Why Solid Carbon is the Future of Energy Storage
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- Опубликовано: 21 фев 2024
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Energy storage is a huge sector, and growing at a rapid pace - largely due to the mass rollout of renewable energy. Lithium-ion batteries have a part to play in all of this, but they come with their own set of problems, including cost and the use of rare earth materials. This is why I am so interested in thermal batteries - using heat to store energy instead of chemical bonds. Antora energy have an incredible new way of doing this with solid carbon blocks and thermo-photovoltaic panels. So, I got in contact with them!
Credits:
Producer: Ryan Hughes
Research: Sian Buckley and Ryan Hughes
Video Editing: @aniokukade and Ryan Hughes
Music: Joris Šimaitis
#energystorage #engineering #breakthrough 
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Actually in Roman times they were lead.
When I have 1m³ Block i have 6 surfaces 6m² but how far can the TPV panels placed?
another climate change propaganda
You missed that fossil fuels is a feedstock in petrochemicals (plastics) and cement making (flyash); not just heat.
climate change is Primarily due to loss of planetary carbon sink.
the "end world hunger campaign" caused more loss of carbon sink capacity than the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere.
I am a merchant mariner and it would be cool to have one of these in an exhaust boiler so when in port or anchored we don't need to use a oil boiler to generate steam. On ships its one of the ways we use "waste" heat for power. Heating fuel and the ships.
Would not work at all.
@@dragoscoco2173 why not? Instead of using resistive heating you could use steam or exhaust right?
@@cloggedpizza239 Steam has a limit to how hot it can get, exhaust too. You do not need graphite for those temperatures, oil will do just fine.
Also at low temps getting work out of that lukewarm material is subject to the Carnot cycle efficiency of sub 15%.
So unless you transform that heat into electrical at sub15% efficiency to heat the graphite to high temps you will not get much energy back.
I suppose some engineers thought of this and found the oil tank to be the adequate and best case scenario for both usability, weight and price for what it returns.
@dragoscoco2173 I was more referring to heat storage in genral not nessarly grafite but I have heard of other companeis using ceramic with steam. But I beleave our ships exuast only reaches around 400c-600c after the turbo. But I guess it would be inefficient in weight to store enough energy for 3 days at port and may effect stabilty becuase of weight. But maybe the infared pannels could have use.
@@cloggedpizza239 Found a somewhat decent data source. I quote "The team’s design can generate electricity from a heat source of between 1,900 to 2,400 degrees Celsius" and uses multi junction TPV tech which is the most expensive to date achieving 40% efficiency on a tabletop experiment, not the actual battery which is mostly theoretical. So i expect it to perform exponentially poorly below 1900'C and the real life efficiency to be less. TPV sound nice and it would be great to have some, but we do not have a decent way to make any in a usable temperature range.
Let's de-carbonize with pure carbon!
As long as it's not in the atmosphere as CO2, carbon is not a problem so yeah that's the idea. And it's a genius idea, especially if they use carbon from carbon capture
Lol, was going to write the same - Carbon; this time it’s good for the environment.
In batteries seem like the best place for it! Haha
“Carbon Sequestration in Construction” (CSIC) / “Carbon Sequestration in Materials (CSIM) is a bit of a concept I thought of a bit ago.
I have to dig for papers, but it could honestly be a method for CCS. There is a PILE of stuff on Enhanced Weathering in Concrete and all that, but using a PILE of Carbon Black or Carbon Fiber or even just *petrochemicals* made from *Sustainable* Biomass and/or Power-to-X tech.
I can ramble about this all day, but I think it is a really interesting area, although LCA’s may make it less exciting as i think!
Either way it’s worth more amazing coverage like this, at least in my book!
It would give us something useful to do with the carbon we pull from the atmosphere.
Thanks, Z, and colleagues, for another well done video. I'm a 77 year old guy who is constantly encouraged by the brilliant, innovative thinking behind technologies such as this carbon battery and then having the knowledge and guts to start a game changing business. The young men and women of your generation have the future of our planet looking better and better. It's wonderful to see those who speak so negatively about our young people being proven completely wrong so frequently.
