Electricity Storage alternative to lithium

[Hillhater]

Thermal power storage is already in use…molten salt, hot rocks, sand, ceramic blocks, etc….but all rely on steam turbines or similar to convert the heat back to electricity at low efficiency. (30% ?)
But it seems that direct heat to electricity is becoming practical using high temperature Thermal Photo Voltaic cells with higher efficiency.(>40%)
Direct heat to electricity!

Thermophotovoltaic efficiency of 40% - Nature

Two-junction TPV cells with efficiencies of more than 40% are reported, using an emitter with a temperature between 1,900 and 2,400 °C, for integration into a TPV system for thermal energy grid storage.

www.nature.com

 

[fill]

And since petrol/gasoline is a very energy dense and combustible fuel we can have 'gas' powered evs, deisel heater evs and even coal stoked evs wahey!! even a baked plastic juice fueled ev is on the horizon..

how could that go wrong??

 

[JackFlorey]

Thermal power storage is already in use…molten salt, hot rocks, sand, ceramic blocks, etc….but all rely on steam turbines or similar to convert the heat back to electricity at low efficiency. (30% ?)
But it seems that direct heat to electricity is becoming practical using high temperature Thermal Photo Voltaic cells with higher efficiency.(>40%)

It would make sense if there is another use for the low quality waste heat (for example, in a water heater, or for some industrial process.)

 

[Hillhater]

It would make sense if there is another use for the low quality waste heat (for example, in a water heater, or for some industrial process.)

Sure, but the TPV technology only seems to become efficient to a practical level (40%+), at high temperatures.
and whilst is may be an improvement over existing turbines, ..even then it still “leaves a lot on the table” ..with more than 50% of the energy not recovered !
..So yes , there is a lot of wasted energy still to be captured.

 

[batteryroot]

I've wonder why tech like this hasn't advanced further (cost prohibitive?). See article.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba8976

 

[DaLanMan]

:pens mouth:: :auses to think:: Why do we not have a portable energy generating unit that has near molten aluminum in it?

Common sense and self preservation kicked in for someone?

We once almost built a rocket... that used nuclear bombs as motile force.

Famously the concept creator literally said "I was a bit worried at first when I realised I needed an equation for how many people would die as a side effect of each launch"

Every once in a while humans realise that while it might be really cool, it may be equally dumb, someday I hope to figure out that bit of wisdom..

 

[batteryroot]

:pens mouth:: :auses to think:: Why do we not have a portable energy generating unit that has near molten aluminum in it?

Common sense and self preservation kicked in for someone?

We once almost built a rocket... that used nuclear bombs as motile force.

Famously the concept creator literally said "I was a bit worried at first when I realised I needed an equation for how many people would die as a side effect of each launch"

Every once in a while humans realise that while it might be really cool, it may be equally dumb, someday I hope to figure out that bit of wisdom..

how about a lump of cellular matrix? Stack of BioCells Converting ATP to Electrical Power and Possible Applications | MRS Online Proceedings Library (OPL) | Cambridge Core

 

[DaLanMan]

Somewhere between the millenium march (I was an IT consultant during that death march) and going back to school to get my Ms I got involved with a project running out of ... oh lets just go with a school with a good reputation for producing. I was helping build a tank system in which they had a custom bred biota with the goal of producing viable household level current out of it. It .. Kind of worked, if you had the required 2300 Msq space to put it in...

It has been a thing for a while, I think it was somewhere in the 70's that someone realised biota can be used to produce a lot of things, so far the best way to do it is grow oily algy, harvest, turn it into bio-diesel and run a genny...

Turns out over-turning 140 years of ICE is not easy.