One point I forgot to mention was the testing RheEnergise have done to show their new breakthrough doesn't significantly increase wear the turbines either! If you enjoyed this video, you're going to love the interactive courses from Brilliant! Use my link at brilliant.org/ziroth/ for 30 days FREE and 20% off a subscription!
@@brettmoore3194 good question, that might shrink the skin friction, but it won’t decrease the bulk viscosity, the friction from the liquid rubbing against the liquid. Any coating would be very expensive too and the concern that eventually it would flake off and then harm the turbines or be a danger to the environment.
@@justinmyers6737 I was surprised to hear in the video that friction wear on the turbine blades was not a problem. As to the load, remember, water will be stacked 2.5 times higher to create the same load. This benefits us because it can be used in a place where they is a much shorter hill resulting in the same load (not a higher load than the water).
I totally agree, they also don't quite show the reality of the problems it could be faced with though they touch on it.. separation.. while it doesn't seem like much in that small flask, would become a much bigger issue in a reservoir.... also, there is the local animal life
@@thiemokellner1893 Ideally you'd want to have the slurry be as closed in as possible so that evaporation and rainfall don't affect the viscosity / density that you're expecting the system to have. Making it watertight will keep animals away from it as well presumably
_raises hand_ Professor, my potential problem with this fluid isn't its weight, viscosity or temperature dependence; basic engineering can handle those. My problem is that we are dealing with suspended solids at extremely high pressures and harnessed via hard changes in momentum. This sounds very similar to the principles behind the cutting fluid used in waterjet tools to me. How abrasive is this fluid, and what measures can we put in place to ensure long-term durability and low maintenance costs, especially in the turbine? (Don't misunderstand, I'd love to see this tech mature, and we only get there by handling them critically.)
@@chrism.1131 That... doesn't answer my question at all. I'm not even sure what question you were answering. I want to know how fast the suspended solids in the fluid wear away at the turbine as it flows through at speed, and whether any additional repair costs are enough of a problem to question the tech's viability right now.
@@wolvenedge6214 "This sounds very similar to the principles behind the cutting fluid used in waterjet tools to me." Not quite. Typically, the agents used in waterjet cutters are extremely hard minerals. Garnet is very commonly used, with other, more expensive and harder additives used when needed. This works on the "something hard hitting something softer" principle of cutting. If the thickening agents are softer than the components in the system that the fluid will impact at high speed, there shouldn't be any additional cutting force applied. In fact, it may actually lesson the erosive effects of the water, as in any given volume of liquid that passes, a lower percentage of that volume would actually be water; the rest would be the softer thickening agents. I would be more concerned with how the thickeners would collect on the turbine/pump blades and cavities than with any additional erosive effects of added thickeners. Of course, all of this would/will need to be tested to get actual answers.
I'm more worried about leakage from the reservoir, if the fluid composition is 'a closely guarded secret.' I was worried for a bit that they'd consider using liquid mercury, and that's the direction this tech will naturally want to lean into, for mechanical efficiency. Liquid metal is *far* denser than water.
I assume the system would need to be enclosed. Evaporation, or extremal contaminants (rain), would surely throw off the balance of the fluid? I'll keep an eye out for updates on their developments 🙂
My prediction: This "invention" will turn out to be totally unworkable and is essentially a fraud. How can a patent be a secret? A patent is a patent disclosure. Either you disclose and get exclusive rights for a limited time or you keep it a secret and hope that the competition cannot duplicate your invention work.
Yeah that's how it should be in principle but nowadays any good patent lawyers will write it to be as vague as possible while still, by the slightest of technical margins, covering what you're actually doing. I highly doubt RheEnergise's idea will be commercially viable. Competing with _water_ for gravity-based energy storage automatically puts you at a huge disadvantage with respect to cost, toxicity, and phase separation. It sounds like they need to keep their whole fluid system sealed or at least covered, which is another big cost/complication.
@@economistfromhell4877 Less than 1 minute of research would have (possibly) taught you some humility: Trade secrets Coca-Cola's secret recipe is a trade secret that has been protected for over a century. Trade secrets are governed by state laws and do not expire like patents. Coca-Cola's decision not to patent their formula again after changing it is due to the fact that if they had, the formula would have become public knowledge once the patent expired.
@@economistfromhell4877 Trade secrets Coca-Cola's secret recipe is a trade secret that has been protected for over a century. Trade secrets are governed by state laws and do not expire like patents. Coca-Cola's decision not to patent their formula again after changing it is due to the fact that if they had, the formula would have become public knowledge once the patent expired.
Pumped hydro does not necessarily require mountains for a large elevation difference. The lower reservoir can be excavated underground, for instance in a disused mine. It could be a promising way for large capacity storage when combined with this new technology.
Self-admittedly newb on the topic of pumped hydro, this slurry "solution" seems to be looking to solve a problem where none exists. Specifically not using water means the entire reservoir x2 _must_ be created artificially (with megatons of concrete), and then megagallons of slurry must be made to fill them. No matter how "cheap" it is to make, water is much cheaper. Artificial reservoirs on the other hand are so expensive it may not even matter. This is all to solve the problem of the neighboring hill height? I've never heard this is THE problem with pumped hydro. Seems like this is a story about a patent (R19) and not a story about "waterless hydro". *meh* what am I missing?
If you can excavate a lower resovouire the size of a mid- sized town, several hectares in surface area and a couple hundred feet deep, at a reasonable cost, then sure go for it. Of course that's impossible unless you're drilling with hydrogen bombs, which is why no one is doing this.
One big issue I see with this is a "worst case" failure mode. With a regular dam you can always slowly release the contents to take pressure off until the dam can be fixed, but it is environmentally sound to just dump this into the environment?
@@Hamish_A Well that's true of any chemical process ever. But these are risks we know how to minimize and deal with. Since the bottom reservoir is big enough to contain the entire volume of fluid the system is using, a good design would be set up so any leaks would just naturally drain to the bottom reservoir. That would be a big step to making things safer.
There's something decent about hydro run by clean water. Clean energy systems must be developed in the interests of the environment. You know how to put me off this slurry idea.
1- The high-density fluid will require more energy to pump to the upper reservoir due to its greater mass. This is because the work done, or the energy required to move the fluid, is directly proportional to the mass of the fluid being lifted. 2- The higher mass and potentially greater viscosity of the fluid could lead to increased mechanical stress on pumps, turbines, and other infrastructure. This could result in more frequent maintenance or the need for more robust equipment. 3-The overall efficiency of the system might be impacted. While the energy density is higher, the additional energy required to pump the fluid could offset some of the benefits. It's crucial to ensure that the energy gained from the increased density outweighs the additional energy cost of pumping.
"The pipes would need to be thicker...". What a strange and imprecise word to use, immediately conjuring up thoughts of pipe wall thickness. 'Larger bore' would have expressed it better.
The English are weird. They speak of "small roads" when they mean narrow roads. And when something falls , it ends up on "the floor" instead of on the ground - even when the situation is outside of a human built structure. It seems they are losing the use of their own language. William Shakespeare is spinning ever faster in his grave.
even just saying "bigger pipes" would convey the idea of larger bore more accurately than "thicker pipes", since thickness generally does not apply to negative spaces within a container. even if "thinner" may work on stuff like pipes and straws, "thicker" simply does not convey its exact opposite in these cases. english is weird af.
"thicker pipes" put my attention to the subject of the video in a tailspin as well. I think I would have gone with wider or larger diameter pipes as well.
The fluid is derived from oi drilling mud, Barite-barium sulphate-is used both to increase drilling mu density and as an orally administered "milkshake" to improve GI x-ray contrast.
A saturated clay solution with a couple drops of dawn would accomplish the same. I got clay on my land that Ive mixed up and the water evaporated before the clay ever settled. No need to overcomplicate the thing.
We never get far into the comments before someone’s real life experience can answer the questions! I was stuck on bentonite, but you’re no doubt closer to their magic formula. Would require constant turbulence to maintain suspension and inflow to address evaporation (and treatment to keep ph from becoming corrosive). I like the idea, but it has some real engineering hurdles.
83% grid to grid efficiency is leaning into the pipe dream territory. 85% on production cycle is extremely good for a hydro, 65% is a lot to hope for during pump cycle, yielding an expected grid to grid closer to 55%. This is the one of several curses of pumped storage. Another is the ongoing need to maintain fluid quality, which with water or water based fluid requires inflow. If this system is to maintain its quality as a sealed fluid cycle, that requires covered ponds which limit potential size.
The moment he spoke "83% efficiency", my immediate reaction was "this is bullshit" . Also, totally agree with Mentality-Monster... its all about investment money...
This channel, along with a few other green-tech ones, is guilty of hyping the "this could change everything" PR releases without much or any good faith coverage of the common real world challenges that'd scrap a project like this; without an eco study at a specific site proving the "benign" part of the claim, this would not get approved even at a small scale. "Oh you tried it on a hill in Canada using 2 enclosed industrial containers and a hose? cute. Go play in your garage s'more or spend 6-7 figures and 6 months proving environmental "safety" of your dirty dirty water."