@tedbomba6631 - This is a fascinating video and very promising. I'm retired and it's wearying hearing the rising generation of younger scientists and engineers constantly disparaged and denigrated by old timers. For starters, the old timers are simply and demonstrably wrong. Their bias is unreasonable. I've been in the medical field for nearly thirty years and I've seen the medical and biomedical advances coming from fresh young faces for that entire time.
74 year old here and I think about that as well.
ruclips.net/video/kx1Jxk6kjbQ/видео.html
This appears to be a very promising technology. I have one question: where does the carbon come from? Hoping it is sustainable…
Hey , old man, I have a lot of knowledge about these subjects, ask me if you have doubts
I like how he's also literally taking carbon out of the carbon cycle to make these heat reservoirs. The IR mirror returning unused photons back into the reservoir is genius.
Maybe carbon doping to alter frequency of light emission to make solar panel work better. Or tuned antenna solar capture instead of just bandgaps.
that's being looked into I believe I mean we made stuff like mirrors for solar @@brodriguez11000
an IR mirror has been talked about by a TPV graphite energy using liquid tin to heat up the graphite and store it and using tungsten to radiate the glow of energy off the graphite and whatever is left you can cover other sizes using IR mirrors and their so good really this was from MIT from last year and I love it
This would be a good use of solid carbon precipitate from turquoise H2 production, in way it would produce short to medium energy storage with the thermal carbon batteries and long term seasonal / emergency storage with H2, especially when the H2 can be stored in a carbon matrix like some companies are pioneering. This would even be carbon negative if RNG is used.
How does this technology compare to water electrolysis, producing hydrogen and oxygen? From what I can read, the round-trip efficiency , electricity to electricity, is around 40%. Would love to hear the company compare themselves..
Solid graphite is also used for heavy duty arc plasma lances used in steel foundries, carbon arc steel cutting, high-powered searchlights (called arc lights), and more. Great use of this old tech!
Arc lights came to mind almost immediately as they can just run current through the graphite blocks to heat them up. No extra heating coils using Tungsten needed.
Alternative energy storage technology is a very interesting toppic.
On the vid side itself. Clear presented, flowing script without any "breaks" in the narrative. Well chosen pictures for visual representation and the audio balance for voice vs background music is very well done too.
Nothing to add but a round of praise.
These words mean more than you think! Thank you 🙏
Decarbonization is 21st century cathedral/pyramid building.
It is orchestrated human sacrifice for a superstition.
AGW is a superstitious bunk.
At 1700C you would get a theoretical conversion efficiency to electricity of about 75% with a Carnot cycle. It increases with the temperature. I was wondering if you could molten sand as perhaps another option. You have a boiling point of 2230C and in its molten state heat conductivity would increase, and another thing is you get some extra storage capacity from the latent heat when it melts. Also one thing totally left out in the video is leakage of heat. You are up agaisnt the Stefan-Boltzmann law of sigma T^4. How do you mitigate this as T rises?
I also felt the lack of these points. It seems like a laboratory idea that won’t be at the market, maybe never.
Hmmm, I thought that solar plant in Nevada (Crescent Dunes) was molten sand, and I came here to post about it, except it's molten salt. Hmmm. Hmmmmmmmm.
The idea is a called solar thermal power plant, and the technology has been around since the 60s. Its efficiency is around 75% in ideal conditions too.
itsa moltel salt.@@herzogsbuick
Double metal walled insulation won't work?
I've watched many many videos like this for years, new breakthroughs, that never happens! This is that kind of video!
Same here.
Planck is going to be proud of those guys... That mirror in a cavity is real genius.
One question though: how do they prevent glowing graphite to react with air and burn?
I'd be guessing CO2
Surround it with inert gas, such as nitrogen, CO2 or something else.
I realize those gases are not strictly inert, but they are in this context.
@@hansmuller1625 Yes of course changing the atmosphere inside solves the problem, however, they were talking about opening shutters to get the heat out, so I am puzzled.
@@markotrieste The heat shutters could open to another controlled atmosphere with a radiator?
They're probably going to use a refractory glass that is transparent to whatever band of the EM spectrum they need for a specific application.
