They are supposed to be a breakthrough.
Looks good but Aluminum-ion batteries run at 2 volts while giving us just over 2.5 times the energy density.
<yawn/>
All these new battery chemistries that never end up seeing the light of day have me rather jaded.
This and the new “Jesus battery” (quantum glass) are just the 2 latest.
I’ll believe it when I see it. Just call me Thomas…
My day job is battery research, and has been for 6 or 7 years now. I can say that there are lies, then there are lies in the battery industry. Nearly every breakthrough idea I’ve seen in the last 5yrs has fell on it’s face. Not necessarily always due to the function of the base chemistry (though usually), but then it’s a major issue of cost, scalability, or manufacturability. This nano-tech stuff is all super promising in a coin cell, but I’ll believe in it when I see 18650s or pouches rolling off a production line and still performing. Not many people understand the challenges of that second part. People in my lab, including myself, can make coin cells all day with novel electrodes or electrolytes or processes that work great in some way or another, but not many have a snowballs chance in hell at being commercially successful.
I’ll be hopeful and invested in alternatives to organic fluorinated electrolyte lithium based batteries, because one thing I’m sure of is that they are not the answer to the ‘green future’. The metals mining and limited recyclability of these cells is a serious environmental issue as is. Going all in on electrification right now is a major mistake.
Yeh, like mining of Li in… I think it was Nevada… was stopped dead in its tracks because someone found a patch of endangered buckwheat. :person_facepalming:
Meanwhile, China is scooping up all the Li it can carry away from Bolivia, because they could give 2 sheets about buckwheat and just want the pesos instead.
I'm a battery mooch patron, and he posts "exciting new" battery tech revelations every week, which I was excited about at first and now Realize that if they all or even half of them came to fruition, we would have 50 new battery technologies by next year. Probably unlikely.
I think battery tech is going nowhere though, unless a more profitable technology comes through to take its place.
Among the crazy ideas I heard lately…:
imagine a nuclear powered flashlight at some point in the future!
A long while back there was someone on CPF who sold machined ? aluminium with tritium spheres set into the front, essentially those are nuclear flashlights….
I believe the military also have ‘betalights’ which are a plastic equivalent.
i once watched a video about aliens, or maybe it was a tedx talk 
where the speaker said those who control energy, fuel and access to power (electric, fossil, or otherwise) control the world and everyone on it. It's true it tou think about where we are with electronics, vehicles, homes, and literally everything else. That being said, I'll take my diamond cased nuclear batteries please. But with a cycle life of 28,000 years, or even 9 years, I don't think large corporations or the government will ever let us consumers see them. Just think what would happen to their profits if we almost never had to buy batteries (or fuel for that matter)for anything.. and also, imagine what that technology (nuclear diamonds batteries.. lol) opens the door to. It would change the way we consume power forever. That'd be pretty awesome
Ok, I understand that ^ comment was a little.. wierd.. inapologize. I hate saying things like "the government and large corporations ". Almost immediately makes me feel like I'm a crazy conspiracy theorist. I'm not. I swear.
If you follow science news there is everyday multiple revolutionary new technologies that will change the world, its totally another thing for real world use and not a laboratory seeking investment fund for playing around with theoretical gadgets.
Don’t see how that would be a problem?
2x2v = 4v
Majority of “high end” flashlights currently use 3.7v batteries, 4v is close enough, and hey would give higher power for direct drive lol!
Most could probably even just drop in 2 18350 format Aluminum ion batteries in an 18650 flashlight and call it good!
pretty sure that was a title of a Tom Swift book…
that diamond battery can barely run a wristwatch
Thanks for giving an informed analysis about this article.
In reading it all you keep hearing is “Coin Cell performance, acts/charges like a capacitor” Ahh, OK that pretty much makes it a glorified capacitor, where is the scaled up real amperage draw specs. No, none to be had.
Sounded more like a sales pitch than a real product.
Cheers,
Keith
Sounds like Cold Fusion in 1989.
But breakthroughs do happen.
The day that came up I was a student. Our professor (experimental physics) needed five minutes to calculate that a fusion is night on impossible to happen at the voltages stated. No one at our university talked about it after that day.
—
I understand the hunt for better chemistries, but think storing energy in H is the safer bet for an electrical future. Less comfortable, less efficient, more expensive in building up the infrastructure, but once established worldwide it should be greener, taking all the energy produced, easily transported, cheaper in the end for the consumer.
we might get something or something this decade
they’ve been slowly but steadily increasing efficiency, plasma containment takes stupid amounts of energy
Maybe 30 years after the first unity success (same power in as out) we won’t need coal any more.
Also if we still needed nuclear power plants, we could always use thorium salt reactors instead of uranium. They have much reduced risk of meltdowns iirc.
I’m certain we will have new batteries too, afaik toyota are building a plant to ship solid state lithium-ion batteries by this or next year which means they’ve solved the issue of rechargeability with ceramic “elecrolyte” batteries. Though it’s not Goodenoughs new battery, it’s realistic, it will reduce the fire risk (and left over hydrofluoric acid in the street after a fire) and increase mAh.
If the right research gets funded I think we can only fuck it up by continuing with stuff like planed obsolescence.