One big problem that I'm positive would arise, is the effect those solid particles are going to have on the inner walls of the piping and the blades of the turbines. It is very possible (I think certain) that the slurry is going to act as a liquid sand paper! Quickly sanding and filing away at the pipes and turbine blades. "Eating" them away. Clear water can have wearing effect on surfaces when the flow is fast, let alone a water with particles in it. this sounds like the liquid solutions they use in water jet cutters. I believe this project would hit a major roadblock if this issue isn't resolved.
Yes you want high density, but you also need low viscosity and low or zero toxicity. Low cost of the fluid is also helpful. If the water from the slurry evaporates, the viscosity will increase and water will have to be added, just like water based pumped storage. On the plus side, with water based pumped storage, people want to use it for recreation and that’s a security problem for the facility and a danger when people get in. One can’t assume that the public will understand the risks and stay out. I will watch the technology and see how well it works.
@@edwardlulofs444 the ingredients are a secret, but if it is largely just clay, or other inert stuff denser than water, not too much of a problem. Go for a mud bath in the slurry. Also water is pretty inexpensive to add to offset evaporation.
@@vylbird8014 true, tho he did mention it has other ingredients to help the particles stay in solution. Tho the density of clay is a bit too low to work on its own.
For a decent amount of power generation you need a huge water reservoir allowing for a large flow over a long period of time preferably with a large head. This slurry is about 2.5 times as dense as water. That means you only could reduce the amount of material by 2.5 times compared to a hydro plant (or reduce the head by 2.5 times). A head of 400m would now be 160m. At the SAME volume of the reservoir because you can either reduce head OR volume but not both if you want to keep the energy yield the same. So imagine the Nant de Drance being 160m above the Emosson lake instead of 400m but filled with this slurry instead of water.This is not a usefull energy storage application. It might work in very specific circumstances but for almost all practical purposes it is useless. Even if you could develop a slurry with a density 10x of water you'd still not be there. You'd have to have a slurry with 100 times the density of water to get anywhere close to an economically viable energy storage solution.
The biggest problem for Rheenergise is that there is nothing inherently novel about increasing the density of the pumped fluid. There's very low likelihood that the cost of heating that still very large amount of fluid is going to be offset by the reduced viscosity, which means their only claim to fame is selling drilling mud. If the approach is viable then anyone who can build a pumped hydro unit can easily replace these guys. And lets not forget that because your pumped fluid is a closed system you now need an upper and a lower retaining pond so that claim of less space probably won't happen.
2:22 the way they built that dam to completely hide all the machinery and with NO ROADS is a fascinating tale, there is another vid about it somewhere --- they did a magnificent job, just look at that thing!! Not a trace of artifice, except that bit of concrete wall
The problem with this concept is that the round trip estimates appear to relate to energy storage phase efficiency only. Not power generation. It does not appear to factor in the electrical conversion component via the hydro turbines. There you are loosing more efficiency again. Compare that to a battery that bypasses generation completely, because the power is already in the electrical form. Also you have additional maintenance costs for the turbine power generation system.
You’re correct about efficiency. Pumped storage is a couple of orders of magnitude cheaper to bring into production than sodium batteries for grid scale use, but probably won’t get above 55% efficiency grid to grid. I have no confidence in a “turbine friendly surfactant”. Earth based mineral density augmentations are all abrasive. But if these require a turbine bucket refacing once a year, that may be within reasonable operating parameters.
Lifted Weight Storage stores energy by lifting a heavy block up a mineshaft and retrieves the energy by lowering it back down. Optionally use multiple blocks. (Just don't drop any.) Lift Renewable Energy stores energy by pulling empty tanks down into deep water; seems safer than pumping fluid into an elevated reservoir that can release.
You forget that many of the pump hydro storage plants in the Alps also use a lot of natural influx from rain and snow that has to run away in a river. Sometimes they do not even have a large storage basin on the low side but use the river's water from a small basin to pump upwards. This is not a viable idea for many Alpine pump storage plants. The uprise of landscape protectors is sure. I am also interested in erosion in the engines. This can significantly increase with particles in the water. Some fifty years ago I was told that a Francis turbine crashed after some 700 hours due to quartz sand in the plant's water exactly two hours before the official opening ceremony with two state presidents and a lot of other high-ranked animals.
@@loganstewart6133 mud alone would have too low a density. It also has too much sand, sand is very hard and it would chew up the turbine in a very short order.
I am worried about its content, is it harmfull if it is spilled into the environment>? or seeps into the environment??? Poluting a massive water source, is a big concern!
Exactly my concern. Doesn't sound very eco friendly, if it was, they would say something like high clay content water. I cannot see how high density slurry could not be replicated by/engineered with other materials, so why the lack of transparency?
Isn't it basically just mud? Considering how harmful the majority of current power generation is(especially in the US) I don't think there's much harm in having slightly dangerous ways to store energy to improve the effectiveness of renewables.
There are a few chemical and mechanical ways to prevent it. For the application they are all going to be terrible in many ways but if you just need a small scale short term demonstration to get some investors spend their money then it can be done.
All pumped storage systems require more energy input from external sources than is produced when the liquid flows from higher to lower levels due to inefficiencies. But they do separate timing of production and use. My concern with this scheme is wildlife hazards (such as waterfowl), as well as the potential of polluting the land and water table in the area due to leaks, seeps, or eventual disrepair of the system. Does the fluid become a 'forever' non-biodegradable fluid pollutant, solving one problem (energy) but creating a worse one (environmental)?
At university, when we did a project on the topic of proving the infeasiblility of artificial pumped hydro, we used the example of a water tower. The gravitational potential energy stored in the average U.S. water tower at average height and volume, has enough potential energy to just barely meet the energy demands of a single U.S. home for one day. It really comes down to an optical illusion where some people look at a damed resovouire and ridiculously under estimate the mass of water that they contain. Building the resovouire, without natural geologic containment in place, is vault outside of the engineering abilities of today, or for that matter, within the next century, let alone doing that at a cost effective point. All forms of gravitational potential energy storage are fundamentally inadequate for electricity storage within the geological confines of most places. Chemical and thermal energy have much higher energy densities and probabilities of achieving cost effective energy storage
You can use CO2 gas as a medium to generate electricity pilot plants have been produced. A large CO2 reservoir and two gas compressors to circulate the system and it can be run at 60 percent efficient more than hydrocarbon fuels . Instead of making CO2 the enemy use it CO2 turbines are a lot smaller than traditional and uses less turbine stages .
The thing with gravity energy storage is it's terrible energy density. Pumped hydro makes this less of an issue provided you're using natural topography to create most of the two big reservoirs, and cheap, untreated water as your potential mass, .. most of the actual construction then just needs to be the pumping/power-station component. Using concrete and cranes, or designer fluids and larger pipes is a terrible idea as you then require a hug amount of engineered material relative to your energy stored.
The excessive wear of pumps that recirculate the liquid is one negative point. The contamination of the land mass under the reservoir is the other. It's a shame you have not addressed these much, as it would make the video much more objective. In example, after the Kahovska Dam was breached by russians, the reservoir quickly turned into a forested area. I can't say for sure, but fresh water that stayed there for decades must have had little negative impact on the chornozem underneath. On the other hand, imagine what would have happened if there was a constant flow of clay, or other substance, in amounts that would double the mass of the liquid. Not to mention that you create a reservoir that is, supposedly, uninhabitable by living organisms, unsuitable for swimming, and can't store fresh water for domestic needs. I think this is a very niche solution for areas that are already beyond repair, mines being a good example. It won't ever reach the halfed scale of typical hydroelectric plants.
I enjoyed this video. Smart idea. I was distracted by your saying they may need to make the pipes “thicker”. I think you meant “increase the inner diameter.” As someone familiar with pipe fitting and plumber terminology (in the U.S.), this left me wondering what else may be misstated.
@@rohan751 If thicker means the outer diameter is larger, that’s separate from the inner diameter which controls how much can flow. The wall thickness of the pipe material makes the inner usable diameter smaller than that outer diameter. “Thickness” is not a term you’d ever hear. At least in the U.S.
Somewhat solved. Not all li-ions are alike, there are different chemistries. Your basic li-ion as used in consumer electronics is a fire hazard. Lithium-polymer is one spark short of turning into a hand grenade - sometimes you need a fireproof bag to charge them semi-safely - but the very high power density makes them useful in compact high-performance applications. The you have the safer options - LiFePo4 and the still-novel Na-Ion. Lower energy density, but also pretty safe - even if you try, it's hard to make them catch fire.
It's an interesting idea, but that cost per MWh isn't exactly great. I realise they don't exist yet, but I suspect the future of grid storage will be sodium ion batteries. Lower energy density than lithium ion, but that really doesn't matter for stationary applications.