Maybe Quartz. Maybe Sapphire. Maybe germanium.
That was absolutely fascinating - thank you. You’re a great communicator with a way of describing relatively complex topics in a clear and accessible way.
How efficient is it really?
First the loss in the wind/solar device.
Then the heating of the block.
Then MOVING the block to where it is used.
Then the 40% of turning it back to electricity.
And depending on the use, there are several more layers of energy loss.
It sounds better to me to just use it as a battery on side of generation, acting as a buffer.
Not having to deal with transporting back/forth, batteries.
How well does it compete in that with other battery tech?
It isn't more efficient, kind of dumb that they're reinventing something that doesn't need reinventing but simply done for the sake of decarbonization. If anything sounds like an easy money grab from investors who doesn't understand anything about thermal batteries (I remember there is a molten led thermal battery used with Stirling engine, don't know what has happened to it last time I saw it was 2017). Great example of this is concentrated solar plant, more efficient than photovoltaic. I'm waiting for thunderf00t to make a video and shit on this too lol.
The round trip efficiency was mentioned to be 30-40%, which for me is not very worth it. Even if the renewable energy LCOE is low (0.04-0.05 $ per kwh), with that efficiency you would need to sell it at 0.15$ per kwh just to break even.
If they could raise it to 50-60% round trip efficiency, then we can talk. Because even with Lithium based batteries, the round trip efficiency is between 80 and 90%.
With 50-60% efficiency and the low cost of storage, the overall LCOE would be less than $0.10 per kwh, which is about the same as fossil fuel and nuclear LCOE. And they would still be able to make money at $0.15 per kwh.
Efficiency does not matter, just money gained per cycle per dollar invested
If the cheapest electricity price in a day is 0.00 and 0.25 - would you rather have one 100% efficient battery, or fifteen 40% efficient batteries? You'll make more money with the lower efficiency ones
Yeah I'm wondering if Power-to-Gas (use renewable to great H2) still beats this out. I've heard those systems are way more efficient than people realize. Plus there's no new tech and parts are standardized.
Only use case i see is where you cant bring power otherwise because of.. reasons..
Thank you for another informative video. My son ans I were talking about the need to develop better large scale batteries for the future just yesterday. This sounds like another very effective option with versatility that other sources don't have. I first found out about the properties of heated carbon in welding class fifty years ago. With an arc welder, two carbon rods hooked up to the welder and brought almost touching together, creates the perfect brazing temperature. They glow like heated steel and last for an impressive time.
I am not sure what battery storage you say has a 4-6 year lifespan but Tesla’s Megapack has a 15 year warranty.
Probably it's a capacity lifespan that is so short. Worn out PV panels from a solar farm selling cheap are about 70-80% and cost effective to replace with new PV but still quite usable for many more decades; they just take up more space for the same production.
@@bussdriver - Using Batteries on almost ideal conditions, increases the life span by a LOT... when you have an ambient with very controlled temperature, zero vibrations and very careful charge and discharge, you can reach insane number of cycles... that is why Tesla's Megapack has 15 years warranty
Im not sure about anything about this video, everything he said smells bullshit... 40% efficiency solar panels? no specifics on how the reflection works on practice and ZERO details on how the energy goes in and out.
@@bussdriver The 15 year warranty is a capacity guarantee, soo no there is no massive capacity loss.
The latest Megapacks have a 15 year warranty as their design moved to lithium iron phosphate cells, which is a game changer for the lithium based storage market. Any solution based on lithium ion batteries will have a much lower lifespan for any solution that cycles the battery daily.
Finally, someone focused on the problem of thermal conductivity. This is a brilliant idea. Thanks for the great content!
This seems like a brilliant thermal battery for use in heavy industry, and a suboptimal battery to get electricity out of. There are other ways to store energy & get electricity out, besides lithium ion (which really ought to be reserved for vehicles & the like that require its particular characteristics), that seem more promising to me for storage at grid scale & residential scale - liquid flow & sodium ion come to mind. Different tools for different jobs, and it's great to see how all of them are coming along.
