yes. Non-aqueous sodium ion batteries (which are most of them) are more dangerous than LiFePO4 though.
Tangential to the main article point but…<p>The energy density scatter plot is physically correct but misleading and everyone makes this mistake.<p>From an engineering point of view you have to use work delivered at the end of the drive train not fuel raw energy content.<p>When you do that lithium ion batteries compare more favorably to liquid fuels. That’s because the conversion path is more than 90% efficient. For ICE engines you’re starting with only 20-40% Carnot efficiency (depending on how good and in good shape the engine is) and then losing in the transmission and then losing more because ICE cars have more other gears and moving parts. Power to wheel is pretty terrible. Most of the energy from gasoline heats the air around the car.<p>This is also why you get outrageous sounding but accurate things like: an EV charged on 100% coal fired electricity emits less carbon than a typical gasoline car. The fact that coal is literal pure carbon fuel is made up for by the high thermal efficiency of a giant supercritical steam turbine vs a small piston engine. Coal burns real hot too (steeper thermal gradient). So more of the energy from coal ends up doing actual work vs heating the air. (Well directly heating the air I mean.)
Yes, electricity should be the only abstraction layer to deliver energy to end user. We can extract a lot more energy from fossil fuels in large scale plants and also continuously switch out dirtier fuels with clean energy.<p>For example, no need to build natural gas infrastructure to every home. Use induction stoves (or electric coil -- already 67% of homes). Heat pump water heater instead of gas. And heat pump for HVAC.<p>If all energy bills are consolidated as electricity (instead of gas, natural gas and electricity), most people would install solar on their rooftops, buy EVs, and save ~$1000/month on energy bills.
> We can extract a lot more energy from fossil fuels in large scale plants<p>This isn't true at all for natural gas. Burning it for heat in the home is much more efficient than burning it in a plant, converting it to electricity, transferring that electricity, then turning that electricity into heat.
The theoretical efficiency maximum for burning gas in a home is 100%. Most systems won't hit that because they need to vent waste gases, which carry some heat away.<p>Heat pumps are significantly more efficient than 100%. They can get to 500% efficiency. So no, it's definitely not more efficient to burn gas in a home. (To say nothing of the safety of running gas lines to every house.)
Depends, if you are turning that electricity into heat using a heat-pump you might win on most situations (maybe lose if the weather is really cold outside, unless you add geothermal loops, but then its a lot more expensive to make)
In addition the sibling comments (COP of heat pumps is 500%), air pollution in homes is worse than air pollution outside. If you don't have natural gas and burning fuel, it helps a lot. Not only is electricity cheaper and cleaner, but also healthier.
That is false. Heat pumps are more efficient than burning gas in a home even when the electricity came from burning gas.
But isn't it more advantageous to have the gas -> electricity conversion in a plant from an emissions point of view? You still have losses in the system when moving natural gas around from the source to individual homes too (leaks). In theory you don't, but in practice you do.
Can someone please explain why electrons also cannot go directly through the electrolyte just like Lithium ions? Footnote 1 skips explaining this. I tried asking ChatGPT, but it is not getting to a complete answer. It says things that just pushes the question into another form.
The Two Bit Da Vinci YouTube channel has a good video on solid state battery fundamentals and a deep dive into a battery company (ProLogium) that has demonstrated manufacturing at scale.<p><a href="https://youtu.be/xQFVIs4leig?si=iOOt5gg_2MJAIoFR" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/xQFVIs4leig?si=iOOt5gg_2MJAIoFR</a>
I'm not trying to build a solid-state battery...
> because the liquid electrolyte currently used in batteries is flammable, replacing it with a solid could make batteries safer and less susceptible to fire.<p>The problem is primarily that batteries are storing a lot of energy, which can be released when things go wrong. The electrolytes (technically, the solvents) typically don't ignite under 750°F or so, which makes them less flammable than a lot of other common materials, and far less of a concern than, say, the lithium metal.
Isn't the key difference that flammable solids have a limited reaction surface when they burn, whereas flammable liquids can be wildly unpredictable?
This isn't true for most lithium ion chemistries.<p>The liquid electrolyte is the thing that releases most energy when the battery burns, more than the anode and cathode. Some also have a very low self ignition temperature.
IIUC, the main problem with the current Li batteries is that the two plates can over time grow material that will 1) degrade performance; and 2) make it more likely to short circuit and catch fire. Similarly with electric car batteries after accidents where the battery is damaged, short circuits, and then catches fire.<p>So the main risk here would be the likelyhood of short circuiting under different failure scenarios.
The energy "stored" in the light oil electrolyte of a battery is >10x more than the electrical energy or the energy released by reacting lithium alone.<p>An 18650 battery weighs ~50g and stores ~10 watt-hours. 10 watt-hours is 8,604 calories, enough to heat 50g of water by 172 C or 310 F. The battery would not even burn without a liquid electrolyte to ignite.
I wonder about the youtube videos of someone driving a screwdriver through a battery pack.<p>Is that the electrical discharge, then the lithium going off, then the electrolytes?
When titles with rhetorical questions sound almost like dumb questions.
Manufacturing the batteries would probably benefit from solid state. The Panasonic battery plant in the exurbs of Kansas City, MO has had two evacuations this year from thermal issues related to lithium-ion battery production, including one yesterday morning. [0] [1]<p>[0]<a href="https://www.kmbc.com/article/lithium-ion-batteries-catch-fire-at-panasonics-de-soto-plant/73293745" rel="nofollow">https://www.kmbc.com/article/lithium-ion-batteries-catch-fir...</a><p>[1]<a href="https://www.kmbc.com/article/panasonic-plant-de-soto-evacuation-thermal-event/71219725" rel="nofollow">https://www.kmbc.com/article/panasonic-plant-de-soto-evacuat...</a>
Was Dendrite shorts the reason for Samsung failure?
have I misread or 3/4 of the article explained what a battery is and only final tiny part got to "short-circuiting dendrites don't happen without electrolite"?
Yeah I've made peace with this too
are dendrites why so many people are now burning down their apartment/complex charging their scooters<p>is LiFePo4 immune to dendrite shorts? Or do they happen just don't burn?
There are a number of reasons why lithium batteries may catastrophically fail and catch fire. Dendrite shorts is one, another reason is poor alignment of the layers during assembly, allowing for eventual shifting of layers leading to internal shorting. Another is conductive or sharp debris getting into the battery during manufacturing, and after a while the anode/cathode separator getting pierced by the debris. Lots of reasons!
dendrites are not really a significant problem in popular batteries. It's associated with lithium metal, vs lithium in normal batteries is in the form of salts. Solid state lets you use metal, which is much more energy dense since you don't need the salts.<p>The most common lithium battery failure mode is that you have a hole in the plastic separator between the +/- sheets inside the battery, which shorts and causes a hotspot that eventually starts a fire. Dendrites cause the short by growing across the gap. In normal batteries it is caused by a manufacturing defect. The outcome is pretty similar.
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