Or heat storage. Requires huge mass, but has high theoretical efficiencies (and can be constructed around existing power plants, using existing infrastructure).
@@russbell6418 Heat storage is not in any way efficient if the source of the heat is electricity and the goal is turning the heat back into electricity again.
The logical location for a technology like this is a deep hard rock mine like a nickel mine that is played out or a lead zinc mine like Brunswick Mines in New Brunswick, Canada. Lots of space and a thousand meters difference with a stabilized temperature and vertical fall of fluids 😮
What if? The reservoirs are of equal height, with a valley between them. Then say at the halfway point the fluid changes from flowing down to then flowing back up. And at the halfway point we reduce the size of the tube. Maybe by 1/3 ? Using the weight difference from the larger, downhill side, to help push the fluid up. Increasing the speed of the flow in the smaller tube so that the volume isn't reduced. Would this work? Would this increase the efficiency? Can the faster flow in the smaller tube be utilized to spin turbines faster for a improvement in the efficiency?
Probably the most important quick calculation is the finances. A really interesting number would be the cost of the R19 per tonne, which I suspect they're not going to release, but on the available information we can do a ballpark calculation. The main ingredient, if it's used in oral medication, has to be something like calcium carbonate, kaolin, silica or something similar, ingredients which have densities in the range of about 2.5 to 3Kg/L. The raw ingredient before processing is probably going to cost you at least £25 per tonne. To achieve a density of about 2.5 times that of water would require probably at least 80% additive, which is equivalent to 2 tonnes of R19 powder/m³ of fluid. By the time you've milled all your ingredients, mixed them and added your surfactant etc. plus a bit of profit, I would be very surprised if the if the cost per tonne would be less than £50, which means the cost of the hydraulic fluid would be at least £100/tonne, and I suspect probably more likely twice that. Info: Dinorwig pumped hydro in North Wales working head of a round of 530m, generating losses probably around 10%. The working volume is around 7M-m³. Using R19 fluid you could reduce the working height to: 530m ÷ 2.5 = 212m Stored energy - KWh/m³ = mgh = (2,500×9.81×212/3600)×90% = 1.30KWh/L At £100/m³ that is the equivalent of about £77/KWh, which is on par with the cost of lithium phosphate batteries, which have an energy density of about 140KWh/L. Note: this is just at the battery cost, it shouldn't be compared with something like a Tesla Powerwall as this is a whole system cost. Info: The construction of Dinorwig Power Station in North Wales, UK, began in 1974 and cost £425 million, which is equivalent to £4.7Bn in today's money. Because the water for Dinorwig it's basically free, using R19 would probably add at least £700M (about 15%) to the project, but almost certainly far more than that. Furthermore, and I like water come up I suspect this emulsion well and gradually degrade with use and require either replacing or refurbishing periodically. When you consider the ongoing performance improvements to battery technology and continued cost reduction, I can't see this technology ever being able to compete with battery storage. It requires more space plus all the connecting pipework and a turbine hall compared to a battery charger and an inverter. And you don't even need a hill of any height.
At 8:56 - "Will it work in the real world? First demo in Canada validating the idea, and a 500kw demonstrator has started in England" - There has been a hydro plant (not using slurry) in North Wales (Snowdonia) for many years, at Dinorwig. I used to live nearby, and saw the plant several times when family visited me. It is locally known as "Electric Mountain" and pumps water between an upper and a lower reservoir. There are pictures of it on Google Maps. When using slurry, I would expect wear to become an issue after some time. I get that the particles are ultra-fine, and doubtlessly not diamond ( 🙂), but they will still be more abraisive than water.
The energy to heat water by 1 degree C is equal to the energy of dropping it 400 meters. Basically the energy to heat it will always be unreasonably high. If you need any heat at all, your heating bill will be way higher than the energy stored. Designs that need to keep the fluid warm are basically unworkable.
It would be interesting to see a calculation on the thermal losses (including frictional losses) associated with pumped storage. Nonetheless, well-done video ! Keep up the good work. ☺
Very interesting. I watch quite a lot of youtubery and notice that many, including this one, use extremely short snatches of video several times over. I mention this because if I'm noticing that, I'm probably not concentrating on the text/commentary. And by contrast, bits of video which are genuinely explanatory are edited down to such short lengths of time that they are pretty well subliminal! Is this because of copyright restrictions? Whereas that shot of one bloke walking towards another bloke seemed totally irrelevant and was shown four times or more! If you're trying to make the video economic to do, more footage of you talking to camera would be acceptable, particularly if it coincides with you making the important points.
Another thing that came to mind is how to handle the increased weight and pressure. If the liquid is four times more dense it will also be much heavier and create much higher pressures. Following this line of thought it will also need thicker pipes, stronger dams and heavily beefed up pumps and turbines. It will also be necessary to build the dams with a much higher security rating. There will also need to be a system for increasing and decreasing the water content of the fluid depending on heavy droughts or rain. To me this sounds like a pipe dream, very badly thought through.
I love gravity batteries. A 2m long steel weight falling down a slightly wider drill hole can turn a 10mw generator and at 750m deep the geothermal temp should be 1c and air flow enough to pull it up, slowly.
Z- look into barite weighted drilling fluids used for the last century plus to both drive the boring bit and to lift the cuttings out of the bore- water, weighted up higher than the rock or formation they were drilling in.
The system would also have to be completely enclosed any water infiltration into the slurry is going to screw with the density and allow the powdered Stone material to fall out of solution
We have a pumped reservoir system in Massachusetts that has been in use since the late 40s. You can't see it, though, because they hollowed out a mountain and put it in there. Kayakers like to wait by the outflow areas to catch the free ride down the river.
Here is a bad idea that is better than the presented concept. Run a vapor chamber heat pipe to pump water vapor uphill. All you need is a tube, a water source, a vacuum pump to remove air, an array of mirrors to focus solar energy, and two heat exchangers. The reservoir at the top is used to cool the condenser.
Great idea. But I wonder if the additives will increase the abrasiveness of the fluid, increasing the need for maintenance on the turbines, pumps, and pipes. If it works, great, we will need a mixture of energy storage solutions to make it all work.
Turbine technology is supposed to be subject to a physical limit of around 65%, although I'm not sure if that's just for steam. If it's across the board then their round trip efficiency has to be off.
I am guessing that this slurry formula could be optimized over time to be even more efficient, for example, use of heavier elements in the fine particles, but still retain the correct slurry consistency.
Hmmm.... I can easily think of a few places with warm weather, rough landscape and water shoratges which make reversible hydro mostly moot. They're all around the Mediterranean sea and in places which often enjoy thermal winds and plenty of sunlight, matched with the infamous "duck curve" of photovoltaic vs air conditioning.
Darpa found thousands of pumped hydro potential sites in US. They used satellite imagery. The problem is US doesn't invest in infrastructure now that it has privatized the commons with finance capitalism. Industrial planning and the pumping the commons with state credit is a ghost from the past. The grid has to be expanded to connect the sites, which is the problem. Locating energy storage near grid nodes is a solution.
The benefit with water is it self transports to the upper reservoir in many locations, and is inexpensive and ubiquitous.. (Lead and tungsten are a little pricey by the tonne. - concrete is cheaper, but only ~1/5th as dense - sure it is better than water in density stakes,harder to pump).) With gravity storage, the maximum the topology can give - is never enough... Never limit to "only so much is required" - the viable minimum may be less, but the maximum yields so much more energy.
So clay water with tannins, aka Slip. Interesting idea on the face of it for geographic advantage, but it still feels like deferred 'free' lunch, like using solar but changing when the bulk of the best light is available in exchange for overnight when it's costing money and not making power.
As a thought experiment, I'd love to see a mercury based energy turbine storage system. 13.6 x the density of water. That would be amazing if it weren't just an absolute environmental nightmare waiting to happen.
You mention to counter the increased viscosity of the slurry, the pipes need to be "thicker". Your language is imprecise. Thicker means the pipe walls have a greater thickness. I think you mean the pipes should be wider. That is, the pipes should have a wider diameter or a greater circumference. A wider pipe allows a greater flow of water in our suburban environment and so this would also pertain to this system using a heavier and slightly more viscous liquid. You're a smart bloke - you should have fixed this. You also said "micro-grid" when the presented graphic said " mini-grid". Science must also include precision and accuracy. I am also curious about the reverse motion video at 11:26, showing water retreating from a reservoir outlet. Maybe your editor was having a negative day.
Obviously, but the whole point is that you do it at night when there is excess power from wind, nuclear and gas turbines which cannot be be turned on & off like a switch. The pumped storage on the other hand can be: I have been inside the "magic mountain" at Dinorwig and seen the utterly enormous valves which open almost instantaneously to meet sudden demand - such as millions of people switching on their kettles or flushing the loo at the end of Coronation Street (e.g.). And before anybody laughs, flushing millions of toilets causes a pressure drop which requires (electric) pumps to be turned on to compensate.