Yep
That is indeed an oft-seen blind spot: not accounting for the continuous development of new technology. Lithium ion will not be used long-term for stationary storage, so comparing the heat battery to this technology doesn't feel right.
And cars.... the first car using sodium ion is already for sale in China. I predict that sodium ion will be the standard for mass-market vehicles and lithium ion only used in the premium segment.
@@arnenl1575grid storage batteries are normally lithium iron (LPO4/LFP)
a different technology which has a much longer life than the lithium ion batteries.
Liquid air and liquid metal batteries are looking like an interesting option for affordable and scalable grid storage, I'm sort of surprised that he didn't mention these as options at the end of the video sodium iron is looking exciting as well.
video suggestion - here you mention at one point the heat in these can be stored for days. could be explore the need for and solutions to seasonal storage be it heat or electricity. so keeping it half a year if we get more renewables in one season vs another. i guess wind and solar counteract each other somewhat but how much and what will we do about the difference. probably not the short term goal but eventually when almost all energy is not made by burning stuff they will need to balance out over seasons.
For very long term storage, the Finnish thermal sand batteries seem like a better solution. At least for stuff like domestic heating.
Lower operating heat (500C) + even cheaper storage medium (sand)
Seasonal storage is where I think chemical fuel synthesis will have a strong chance. A chemical fuel can be stored with zero loss basically indefinitly and their are plenty of already existing peaking powerplants (basically big jet engine turbines connected to a generator) already in place which are going to lose market share to the short term renewable storage solutions. Repurposing these generators into a seasonal powerplant will be effectivly free, at that point it's just a matter of replacing fossil fuel usage with synthesized hydrocarbons made durring times of peak energy availability.
@@CaemmYsWoed it was all around the news last year, but haven't heard about it since. I wonder how much progress they've made, by now.
That is highly unlike to be cost effective and/or it won't pay back itself ever. If you think how many charge/discharge cycles you get out of your storage over its lifetime vs the cost to build and maintain it, getting only a single cycle in a year makes the equation super difficult...
@@DerMacko "cycles" is not a valid unit here. What you want to know is yearly returns, which is energy provided per cycle X number of cycles per year X average price per kilowatt (assuming you can completely discharge, which is another factor)
If you can only do a single yearly cycle, but that one cycle provides steady heating for 6 months, know it doesn't sound that bad
Insulation. Very important part you left out. Very difficult at these very high temperatures.
How they keep O2 out and what they use for insulation are almost certainly proprietary. OTOH, I'm sure the insulation is silicate or borosilicate glass bricks, like the tiles on the shuttle or starship.
Concise, succinct, and clear enunciation conveying an interesting concept. This has excited my mind and curiosity. Well done.
Just supersized storage heaters! Old tech upgraded!
I could imagine one of these being installed at somewhere with a constant need of heat like a large swimming pool and its charging only turned on when "the price is right". This would save them moment and reduce their useage of natural gas and offer themselves as a power-sink to the grid
If you got a swimming pool full of water, you already have a huge thermal battery. Heat it slightly warmer when energy is cheap.
Considering they do not hold energy for more than "days" it is kind of wasteful for a small size house energy storage.
@@Oktokolo true, I was thinking that battery could help them activate that whilst keeping a steady pool temperature
I would be interested to know how they contain and insulate the carbon blocks if the are hot enough to melt steel.
yea that question also arose to me.
he said 3000 celcius stable, steel is 1500
Non metallic storage Like heat shield tiles, ceramics. stuff like that.
Silica aerogel fiberglass around the graphite, steel around the silica aerogel.
Also ... what do they use as their heating element so it doesn't melt or oxidize. And howcome graphite doesn't burn in the air?
Great video. It was well produced and easy to follow. Thanks.
Great video, great technology; and a very cool sponsor! I signed up. Thanks Z!
A suggestion for a script edit: at 1:07 you say "...many magical properties..." I know it's just a figure of speech, but you are a science oriented channel. Maybe leave magic for other types of thinkers. Great video, though.
Science is magic! Just because we understand (almost) exactly how it works doesn't make it any less magic!
could you develop on what materials are used to thermally insulate a 2000C graphite core and on the photocells able to survive at such temperature?
