Liquid Metal Battery

Ambri is commercializing a novel grid-scale electricity storage technology
invented at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
»» LOW-COST: Ambri achieves low cost through the use of inexpensive, earth-abundant
materials, and a simple, easy-to-manufacture design that capitalizes on the economies of
scale inherent to electro-metallurgy.
»» EASY TO DEPLOY: Ambri’s liquid metal battery is emissions-free, operates silently, and
has no moving parts. As a result, it can be sited in the middle of the city or the middle
of the desert without special regulatory or permitting requirements.
»» FLEXIBLE: In the world of electricity storage, Ambri’s liquid metal battery performs
both like a tractor and a race car. It can respond to dispatch signals in milliseconds
— making it a great ancillary services resource — and it can store up to twelve
hours of charge — making it a great energy resource as well.
»» LONG LIFESPAN: Ambri’s all-liquid design avoids cycle-to-cycle capacity fade as the
electrodes are reconstituted with each charge through an alloying/de-alloying process.
This enables the battery to exceed 70% round-trip efficiency without degradation.

I had caught a clip of the guy who invented this named professor Donald Sadoway on of all places the Colbert Report and he seemed so out of place and awkward but also sounded very certain that this will change the world. I looked it up and it’s just a battery I thought until I caught on that the materials used are common abundant and cheap.

Wish I had some cash to invest but anyway. The availability of this means that solar, wind, and even extra energy that is being wasted from conventional plants can now is stored for peak needs. This is actually a huge development and I can’t wait to see how this impacts the future of power production.

I didn’t grasp all the technical jargon but here are the links I am interested in what everyone here thinks might come of this and what other aspects of life it has the potential to affect. Thanks.

www.ambri.com...
www.ambri.com...

Oh Bill Gates backed as well
gigaom.com...

Impact on climate

Why does this guy come to mind?

Sounds good.
The claim that it can store 12 hours of charge is rather silly because it depends on the rate of discharge. A tiny button cell can hold a year of charge if connected to a wrist watch, but connect it to a10 watt bulb and it'll be flat in seconds.

reply to post by BrianG


That's so not funny. This is super serial. NYC has no power right now. That means, time square has no advertisements to promote the representation of our humanity!

reply to post by VoidHawk


Yeah I am not sure what that is gaged on. Average load maybe.

Originally posted by Grimpachi
reply to post by VoidHawk

 

Yeah I am not sure what that is gaged on. Average load maybe.

Doesn't tell us much though.



A couple other things that would be nice to know would be, chances of explosion... cost of materials. Antimony is primarily mined in China... like rare Earth metals.

There are some clues on the website though. It says cells are packed into refrigerator sized unit, then into a 40ft shipping container. Which will store 2MWh.

An electric car rated at 45m/100kWh will only get about 200 miles with a refrigerator's size worth of batteries in it.*

Depending on cost and longevity, this may still be better for electric cars, maybe not. It's not really the intended design given that they are looking at mobile 40ft containers to hold them. But it is something people are probably wondering about.

reply to post by boncho

Exotic batteries? I just hope they invent a better electrical mouse trap before people decide that tiny combustion engines in all of our portable electronics is a good idea. Miniaturized moving parts? Heat? Peak oil?

Bad news, all the way across.

reply to post by boncho


I think the whole point is that they do not need rare earth metals and are cheap to produce also I may be wrong but the longevity may be well above what is available.

Originally posted by Grimpachi
reply to post by boncho

 

I think the whole point is that they do not need rare earth metals and are cheap to produce also I may be wrong but the longevity may be well above what is available.

Look at the diagram, the main ingredients are Salt, Magnesium and Antimony.

Antimony (Latin: stibium) is a toxic chemical element with symbol Sb and atomic number 51. A lustrous gray metalloid, it is found in nature mainly as the sulfide mineral stibnite (Sb2S3). Antimony compounds have been known since ancient times and were used for cosmetics; metallic antimony was also known, but it was erroneously identified as lead. It was established to be an element around the 17th century.

For some time, China has been the largest producer of antimony and its compounds, with most production coming from the Xikuangshan Mine in Hunan.

It's not classified as a "rare earth" I guess, but I wouldn't say it's abundant either:

The abundance of antimony in the Earth's crust is estimated at 0.2 to 0.5 parts per million, comparable to thallium at 0.5 parts per million and silver at 0.07 ppm.[8] Even though this element is not abundant, it is found in over 100 mineral species.

en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by boncho


I couldn't find comaparable numbers to yours but I think lithium is harder to come by so a new tech should be useful.

The global lithium resource is estimated to be about 39 Mt (million tonnes)

Originally posted by Grimpachi
reply to post by boncho

 

I couldn't find comaparable numbers to yours but I think lithium is harder to come by so a new tech should be useful.

The global lithium resource is estimated to be about 39 Mt (million tonnes)

I'm not saying it's not useful, or doesn't have potential, I was merely pointing out some areas that are a little cloudy, and also that some of the information leaves a bit out of the equation.

In any case, antimony seems to be far cheaper than lithium:

Lithium
Antimony

And the process they use to store energy is extremely cool. I would like to see this take off if it is feasible.

I think the more innovative our scientists are for finding ways to store power the better for the world over but, despite however brilliant some of these inventions are, they always seem controlled by government because he who controlls our power sources has a huge controln over the masses and the profits from power are enormous.

Most ordinary people immediately hope these inventions will be made available but not one of our governments is altruistic enough to let this control slip. In the UK when we heard about fracking and the dropping of the cost of fuel it had effected in the USA it seemed like a real solution. However, the tests in the South were not only carried out in one of our exclusive villages where people like my Cousin an ex JP lived, so all hell would be guaranteed to break out when the machines started working on the beautiful landscape there, but we were told by some 'expert' that in the UK things are very different and we were not like the USA (all land here and its mineral rights belong to the Crown, so it certainly could not be 'giving' benefits to us as we would ideally have expected.

We also had a very innovative little factory in The Isle of Wight making fantastic small wind turbines to fit onto one's house, top of blocks of flats etc but - once the public got interested and wanted cheaper electricity and a bit of control by making their own power, suddenly the factory could not get any further funding to expand and it went out of business. So no-one could benefit from its very clever idea.

There is a terrible vested interest in oil still and until that 'interest' is changed or goes away, we will in all honesty be unlikely to see much of any of these new inventions. Wave power for countries with tidal waters seems to be an ideal non-polluting and reliable source of power, but hardly any research is carried out into that and I wonder why? Sorry to sound so sceptic and, if we do see the tide change in favour of these inventions, I will be one of the first to cheer.

It being a molten salt battery, I don't know if it's a great idea for a car. But for a house or power line backup, it might be ok.

I don't want to be doused with a nice dose of 700C molten salt, white hot flaming magnesium and some antimony for sauce in the event of a collision.