Great idea. The problem with sustainable energy has always been storage. The only drawback is that it destroys any potential for aquatic ecosystems from existing within the system
find a material that can be filtered back out, and you will find a much higher energy storage. As you can filter it out going down, and get an easier material (Pure water) to send back up, while sending the material back up via a trolley or something to be remixed, cutting losses dramatically if you can figure it out in an efficient manner. beat the viscosity and you win an extra level of efficiency.
This is nice and all but traditional cisterns can get topped up by rainfall and I wonder about the abrasion of the microparticles on the turbines, not to mention the required temperature control. Still indeed cool for smaller scale closed loop systems as a storage solution.
My first thought this was a 50% solution of zinc bromide when I saw the density. But that would not be environmentally friendly. It would be cool because you could have a gravity battery and a flow battery all-in-one system though.
Stored hydro only makes sense if it is pumped to higher elevation using sustainable energy (solar, wind, hydro etc). Whether it is more efficient than battery storage needs properly evaluating but it does involves very large scale engineering with an negative environmental impact when compared with battery or sand storage
That’s the whole point. Pump during excess solar or wind production, generate during high demand. It’s just a large scale battery with much cleaner environmental effects than lithium or sodium batteries. Sand storage is a heat battery; main issues are corrosion of heat extraction tubing.
For thermal management. Solar thermal and thermal storage are fairly simple tech. Especially if all you need is to heat the fluid before it flows through the turbine. If you need to keep the entire reservoir warm, then “Good Luck with that”.
1- The high-density fluid will require more energy to pump to the upper reservoir due to its greater mass. This is because the work done, or the energy required to move the fluid, is directly proportional to the mass of the fluid being lifted. 2- The higher mass and potentially greater viscosity of the fluid could lead to increased mechanical stress on pumps, turbines, and other infrastructure. This could result in more frequent maintenance or the need for more robust equipment. 3-The overall efficiency of the system might be impacted. While the energy density is higher, the additional energy required to pump the fluid could offset some of the benefits. It's crucial to ensure that the energy gained from the increased density outweighs the additional energy cost of pumping.
If the fluid is 2.5x density of water and as was said it's mixture of water and some particles those particles are required to be off much higher density than water. Thus they are going to settle down over the time of storing the energy. This only can be solved by dissolving which is not having suspended particles. Considering this technology is to be used for lower elevation the depth of the upper reservoir becomes more important for the for energy capacity comparing to high elevation systems. And if the particles settle down to the bottom they lose the potential energy even if the even if the fluid is forcedly mixed (which cost energy too). To summarize, this idea looks to me as one of the green energy frauds (like the idea of storing energy in hydrogen collected from electrolysis) and a way to get the grants from the government.
It seems like a major benefit of water is the abundance of large natural resivoirs. Otherwise one could make a large wight of solid lead inside a sufficient casing of concrete and/or steal to achieve over 11x the energy storage density of water by simply raising and lowering the weight with electric motors/generators. A large, solid mass of lead should be relatively simple to render environmentally inert by encasing it in thick enough material. It may need stabilizing mechanisms to keep it from swaying too much in an earthquake, but a solid chunk of lead isn't going to easily seap into and contaminate groundwater like a large reservoir of slury. Am I missing something? I'd love to hear from some people who actually engineer these systems.
You are re-inventing the wheel...this and many other energy storage systems are already being tried out, notably Tesla storage batteries in Australia to to balance out supply & demand (they have a LOT of daytime solar energy)
4:01 Sorry for your loss and our loss as a globe. Let's hope his legacy lives on beyond us all. And if his projects are anything like this genius solution, I am sure he will. 🙏
Ultra fine powders aren’t “environmentally friendly”, they’re quite hazardous to inhale and so a threat to all air breathing animal life. As long as the slurry is contained and the powder remains in suspension, it’s not an issue, but when it eventually leaks, or needs to be disposed of, that’s a lot of hazardous waste.
The real 'problem' for this is competition from battery storage. Much cheaper sodium batteries for instance are scaling right now and their storage cost is only a bit over a quarter less than today's battery systems. I do like the idea but batteries are going to get very cheap and very plentiful and they have less downsides as time goes on, lower flammability, lower cost, longer lifespans. My money would be on them.
It is an amazing technological achievement. However it has to be isolated from natural water bodies which means minimal suitable locations unless you do from scratch and there is no way it can be more cost effective than increasingly cheaper chemical batteries.
Running this system from a large diameter pipeline at a higher elevation to a pipeline at a lower elevation would get rid of all of the concerns about maintaining the fluids temperature.
Large amounts of surfactants are not "environmental benign". Though, in fariness, this stuff is basically the same as drilling mud used to pressurize oli/gas wells.
Maybe smaller localized installations would be more competitive. They seem to be on top of that already. Not sure how the system will "age". Battery prices are coming down quickly and will continue to do so. Utility battery storage is headed towards $70/kwh in China from $95 a year ago. Grids composed of vehicle and household batteries that are V2G are going to represent a significant sector in energy storage in the future. Fleets of electric school buses when plugged into the grid offer 6,000/kwh or more of storage. A car dealership in the future will have his entire inventory plugged into the grid earning some money from the utility. The tech, like all tech, is changing fast.
Thanks. I wonder how much energy is needed for the grinding , how often the liquid has to be exchanged and how abrasive the liquid is to the turbines. Heating the storage? Or having a flow heater of how much power? The same principle with another less "proven" fluid is more cost effective? I'd like to see that calculation. Do they need a giant agitator in the reservoir to keep the particles suspended in the fluid, to avoid sedimentation? If that would fails, what would that do to pipes and turbines?
One point I forgot to mention was the testing RheEnergise have done to show their new breakthrough doesn't significantly increase wear the turbines either! If you enjoyed this video, you're going to love the interactive courses from Brilliant! Use my link at brilliant.org/ziroth/ for 30 days FREE and 20% off a subscription!
Why not have Teflon coated pipes?
Was wondering about corrosivity and turbine strain.
R19… at least it isn’t R12 😂
@@brettmoore3194 good question, that might shrink the skin friction, but it won’t decrease the bulk viscosity, the friction from the liquid rubbing against the liquid. Any coating would be very expensive too and the concern that eventually it would flake off and then harm the turbines or be a danger to the environment.
@@justinmyers6737 I was surprised to hear in the video that friction wear on the turbine blades was not a problem.
As to the load, remember, water will be stacked 2.5 times higher to create the same load. This benefits us because it can be used in a place where they is a much shorter hill resulting in the same load (not a higher load than the water).
Slightly disingenuous report.
The 2.5x density means you can EITHER use 60% less fluid OR 60% less height, NOT both.
I totally agree, they also don't quite show the reality of the problems it could be faced with though they touch on it.. separation.. while it doesn't seem like much in that small flask, would become a much bigger issue in a reservoir.... also, there is the local animal life
That's the same thing
and somehow I feel like the turbine cups will be "sandblasted/waterjetted" with this liquid way faster than water.
@@troychampion Good point, what about the wild life? Would it try to drink the slush?
@@thiemokellner1893 Ideally you'd want to have the slurry be as closed in as possible so that evaporation and rainfall don't affect the viscosity / density that you're expecting the system to have. Making it watertight will keep animals away from it as well presumably
_raises hand_
Professor, my potential problem with this fluid isn't its weight, viscosity or temperature dependence; basic engineering can handle those. My problem is that we are dealing with suspended solids at extremely high pressures and harnessed via hard changes in momentum. This sounds very similar to the principles behind the cutting fluid used in waterjet tools to me.
How abrasive is this fluid, and what measures can we put in place to ensure long-term durability and low maintenance costs, especially in the turbine?
(Don't misunderstand, I'd love to see this tech mature, and we only get there by handling them critically.)
Just dump the chemicals into an existing reservoir and double the electrical output. Easy Peezy.
@@chrism.1131 That... doesn't answer my question at all.
I'm not even sure what question you were answering.
I want to know how fast the suspended solids in the fluid wear away at the turbine as it flows through at speed, and whether any additional repair costs are enough of a problem to question the tech's viability right now.
@@wolvenedge6214 "This sounds very similar to the principles behind the cutting fluid used in waterjet tools to me."
Not quite. Typically, the agents used in waterjet cutters are extremely hard minerals. Garnet is very commonly used, with other, more expensive and harder additives used when needed. This works on the "something hard hitting something softer" principle of cutting.
If the thickening agents are softer than the components in the system that the fluid will impact at high speed, there shouldn't be any additional cutting force applied. In fact, it may actually lesson the erosive effects of the water, as in any given volume of liquid that passes, a lower percentage of that volume would actually be water; the rest would be the softer thickening agents.
I would be more concerned with how the thickeners would collect on the turbine/pump blades and cavities than with any additional erosive effects of added thickeners.