More graphite. Just thicker so it’s only hot in the middle. After that, glass fibres
There's Starlite and silica aerogel.
@@JohnDoe-ji5wgone is getting wasted as it isolates, the other is super expensive.
@@niceshotapps1233?
@@theairstig9164 graphite as very well described in the video is a very good thermal conductor, in deed as good as aluminum, not an insulator.
a lot of effort to build a giant barbecue grill.
I want to see how they reliably guarantee that no air can enter the "battery" over a life span of 30 years. At these temperatures, they would need argon as an inert gas to prevent the graphite from igniting. If air will enter those red-hot "batteries", they will just go up in smoke (or CO2, that is, besides probably some not-so-healthy nitrogen compounds). Hence they also will need a completely IR-transparent but very durable "window" to harvest the heat. Mixed materials, mixed thermal expansion coefficients, frequent heating cycles over a wide range... that's what makes mountains crumble and housings rupture.
I don't say it's impossible, but it's surely not as cheap as announced.
Has the heat extraction been tested in an industrial setting? If so, at what temperature?
And, at what scale.
Always "Heat batteries! Renewable!" never "Heat batteries! Usable!"
good thermal storage, but practically useless as energy storage. got it.
Ok this is interesting, but why not just use nuclear power instead?
Absolutely. "Climate change." How many people have to die of starvation or freezing to death before we stop our governments from spending our tax dollars on this scam.
The economics of nuclear don't make sense when you can take virtually free energy from excess renewable energy and "store" it in heat form for industrial uses, far cheaper than even natural gas.
You mentioned that materials like concrete or sand are not effective because they can't transfer energy fast enough. This, while true, hides the fact that the biggest limiting factor for emitting/absorbing energy is the ratio of volume and surface.
While sand is not great at conducting heat, you can exponentially increase its surface area by changing its form (for example, creating a shallow layer of sand just using gravity). Once it's surface area has increased, heating and cooling becomes way faster.
This is something you can't easily change the shape of a graphite block, though, so you're limited to only use the pre-existing shape
When I was a kid we used solid carbon capture from the heating system. We called it soot, in the chimney
you could have made this video 5 minutes if you didn't repeat things
I agree, but the repeat was varied and endurable. I liked the video--a lot--overall. Thank for the video. Itis great. Keep up the good work. :-)
5 minutes would mean less video to watch
No way in 5 minutes. This is a very detailed and complete video. Very well done
Okay you have been temporarily subscribed to. Make more really good videos like this one!
Thanks for another informative video
Industries in the business of creating generators, motors, or motor applications typically use thermo-piles (carbon blocks shorting out the electrical output... and huge fan driven heat exchangers to ambient air) to "waste" the energy (i.e. load their systems being tested).
So interesting!! And so many applications
13:00 this is why the periscope vertical solar panel stack idea I've been playing with may be able to help resolve that issue, by reflecting unused solar radiation down a chute of angled PV panels.
For solar panels instead of reflecting the unabsorbed light out into space you could angle the mirror to bounce the light into some ultra-black painted solar water heater, or a heat block, or something akin to those to make use of the energy that'd otherwise be wasted.
Just putting the water lines or whatever underneath the panels would be good, but with mirrors you could concentrate that heat.
Water lines attached to the bottom of solar panels are a thing. They get used to heat water that can then be used for things like heating a pool. And come with the additional benefit of increasing the efficiency of the solar panel meaning more electricity.
Thanks, well done.
thank you, very interesting
worked in energy and this would be a game changer for many industries even if the conversion back to electricity is only 30%.
buying excess energy to fill up batteries at zero cost would not only net the company a profit but also help the grid.
Great video!
You put together great vids. Thanks. That 2000 C temperature is the really big ticket item cause it makes steel and concrete customers. It really can displace a chunk of fossil fuel usage which to now no-one has had an answer. Thanks for the news.
Future is bright,we just have to survive till then!🙌🏼
Thermal battery heat could be used to enhance the expansion stage of a compressed gas battery system (eg. Energy Dome). In the preheat stage before expansion, additional heat from the heat battery (eg. Antora) increases energy input to the turbogenerator for higher power output. Energy is stored as compressed gas, recovered heat of compression, and thermal battery heat.