Of course, all of this would/will need to be tested to get actual answers.
don't apologize for being cynical. This concept is half baked at best.
I'm more worried about leakage from the reservoir, if the fluid composition is 'a closely guarded secret.'
I was worried for a bit that they'd consider using liquid mercury, and that's the direction this tech will naturally want to lean into, for mechanical efficiency. Liquid metal is *far* denser than water.
I assume the system would need to be enclosed. Evaporation, or extremal contaminants (rain), would surely throw off the balance of the fluid?
I'll keep an eye out for updates on their developments 🙂
You probably wouldn't want animals falling in, or birds trying to land on it either.
My prediction: This "invention" will turn out to be totally unworkable and is essentially a fraud. How can a patent be a secret? A patent is a patent disclosure. Either you disclose and get exclusive rights for a limited time or you keep it a secret and hope that the competition cannot duplicate your invention work.
All patents have secrets - your naivety’s astounding
Yeah that's how it should be in principle but nowadays any good patent lawyers will write it to be as vague as possible while still, by the slightest of technical margins, covering what you're actually doing.
I highly doubt RheEnergise's idea will be commercially viable. Competing with _water_ for gravity-based energy storage automatically puts you at a huge disadvantage with respect to cost, toxicity, and phase separation. It sounds like they need to keep their whole fluid system sealed or at least covered, which is another big cost/complication.
Really? What's in Coca-Cola then? It has a patent.
@@economistfromhell4877 Less than 1 minute of research would have (possibly) taught you some humility:
Trade secrets
Coca-Cola's secret recipe is a trade secret that has been protected for over a century. Trade secrets are governed by state laws and do not expire like patents.
Coca-Cola's decision not to patent their formula again after changing it is due to the fact that if they had, the formula would have become public knowledge once the patent expired.
@@economistfromhell4877 Trade secrets
Coca-Cola's secret recipe is a trade secret that has been protected for over a century. Trade secrets are governed by state laws and do not expire like patents.
Coca-Cola's decision not to patent their formula again after changing it is due to the fact that if they had, the formula would have become public knowledge once the patent expired.
Pumped hydro does not necessarily require mountains for a large elevation difference. The lower reservoir can be excavated underground, for instance in a disused mine. It could be a promising way for large capacity storage when combined with this new technology.
But that would be extremely expensive to excavate a suitable reservoir underground.
Gravity pushes down not up but sure put the turbine even lower............
Self-admittedly newb on the topic of pumped hydro, this slurry "solution" seems to be looking to solve a problem where none exists. Specifically not using water means the entire reservoir x2 _must_ be created artificially (with megatons of concrete), and then megagallons of slurry must be made to fill them. No matter how "cheap" it is to make, water is much cheaper. Artificial reservoirs on the other hand are so expensive it may not even matter. This is all to solve the problem of the neighboring hill height? I've never heard this is THE problem with pumped hydro. Seems like this is a story about a patent (R19) and not a story about "waterless hydro". *meh* what am I missing?
If you can excavate a lower resovouire the size of a mid- sized town, several hectares in surface area and a couple hundred feet deep, at a reasonable cost, then sure go for it. Of course that's impossible unless you're drilling with hydrogen bombs, which is why no one is doing this.
@@VigneshBalasubramaniam
One big issue I see with this is a "worst case" failure mode. With a regular dam you can always slowly release the contents to take pressure off until the dam can be fixed, but it is environmentally sound to just dump this into the environment?
Good point. They'd better only operate this system on already heavily polluted rivers. Good job we have plenty of those.
Since it's a closed system you wouldn't be dumping anything into the environment.
@@John73JohnClosed loop until it isn't. Anything at that scale will inevitably suffer leaks at some point, sometimes catastrophic.
@@Hamish_A Well that's true of any chemical process ever. But these are risks we know how to minimize and deal with. Since the bottom reservoir is big enough to contain the entire volume of fluid the system is using, a good design would be set up so any leaks would just naturally drain to the bottom reservoir. That would be a big step to making things safer.
Maintenance would require a way to dump all contents in one of the basins or the other.
I'm going to dump 500 tons of hot chocolate mix in Dinorwig upper tomorrow to see what happens
All that sugar would play havoc with the viscosity. I think you should try Bovril instead.
You’re gonna raise the output, and excite the fish!
There's something decent about hydro run by clean water. Clean energy systems must be developed in the interests of the environment. You know how to put me off this slurry idea.
Your idea is better than the proposed one.
1- The high-density fluid will require more energy to pump to the upper reservoir due to its greater mass. This is because the work done, or the energy required to move the fluid, is directly proportional to the mass of the fluid being lifted.
2- The higher mass and potentially greater viscosity of the fluid could lead to increased mechanical stress on pumps, turbines, and other infrastructure. This could result in more frequent maintenance or the need for more robust equipment.
3-The overall efficiency of the system might be impacted. While the energy density is higher, the additional energy required to pump the fluid could offset some of the benefits. It's crucial to ensure that the energy gained from the increased density outweighs the additional energy cost of pumping.
Regarding 1, the greater energy required to pump it up is exactly balanced out by the greater energy it stores per volume.
@@trogdorstrngbd the density is high, so mass would also increase, thus increase in work required to lift it up
@@mr-x-003 1) less height, 2) less amount of fluid or 3) more energy stored for same height and volume.
@@andrwsk23 more challenges
"The pipes would need to be thicker...". What a strange and imprecise word to use, immediately conjuring up thoughts of pipe wall thickness. 'Larger bore' would have expressed it better.
The English are weird.
They speak of "small roads" when they mean narrow roads.
And when something falls , it ends up on "the floor" instead of on the ground - even when the situation is outside of a human built structure.
It seems they are losing the use of their own language.
William Shakespeare is spinning ever faster in his grave.
even just saying "bigger pipes" would convey the idea of larger bore more accurately than "thicker pipes", since thickness generally does not apply to negative spaces within a container. even if "thinner" may work on stuff like pipes and straws, "thicker" simply does not convey its exact opposite in these cases.
english is weird af.
"thicker pipes" put my attention to the subject of the video in a tailspin as well. I think I would have gone with wider or larger diameter pipes as well.
@@johncreel6135 Actually , if you said "thicker pipe" to any engineer ,they would assume you were referring to wall thickness
Larger bore means bigger internal diameter, not wall thickness.
The fluid is derived from oi drilling mud, Barite-barium sulphate-is used both to increase drilling mu density and as an orally administered "milkshake" to improve GI x-ray contrast.
😂🤣😂
A saturated clay solution with a couple drops of dawn would accomplish the same.
I got clay on my land that Ive mixed up and the water evaporated before the clay ever settled. No need to overcomplicate the thing.
We never get far into the comments before someone’s real life experience can answer the questions! I was stuck on bentonite, but you’re no doubt closer to their magic formula. Would require constant turbulence to maintain suspension and inflow to address evaporation (and treatment to keep ph from becoming corrosive). I like the idea, but it has some real engineering hurdles.
Is there any problem with this sort of thing seeping into the water table?
Had that radioshake once
83% grid to grid efficiency is leaning into the pipe dream territory. 85% on production cycle is extremely good for a hydro, 65% is a lot to hope for during pump cycle, yielding an expected grid to grid closer to 55%.
This is the one of several curses of pumped storage. Another is the ongoing need to maintain fluid quality, which with water or water based fluid requires inflow.
If this system is to maintain its quality as a sealed fluid cycle, that requires covered ponds which limit potential size.
Of course, but they don't get the investment if they're honest, hence they claim a best case scenario that can never be achieved.
The moment he spoke "83% efficiency", my immediate reaction was "this is bullshit" .
Also, totally agree with Mentality-Monster... its all about investment money...
I'm sure the birds and other animals will LOVE finding slurry. Surfactant and "benign" powder sounds "lovely".
This channel, along with a few other green-tech ones, is guilty of hyping the "this could change everything" PR releases without much or any good faith coverage of the common real world challenges that'd scrap a project like this; without an eco study at a specific site proving the "benign" part of the claim, this would not get approved even at a small scale. "Oh you tried it on a hill in Canada using 2 enclosed industrial containers and a hose? cute. Go play in your garage s'more or spend 6-7 figures and 6 months proving environmental "safety" of your dirty dirty water."
But surely it will be cheaper than water, right? And abrasive muds aren't damaging to turbines at all.
One big problem that I'm positive would arise, is the effect those solid particles are going to have on the inner walls of the piping and the blades of the turbines. It is very possible (I think certain) that the slurry is going to act as a liquid sand paper! Quickly sanding and filing away at the pipes and turbine blades. "Eating" them away. Clear water can have wearing effect on surfaces when the flow is fast, let alone a water with particles in it. this sounds like the liquid solutions they use in water jet cutters. I believe this project would hit a major roadblock if this issue isn't resolved.
Yes you want high density, but you also need low viscosity and low or zero toxicity. Low cost of the fluid is also helpful.
If the water from the slurry evaporates, the viscosity will increase and water will have to be added, just like water based pumped storage.
On the plus side, with water based pumped storage, people want to use it for recreation and that’s a security problem for the facility and a danger when people get in. One can’t assume that the public will understand the risks and stay out.
I will watch the technology and see how well it works.
@@edwardlulofs444 the ingredients are a secret, but if it is largely just clay, or other inert stuff denser than water, not too much of a problem. Go for a mud bath in the slurry. Also water is pretty inexpensive to add to offset evaporation.
@@jsbrads1 If it's clay you may be looking at settling problems as well. Slurry is just silt-in-waiting.
@@jsbrads1 sounds promising
@@vylbird8014 true, tho he did mention it has other ingredients to help the particles stay in solution. Tho the density of clay is a bit too low to work on its own.
Super cool! Feels like a promising development!
For a decent amount of power generation you need a huge water reservoir allowing for a large flow over a long period of time preferably with a large head. This slurry is about 2.5 times as dense as water. That means you only could reduce the amount of material by 2.5 times compared to a hydro plant (or reduce the head by 2.5 times). A head of 400m would now be 160m. At the SAME volume of the reservoir because you can either reduce head OR volume but not both if you want to keep the energy yield the same. So imagine the Nant de Drance being 160m above the Emosson lake instead of 400m but filled with this slurry instead of water.This is not a usefull energy storage application. It might work in very specific circumstances but for almost all practical purposes it is useless. Even if you could develop a slurry with a density 10x of water you'd still not be there. You'd have to have a slurry with 100 times the density of water to get anywhere close to an economically viable energy storage solution.
The biggest problem for Rheenergise is that there is nothing inherently novel about increasing the density of the pumped fluid. There's very low likelihood that the cost of heating that still very large amount of fluid is going to be offset by the reduced viscosity, which means their only claim to fame is selling drilling mud. If the approach is viable then anyone who can build a pumped hydro unit can easily replace these guys. And lets not forget that because your pumped fluid is a closed system you now need an upper and a lower retaining pond so that claim of less space probably won't happen.
Probably using mercury
There are worse ways to unload millions of gallons of mercury...
@@jcbeck84 Nope, there aren’t. But it’s probably Barite or Borax.
man sounds like you nailed it. This slurry is totally for fracking and has nothing to do with pumped hydro..
That’s bad for their business but good for us as energy consumers.
2:22 the way they built that dam to completely hide all the machinery and with NO ROADS is a fascinating tale, there is another vid about it somewhere --- they did a magnificent job, just look at that thing!! Not a trace of artifice, except that bit of concrete wall
The problem with this concept is that the round trip estimates appear to relate to energy storage phase efficiency only. Not power generation. It does not appear to factor in the electrical conversion component via the hydro turbines. There you are loosing more efficiency again. Compare that to a battery that bypasses generation completely, because the power is already in the electrical form. Also you have additional maintenance costs for the turbine power generation system.
I think large scale sodium ion battery storage is the future of energy storage.
You’re correct about efficiency. Pumped storage is a couple of orders of magnitude cheaper to bring into production than sodium batteries for grid scale use, but probably won’t get above 55% efficiency grid to grid.
I have no confidence in a “turbine friendly surfactant”. Earth based mineral density augmentations are all abrasive. But if these require a turbine bucket refacing once a year, that may be within reasonable operating parameters.
Lifted Weight Storage stores energy by lifting a heavy block up a mineshaft and retrieves the energy by lowering it back down. Optionally use multiple blocks. (Just don't drop any.) Lift Renewable Energy stores energy by pulling empty tanks down into deep water; seems safer than pumping fluid into an elevated reservoir that can release.
You forget that many of the pump hydro storage plants in the Alps also use a lot of natural influx from rain and snow that has to run away in a river. Sometimes they do not even have a large storage basin on the low side but use the river's water from a small basin to pump upwards. This is not a viable idea for many Alpine pump storage plants. The uprise of landscape protectors is sure.
I am also interested in erosion in the engines. This can significantly increase with particles in the water. Some fifty years ago I was told that a Francis turbine crashed after some 700 hours due to quartz sand in the plant's water exactly two hours before the official opening ceremony with two state presidents and a lot of other high-ranked animals.
Let's hope that when this leaks, this special fluid isn't toxic to the environment.
beat me to it..
@@benb3928 it sounds like muddy water, so it should be no trouble.
Its just mud lol
@@loganstewart6133 mud alone would have too low a density. It also has too much sand, sand is very hard and it would chew up the turbine in a very short order.
I am worried about its content, is it harmfull if it is spilled into the environment>? or seeps into the environment??? Poluting a massive water source, is a big concern!
Exactly my concern. Doesn't sound very eco friendly, if it was, they would say something like high clay content water. I cannot see how high density slurry could not be replicated by/engineered with other materials, so why the lack of transparency?
Watch from 5:03.
@@fuerLutzi Used in oral medication sets me off.
@@Dalorian1 lactose is used as a buking agent in pills 'n stuff. Not to be used in THIS context, of course.
Isn't it basically just mud? Considering how harmful the majority of current power generation is(especially in the US) I don't think there's much harm in having slightly dangerous ways to store energy to improve the effectiveness of renewables.
Wouldn't the particles eventually fall out of suspension and settle at the bottom of the reservoir?
no it's magic
There are a few chemical and mechanical ways to prevent it. For the application they are all going to be terrible in many ways but if you just need a small scale short term demonstration to get some investors spend their money then it can be done.
All pumped storage systems require more energy input from external sources than is produced when the liquid flows from higher to lower levels due to inefficiencies. But they do separate timing of production and use.
My concern with this scheme is wildlife hazards (such as waterfowl), as well as the potential of polluting the land and water table in the area due to leaks, seeps, or eventual disrepair of the system. Does the fluid become a 'forever' non-biodegradable fluid pollutant, solving one problem (energy) but creating a worse one (environmental)?
At university, when we did a project on the topic of proving the infeasiblility of artificial pumped hydro, we used the example of a water tower. The gravitational potential energy stored in the average U.S. water tower at average height and volume, has enough potential energy to just barely meet the energy demands of a single U.S. home for one day. It really comes down to an optical illusion where some people look at a damed resovouire and ridiculously under estimate the mass of water that they contain. Building the resovouire, without natural geologic containment in place, is vault outside of the engineering abilities of today, or for that matter, within the next century, let alone doing that at a cost effective point. All forms of gravitational potential energy storage are fundamentally inadequate for electricity storage within the geological confines of most places. Chemical and thermal energy have much higher energy densities and probabilities of achieving cost effective energy storage
Well… we can use two nukes to make the high and low reservoirs, and tell people that it's radioactive so don't swim in it… two birds with one nukes!
You can use CO2 gas as a medium to generate electricity pilot plants have been produced. A large CO2 reservoir and two gas compressors to circulate the system and it can be run at 60 percent efficient more than hydrocarbon fuels . Instead of making CO2 the enemy use it CO2 turbines are a lot smaller than traditional and uses less turbine stages .
do pipes need to be thicker or wider?
wider probably
Wall thickness matters too for flow but much less important.
Yes, because they will wear quicker.
This will never be heard of again.
Hopefully.
The thing with gravity energy storage is it's terrible energy density. Pumped hydro makes this less of an issue provided you're using natural topography to create most of the two big reservoirs, and cheap, untreated water as your potential mass, .. most of the actual construction then just needs to be the pumping/power-station component.
Using concrete and cranes, or designer fluids and larger pipes is a terrible idea as you then require a hug amount of engineered material relative to your energy stored.
Smart changing the fluid is pretty neat, oils companies use drilling mud all the time, looks like someone worked in the oil industry
The excessive wear of pumps that recirculate the liquid is one negative point. The contamination of the land mass under the reservoir is the other.
It's a shame you have not addressed these much, as it would make the video much more objective.
In example, after the Kahovska Dam was breached by russians, the reservoir quickly turned into a forested area. I can't say for sure, but fresh water that stayed there for decades must have had little negative impact on the chornozem underneath. On the other hand, imagine what would have happened if there was a constant flow of clay, or other substance, in amounts that would double the mass of the liquid.
Not to mention that you create a reservoir that is, supposedly, uninhabitable by living organisms, unsuitable for swimming, and can't store fresh water for domestic needs. I think this is a very niche solution for areas that are already beyond repair, mines being a good example. It won't ever reach the halfed scale of typical hydroelectric plants.
I enjoyed this video. Smart idea. I was distracted by your saying they may need to make the pipes “thicker”. I think you meant “increase the inner diameter.” As someone familiar with pipe fitting and plumber terminology (in the U.S.), this left me wondering what else may be misstated.
Hey , I'm not too familiar with the terminology. Could you explain what the difference is
@@rohan751 If thicker means the outer diameter is larger, that’s separate from the inner diameter which controls how much can flow. The wall thickness of the pipe material makes the inner usable diameter smaller than that outer diameter. “Thickness” is not a term you’d ever hear. At least in the U.S.