Advantages include 1. a (resistively heated)thermal battery can absorb energy spikes that a mechanical compressor cannot 2. thermal battery heat can increase turbogenerator output on demand 3. thermal battery heat can "make up" for reduced gas pressure and lost reheat energy as a compressed gas battery system discharges. 4. colocated battery systems utilize the same grid connection. Therefore resistively heated thermal batteries are complementary to compressed gas energy storage and with the variability(intermittent wind/sun) of renewable energy production.
I think this would work. I had a similar idea. Also, they have been using the idea of molten salt as it is also very prominent and can be extracted easier as it is a liquid and can be passed through a heat exchanger, although the system might be a little more costly it would be more efficient , With reflection, shiny surfaces and highly insulative materials about 1 foot of insulation would be totally enough also the larger the volume the less service area, shape also matters. A sphere has the lowest surface area per unit volume. A square cube is also decent. A container is not really that good but if you put two of them side-by-side or four of them, side-by-side t and two on top of them, you would only have to insulate the exterior walls. I’m guessing highly reflective, interior walls, high temperature insulatating bricks in the inner then Rockwool insulation then maybe regular fiberglass for total of about 16 inches should be very insulative. Of course you could go further as it is such a high delta T
hmmm that reflection idea is very interesting, what if you mounted a mirror at the back of the PV and a one way mirror in front of the PV
then the sun would deliver its light to the PV as it is allowing to pass thru at the front, but can never escape back into the air because of the mirror and one way mirror (loop), feasable? i got the idea from the old ruby lasers, wich has such a one way mirror to bounce the light continuesly making it more powerful
Impressive project
Lithium Ion storage also has the inconvenient habit, at high currents, of spontaneously combusting into a flamethrower that can't be stopped and gets more intense the more energy is stored in the battery. Hot enough to break the bonds in concrete or melt steel. And that's before we start talking about the damage to the environment.
Awesome!
Great stuff Rob. Why not explore converting plastic into 3d printing filaments?
How is that different to coil burning plant? How often do they need to replace the carbon cubes?
great video dood :)
its sounds like a great idea . where do they get the carbon from ? do they dig it up or make it ?
Makes sense for heat applications but 40% efficiency is a big loss if the main use is to use it as storage
Interesting to think early nuclear tech used giant piles of graphite bricks - it was a nice material to work with - soft enough to be machined but with good physical properties, and a lot of interesting things are coming out of that research.
A yield of 40% on light to electricity is awesome!
Graphite thermal storage sounds like a winner....cheers.
Any problem with materials (others than graphite/graphene) inside the "battery" reaching temperatures >2.000⁰C? I.e.: electricity>heat & heat>electricity converting system's materials?
Could this be used to store energy for neighborhoods? In The Netherlands we have for instance exces heat from factories being used to heat the homes of neighboring houses. If this could be used for that aswell then you can utilise the high efficincy of heat capacity over the lowe elctricity one.
Smart. For processes the need heat energy an efficiency of around 90% seems very attractive.
When I was a glassblower, I accidentally ruined my graphite mold by placing it in a kiln. It became porous after glowing red for a while. The heat was at 1050C
Depends on how much air got in to burn the poor thing. This will be a major issue in this type of energy storage too.
What I do know is that carbon has a really high melting point compared to other elements.
Maybe could be used to make clinker used for cement manufacturing.
From memory aluminium smeltering uses carbon as electrodes, so perhaps potential there?
Less chance of fire than li ion. Already had 2 battery fires here in OZ in grid storage setups.