You can always use insulated spheres on top to reduce thermal loss from the surface of the working fluid.
These gravity batteries have one HUGE advantage over metal ion paste based batteries: No battery fires.
The latest battery tech doesn't burn.
Somewhat solved. Not all li-ions are alike, there are different chemistries. Your basic li-ion as used in consumer electronics is a fire hazard. Lithium-polymer is one spark short of turning into a hand grenade - sometimes you need a fireproof bag to charge them semi-safely - but the very high power density makes them useful in compact high-performance applications. The you have the safer options - LiFePo4 and the still-novel Na-Ion. Lower energy density, but also pretty safe - even if you try, it's hard to make them catch fire.
It's an interesting idea, but that cost per MWh isn't exactly great. I realise they don't exist yet, but I suspect the future of grid storage will be sodium ion batteries. Lower energy density than lithium ion, but that really doesn't matter for stationary applications.
Or heat storage. Requires huge mass, but has high theoretical efficiencies (and can be constructed around existing power plants, using existing infrastructure).
Sodium ion batteries exist. In fact, you can go buy some right now, they're already rolling out to residential consumers. Look up Natron batteries.
@@russbell6418 Heat storage is not in any way efficient if the source of the heat is electricity and the goal is turning the heat back into electricity again.
The logical location for a technology like this is a deep hard rock mine like a nickel mine that is played out or a lead zinc mine like Brunswick Mines in New Brunswick, Canada. Lots of space and a thousand meters difference with a stabilized temperature and vertical fall of fluids 😮
What about using mercury as the liquid in the pumps? 13 times the density of water
What if?
The reservoirs are of equal height, with a valley between them.
Then say at the halfway point the fluid changes from flowing down to then flowing back up. And at the halfway point we reduce the size of the tube. Maybe by 1/3 ? Using the weight difference from the larger, downhill side, to help push the fluid up. Increasing the speed of the flow in the smaller tube so that the volume isn't reduced.
Would this work?
Would this increase the efficiency?
Can the faster flow in the smaller tube be utilized to spin turbines faster for a improvement in the efficiency?
What about erosion in the turbines?
Water should be used so we can use it to grow fish to help feed us. This also benefits local wildlife.
So where are these fish of yours going to live??? In either top or bottom reservoirs, they would be sucked through the turbines - DUH!
Probably the most important quick calculation is the finances.
A really interesting number would be the cost of the R19 per tonne, which I suspect they're not going to release, but on the available information we can do a ballpark calculation.
The main ingredient, if it's used in oral medication, has to be something like calcium carbonate, kaolin, silica or something similar, ingredients which have densities in the range of about 2.5 to 3Kg/L. The raw ingredient before processing is probably going to cost you at least £25 per tonne.
To achieve a density of about 2.5 times that of water would require probably at least 80% additive, which is equivalent to 2 tonnes of R19 powder/m³ of fluid. By the time you've milled all your ingredients, mixed them and added your surfactant etc. plus a bit of profit, I would be very surprised if the if the cost per tonne would be less than £50, which means the cost of the hydraulic fluid would be at least £100/tonne, and I suspect probably more likely twice that.
Info: Dinorwig pumped hydro in North Wales working head of a round of 530m, generating losses probably around 10%. The working volume is around 7M-m³.
Using R19 fluid you could reduce the working height to: 530m ÷ 2.5 = 212m
Stored energy - KWh/m³
= mgh = (2,500×9.81×212/3600)×90% = 1.30KWh/L
At £100/m³ that is the equivalent of about £77/KWh, which is on par with the cost of lithium phosphate batteries, which have an energy density of about 140KWh/L. Note: this is just at the battery cost, it shouldn't be compared with something like a Tesla Powerwall as this is a whole system cost.
Info: The construction of Dinorwig Power Station in North Wales, UK, began in 1974 and cost £425 million, which is equivalent to £4.7Bn in today's money.
Because the water for Dinorwig it's basically free, using R19 would probably add at least £700M (about 15%) to the project, but almost certainly far more than that. Furthermore, and I like water come up I suspect this emulsion well and gradually degrade with use and require either replacing or refurbishing periodically.
When you consider the ongoing performance improvements to battery technology and continued cost reduction, I can't see this technology ever being able to compete with battery storage. It requires more space plus all the connecting pipework and a turbine hall compared to a battery charger and an inverter. And you don't even need a hill of any height.
This is awesome. Cant wait to see the follow up. Is there a timeline when those test sites will be functioning?
At 8:56 - "Will it work in the real world? First demo in Canada validating the idea, and a 500kw demonstrator has started in England" - There has been a hydro plant (not using slurry) in North Wales (Snowdonia) for many years, at Dinorwig. I used to live nearby, and saw the plant several times when family visited me. It is locally known as "Electric Mountain" and pumps water between an upper and a lower reservoir. There are pictures of it on Google Maps.
When using slurry, I would expect wear to become an issue after some time. I get that the particles are ultra-fine, and doubtlessly not diamond ( 🙂), but they will still be more abraisive than water.
The energy to heat water by 1 degree C is equal to the energy of dropping it 400 meters.
Basically the energy to heat it will always be unreasonably high. If you need any heat at all, your heating bill will be way higher than the energy stored. Designs that need to keep the fluid warm are basically unworkable.
Got my popcorn. Waiting for Thunderf00t.😁
It would be interesting to see a calculation on the thermal losses (including frictional losses) associated with pumped storage. Nonetheless, well-done video ! Keep up the good work. ☺
I'm wondering about wear issues on components
3:00 Tea is just a specially configured slurry.
Very interesting. I watch quite a lot of youtubery and notice that many, including this one, use extremely short snatches of video several times over. I mention this because if I'm noticing that, I'm probably not concentrating on the text/commentary. And by contrast, bits of video which are genuinely explanatory are edited down to such short lengths of time that they are pretty well subliminal! Is this because of copyright restrictions? Whereas that shot of one bloke walking towards another bloke seemed totally irrelevant and was shown four times or more! If you're trying to make the video economic to do, more footage of you talking to camera would be acceptable, particularly if it coincides with you making the important points.
Even storyboard or diagrams work.
Temperature control required seems like a lethal Achilles heel. They’ll have to expand the working window
After seeing that slurry, I now have an intense craving for chocolate milk...
shake before use
Another thing that came to mind is how to handle the increased weight and pressure. If the liquid is four times more dense it will also be much heavier and create much higher pressures. Following this line of thought it will also need thicker pipes, stronger dams and heavily beefed up pumps and turbines.
It will also be necessary to build the dams with a much higher security rating. There will also need to be a system for increasing and decreasing the water content of the fluid depending on heavy droughts or rain.
To me this sounds like a pipe dream, very badly thought through.
I love gravity batteries. A 2m long steel weight falling down a slightly wider drill hole can turn a 10mw generator and at 750m deep the geothermal temp should be 1c and air flow enough to pull it up, slowly.
Z- look into barite weighted drilling fluids used for the last century plus to both drive the boring bit and to lift the cuttings out of the bore- water, weighted up higher than the rock or formation they were drilling in.
The system would also have to be completely enclosed any water infiltration into the slurry is going to screw with the density and allow the powdered Stone material to fall out of solution
We have a pumped reservoir system in Massachusetts that has been in use since the late 40s. You can't see it, though, because they hollowed out a mountain and put it in there. Kayakers like to wait by the outflow areas to catch the free ride down the river.
Here is a bad idea that is better than the presented concept. Run a vapor chamber heat pipe to pump water vapor uphill. All you need is a tube, a water source, a vacuum pump to remove air, an array of mirrors to focus solar energy, and two heat exchangers. The reservoir at the top is used to cool the condenser.
I read about this from an article. Dense water for more efficient, small storage. Thanks.
Great idea. But I wonder if the additives will increase the abrasiveness of the fluid, increasing the need for maintenance on the turbines, pumps, and pipes. If it works, great, we will need a mixture of energy storage solutions to make it all work.
Turbine technology is supposed to be subject to a physical limit of around 65%, although I'm not sure if that's just for steam. If it's across the board then their round trip efficiency has to be off.
I am guessing that this slurry formula could be optimized over time to be even more efficient, for example, use of heavier elements in the fine particles, but still retain the correct slurry consistency.
Hmmm.... I can easily think of a few places with warm weather, rough landscape and water shoratges which make reversible hydro mostly moot. They're all around the Mediterranean sea and in places which often enjoy thermal winds and plenty of sunlight, matched with the infamous "duck curve" of photovoltaic vs air conditioning.
Darpa found thousands of pumped hydro potential sites in US. They used satellite imagery. The problem is US doesn't invest in infrastructure now that it has privatized the commons with finance capitalism. Industrial planning and the pumping the commons with state credit is a ghost from the past. The grid has to be expanded to connect the sites, which is the problem. Locating energy storage near grid nodes is a solution.