Article suggestion: Energy Dome CO2 energy storage. The first full scale dome is under construction right now, and they reckon they can hit 75-80% RTE to in a 20MW/200MWH configuration, IOW solving overnight solar storage, which is 'good enough' for most of the world's population which are reasonably close to the equator, and darn handy for the rest of us.
each home should be equipped with such a device, and have a way to use the stored heat either for electricity generation or actual heat (cooking, HVAC, etc)
Exactly the same thought struck me! So much more efficient than converting electricity back into heat again...
the clip about CA energy being worth zero or negative dollars at certain times of day brings a frightening thought into view. If the value of the power drops to zero because we got good at it, we're going to have one of two things: either the power companies will drag their heels to preserve their incomes, or the power companies are going to shrink, aggregate, and/or disappear. Nothing runs on no input. If we make renewable energy and storage too good, and it knocks out power companies' financial survival, I don't know what will happen after that. But it will be very unstable.
What are the mirrors made out of so they don’t melt if you’re dealing with temperatures hot enough to melt steel?
They are cooled because the "solar" cells/electric interconnections.., also won't resist these temperatures.
Can I use OnShape offline? Can I save the files in a standard format locally?
Hi, sounds like a really neat technology. Great video the only thing I would query is where you got a lifespan of 4-6 years for Lithium Ion storage? Most consumer batteries come with a 10 year warranty to be at 80% capacity same as EV's. There is no way they are going to give a 10 year warranty on something that will only last 4 years. I suspect the two technologies would complement each other rather than replacing either.
would it be possible that for solar pv panels, instead of reflecting the low energy photons, could you instead capture them as heat and further add to the heat in the batteries? Either using some kind of heat pump or heating water to turn a turbine to get more electricity.
What is the resistive element made out of? Tungsten? How is it mounted? Interesting idea. I wonder what the LCOE for this actually works out at (or more significantly, would with a bit of volume)
I wanted to use slate tiles, because the color would be useful for the thermal mass of the walls of my earthship, but it seems that I could also use them in direct contact with the metal parts of my rocket mass heater.
Slate tiles would be really good, but it's rather expensive in France, probably because it's a fashionable color and material.
The only problem is that it's difficult to find for free or really cheap, compare to all the materials I already have (stones and clay tiles).
Maybe I already have stones with similar properties, but in a temperature range lower than 1000°C (pyrolysis)
Salt is another way to store heat. When the salt melts it takes in a lot of heat. When it freezes, it gives up that heat. The trick is to get a substance that has a very high melting point - and of course, a way to contain it in something that doesn't melt or dissolve.
@@acmefixer1 I know but I want low tech and solid.
A lot of hassle for a few m² of surface area.
I will probably keep it as simple as possible and after enough testing I will make modifications if I find that the heat is escaping too much too quickly or other problems.
Thermal does look like a pretty good option. If nothing else, during the night when people are asleep, money is being spent on getting wind plants to curtail. Actually increasing demand overnight would be helpful for the folks who have to balance the grid. "Filling the bath" they call it.
Calcium chloride has better potential for energy storage.
Melting point 750 C;
Boiling point 1935 C.
So if you have high temperature pipes, pumps and valves (eg aluminium oxide) you can pump the liquid salt into heat exchanger or industrial furnace etc.
It has great potential for solar thermal because sunlight can be focussed by mirrors straight into a CaCl2 heater. Very efficient.
Okay, I'm convinced. Where do we buy this?
Now what would be the cost of a 100 kWH version for home use? I have lots of solar power for weeks at a time...but my main cost is storage for the cloudy weeks.
I thought this would be a video where the company is a startup with no real world products in use. Cool video, especially the thermal/solar cells
Now that I’ve watched, I can acknowledge that this is an excellent presentation of why lithium ion batteries are not the answer. I congratulate you on at least covering the question of electricity to heat back to electricity losses. I’m still willing to bet that this doesn’t turn out to be the answer, but I give them points for at least discussing the hard questions that others have glossed over in the past.
I wonder how thrilled the people who are currently terrified of transporting nuclear waste quantities that are several orders of magnitude lower will be about having all these trucks transporting boxes with contents at 2000-3000 degrees centigrade. Each wreck would create an instant blast furnace.
I'm just thinking about how nice would be to have a couple of blocks of these in your floor. Heated up real good and warm the house all winter.
i feel like a certain Tim Cast Host might explode from excitement watching this
Whats the energy efficiency if used to generate electricity with conventional steam to turbine? Is it near %40?
You don't mention the insulation between the carbon and the container. Maybe that is proprietary information? It must have some pretty amazing properties.
Power-to-Heat and Power-to-Heat-to-Power are really neat methods!
This is almost like a thermal IR carbon laser - I am very excited by this. Is there a shortage of high-grade graphite - I thought it was kind of rare? How does this tech function at lower grades of graphite?
I've also signed up for onshape - this might be the tool I have been looking for if I can run it on my ipad.
Great video 👍 BR, Per (Denmark)
Impressive technology, but you’ll need a lot of trailers to have a meaningful impact for most industrial processes. A standard 40 foot trailer is 67m2. Even if we assume 50m3 graphite at 2 ton/m3 density and a 2 MJ/tonC specific heat with a 500C working temperature range, you get a maximum of 100GJ or 28 MWh of heat storage. This may be 5 times the ~5MWh capacity of the best containerized LFP battery storage systems, but with
I missed, how do you charge that battery and why not using any energy dense rock?
Impressed, but my big question is the durability of the carbon blocks in use in their "charging" and "discharging" cycles. Is the 30 year claim valid ? Would it be useful for district heating?
how does infrared-voltaic works so long as the material gives off the "glow" what happens at lower temps? would Stirling engines work?
Does antora sell tpv panels to individuals in small quantities and if not who does?
Sounds great 👍 hopefully they’re stackable. Surprising to know the we are at point of wasting abundant renewable energy
Aerogels have a heat resistance of up to 3000 and are excellent insulators. I wonder if they could be used to make these more efficient?
How does one get started on helping with the clean energy movement? I have ideas, but lack funding for materials to prototype or design projects.
The storage and heat emission is absolutely groundbreaking. Possibly combining the solid carbon heatsource with the Ambri liquid metal batteries could be a thing. From memory they are about 70 odd percent efficient at converting from heat to electricity.
All comes down to cost. Ambri is potentially better for electricity and this is better (one of the only options) for industrial process conversion. The real cost and life of each device and the cost of surplus electricity impact the viability and noone can accurately gauge that from youtube videos marketing the tech. Ambri has complexities mostly around the ceramic components.
There must be clever ways of avoiding energy losses. If the environment where the heating occurs heats up too (so not only the carbon)- then that heat could be used, perhaps for pre-heating. If the glowing medium is a plate with infrared cells on both sides, the escaping not converted infrared heats up the space around it and could be used again too. But it seems hard to find a perfect and yet cheap and practical insulating method. The heat lost to the environment will be lost....I have actually no idea how good insulation can be this days.
i would use the excess to produce hydrogen through electrolysis and store into high pressure carbon fiber tanks like a breathing method or inflating a balloon then recycle the water and ultracapacitors as a middle battery to help transitions and provide a steady flow when switching hydrogen or solar
なるほどね、今までレンガの蓄熱は知っていたが炭素の塊は初耳。
日本でも春と秋の晴天時は太陽光発電のエネルギーが余り始めているからその余剰電力を蓄熱して冬の暖房に使えれば理想なんですけどね。
秋から冬まで熱エネルギーを蓄えなくても良い、冬の晴れた日の日射による熱を夜の暖房に回せるだけでも結構CO2は削減出来ると思うがそこまでは難しいでしょうね。
I'd like to see that kind of thermal battery (miniature, of course), to warm the cabin and especially the battery of an EV in winter and unlock the far north where EVs currently are mostly impractical.
I missed how much kwh of heat a cube with 1mx1mx1m can store and how long?
Yeah the presentation was pretty lacking in technical details,. I want to know how much electricity has been produced and what price? How fast is it ramping up, is it going to be exponential growth rate??
I think it might still be unimpressive and they’re working on that.
The project is inspired by the properties that are already promising, and they try to improve the yield/capacity/safety/modularity.
Because it's technological pop video, monetising people's need to hear about ever new magical technologies. There are so many of these on RUclips, it's incredible.
I use resisitively heated silica sand to store excess daytime solar energy and then release the heat into my house by diverting the furnace plenum through pipes embedded in the sand... I never even considered graphite as an alternative.
What are the figures? How much do you put in and how much electricity comes out for instance?