The benefit with water is it self transports to the upper reservoir in many locations, and is inexpensive and ubiquitous..
(Lead and tungsten are a little pricey by the tonne. - concrete is cheaper, but only ~1/5th as dense - sure it is better than water in density stakes,harder to pump).)
With gravity storage, the maximum the topology can give - is never enough... Never limit to "only so much is required" - the viable minimum may be less, but the maximum yields so much more energy.
So clay water with tannins, aka Slip. Interesting idea on the face of it for geographic advantage, but it still feels like deferred 'free' lunch, like using solar but changing when the bulk of the best light is available in exchange for overnight when it's costing money and not making power.
As a thought experiment, I'd love to see a mercury based energy turbine storage system. 13.6 x the density of water. That would be amazing if it weren't just an absolute environmental nightmare waiting to happen.
You mention to counter the increased viscosity of the slurry, the pipes need to be "thicker". Your language is imprecise. Thicker means the pipe walls have a greater thickness. I think you mean the pipes should be wider. That is, the pipes should have a wider diameter or a greater circumference. A wider pipe allows a greater flow of water in our suburban environment and so this would also pertain to this system using a heavier and slightly more viscous liquid. You're a smart bloke - you should have fixed this. You also said "micro-grid" when the presented graphic said " mini-grid". Science must also include precision and accuracy. I am also curious about the reverse motion video at 11:26, showing water retreating from a reservoir outlet. Maybe your editor was having a negative day.
My question is : since its a closed loop system and you’re reusing the same fluid , so you still need energy to pump the fluid up , right ?
Obviously, but the whole point is that you do it at night when there is excess power from wind, nuclear and gas turbines which cannot be be turned on & off like a switch. The pumped storage on the other hand can be: I have been inside the "magic mountain" at Dinorwig and seen the utterly enormous valves which open almost instantaneously to meet sudden demand - such as millions of people switching on their kettles or flushing the loo at the end of Coronation Street (e.g.). And before anybody laughs, flushing millions of toilets causes a pressure drop which requires (electric) pumps to be turned on to compensate.
Why didn’t I think of this. It is a beautiful solution.
An interesting reservoir to go in for a swim. Drowning won't be a problem.
Great idea. The problem with sustainable energy has always been storage. The only drawback is that it destroys any potential for aquatic ecosystems from existing within the system
find a material that can be filtered back out, and you will find a much higher energy storage.
As you can filter it out going down, and get an easier material (Pure water) to send back up, while sending the material back up via a trolley or something to be remixed, cutting losses dramatically if you can figure it out in an efficient manner.
beat the viscosity and you win an extra level of efficiency.
The total mass being lifted back up is the same regardless of the state it’s in.
As with every gravity based project.... But what if we consider material costs? They never make sense to construct in the end
This is nice and all but traditional cisterns can get topped up by rainfall and I wonder about the abrasion of the microparticles on the turbines, not to mention the required temperature control.
Still indeed cool for smaller scale closed loop systems as a storage solution.
My first thought this was a 50% solution of zinc bromide when I saw the density. But that would not be environmentally friendly. It would be cool because you could have a gravity battery and a flow battery all-in-one system though.
Stored hydro only makes sense if it is pumped to higher elevation using sustainable energy (solar, wind, hydro etc). Whether it is more efficient than battery storage needs properly evaluating but it does involves very large scale engineering with an negative environmental impact when compared with battery or sand storage
That’s the whole point. Pump during excess solar or wind production, generate during high demand. It’s just a large scale battery with much cleaner environmental effects than lithium or sodium batteries. Sand storage is a heat battery; main issues are corrosion of heat extraction tubing.
In the 12:00 chart it should be kWh instead of MWh
For thermal management. Solar thermal and thermal storage are fairly simple tech. Especially if all you need is to heat the fluid before it flows through the turbine. If you need to keep the entire reservoir warm, then “Good Luck with that”.
high density also means they would require large wrok done or energy to move them in upper reservoir, as mass to volume ratio increases
1- The high-density fluid will require more energy to pump to the upper reservoir due to its greater mass. This is because the work done, or the energy required to move the fluid, is directly proportional to the mass of the fluid being lifted.
2- The higher mass and potentially greater viscosity of the fluid could lead to increased mechanical stress on pumps, turbines, and other infrastructure. This could result in more frequent maintenance or the need for more robust equipment.
3-The overall efficiency of the system might be impacted. While the energy density is higher, the additional energy required to pump the fluid could offset some of the benefits. It's crucial to ensure that the energy gained from the increased density outweighs the additional energy cost of pumping.
I have to wonder about the scalability of production of the finely milled mystery ingredient that this would require by the lake full.
If the fluid is 2.5x density of water and as was said it's mixture of water and some particles those particles are required to be off much higher density than water. Thus they are going to settle down over the time of storing the energy. This only can be solved by dissolving which is not having suspended particles.
Considering this technology is to be used for lower elevation the depth of the upper reservoir becomes more important for the for energy capacity comparing to high elevation systems. And if the particles settle down to the bottom they lose the potential energy even if the even if the fluid is forcedly mixed (which cost energy too).
To summarize, this idea looks to me as one of the green energy frauds (like the idea of storing energy in hydrogen collected from electrolysis) and a way to get the grants from the government.
It seems like a major benefit of water is the abundance of large natural resivoirs. Otherwise one could make a large wight of solid lead inside a sufficient casing of concrete and/or steal to achieve over 11x the energy storage density of water by simply raising and lowering the weight with electric motors/generators. A large, solid mass of lead should be relatively simple to render environmentally inert by encasing it in thick enough material. It may need stabilizing mechanisms to keep it from swaying too much in an earthquake, but a solid chunk of lead isn't going to easily seap into and contaminate groundwater like a large reservoir of slury.
Am I missing something? I'd love to hear from some people who actually engineer these systems.
You are re-inventing the wheel...this and many other energy storage systems are already being tried out, notably Tesla storage batteries in Australia to to balance out supply & demand (they have a LOT of daytime solar energy)
Another thought just came to my mind. How does the fluid react to contamination. It seems there is a lot of surface that could happen though.
This is such an obvious solution that I'm actually kinda mad at people who work with slurry for not thinking of this idea
4:01 Sorry for your loss and our loss as a globe.
Let's hope his legacy lives on beyond us all.
And if his projects are anything like this genius solution, I am sure he will.
🙏
Funny the best ways to get energy today are still something Tesla left us as his legacy, truly the creator of modern society
Ultra fine powders aren’t “environmentally friendly”, they’re quite hazardous to inhale and so a threat to all air breathing animal life. As long as the slurry is contained and the powder remains in suspension, it’s not an issue, but when it eventually leaks, or needs to be disposed of, that’s a lot of hazardous waste.
The real 'problem' for this is competition from battery storage. Much cheaper sodium batteries for instance are scaling right now and their storage cost is only a bit over a quarter less than today's battery systems. I do like the idea but batteries are going to get very cheap and very plentiful and they have less downsides as time goes on, lower flammability, lower cost, longer lifespans. My money would be on them.
It is an amazing technological achievement. However it has to be isolated from natural water bodies which means minimal suitable locations unless you do from scratch and there is no way it can be more cost effective than increasingly cheaper chemical batteries.
Oh, R-19 is a bismuth slurry. Imagine doing a dam busters raid on a lake of Pepto Bismol!
Running this system from a large diameter pipeline at a higher elevation to a pipeline at a lower elevation would get rid of all of the concerns about maintaining the fluids temperature.
THANK YOU FOR INFO
Large amounts of surfactants are not "environmental benign".
Though, in fariness, this stuff is basically the same as drilling mud used to pressurize oli/gas wells.
Maybe smaller localized installations would be more competitive. They seem to be on top of that already. Not sure how the system will "age".
Battery prices are coming down quickly and will continue to do so. Utility battery storage is headed towards $70/kwh in China from $95 a year ago.
Grids composed of vehicle and household batteries that are V2G are going to represent a significant sector in energy storage in the future. Fleets of electric school buses when plugged into the grid offer 6,000/kwh or more of storage. A car dealership in the future will have his entire inventory plugged into the grid earning some money from the utility. The tech, like all tech, is changing fast.
You would need massive amounts of this fluid even with the increased density.
Thank you for the informative video. I hope everyone is having a great day. Sheila Mink in New Mexico
Thanks.
I wonder how much energy is needed for the grinding , how often the liquid has to be exchanged and how abrasive the liquid is to the turbines. Heating the storage? Or having a flow heater of how much power? The same principle with another less "proven" fluid is more cost effective? I'd like to see that calculation. Do they need a giant agitator in the reservoir to keep the particles suspended in the fluid, to avoid sedimentation? If that would fails, what would that do to pipes and turbines?
Nice innovation, but what about pump-blade wear because of the thicker fluid ? They have also to in-calculate the possibility of cavitation ?