Liquid Battery

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Ali Tait
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#1 Liquid Battery

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pre65
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#2 Re: Liquid Battery

Post by pre65 »

Ali Tait wrote: Fri Aug 17, 2018 7:39 am Interesting-

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-45179722
Very interesting. I hope they make it work.
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#3 Re: Liquid Battery

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Looking at the publication its got a practical energy density of a 50th or petrol or a theoretical density of a 10th, so even if it works its not a perfect solution unless we are going to have 500l fuel tanks. (If I read the numbers correctly)
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#4 Re: Liquid Battery

Post by jack »

Flow batteries are not a new idea - in 1988 the paper "Rychcik, M.; Skyllas-Kazacos, M. Characteristics of a new all-vanadium redox flow battery. J. Power Sources 1988, 22, 59–67" discussed the idea but I can't find a copy that isn't behind a paywall.

The bottom line is that the Glasgow lot are predicting energy densities of up to 1000Wh/l, which equates to about 3.6MJ/l - to put that in perspective, petrol is about 34Mj/kg (yes, I know that a kg of petrol is more than 1 litre [*]) but we're still talking factors of 10 less energy density. About the same as lithium batteries though...

This has been in discussion for a few days on other fora.

2 years ago this article suggested flow batteries as wildcard for EVs: https://www.idtechex.com/research/artic ... 010075.asp

Current news reports are based on this research at Glasgow: https://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_601603_en.html with the actual paper being published in Nature https://www.nature.com/articles/s41557-018-0109-5

I think we're still a fair way from this being mainstream technology for cars (flow batteries are already fairly well developed for staitc storage) but it's good to see that there's research in the field as lithium batteries with charging stations are far from ideal.

Not just in the developed world: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45084671

[*] Petrol's density is about 0.75kg/l, so its energy density is about 44MJ/l (34*1.3)
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ed
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#5 Re: Liquid Battery

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yeah but no but yeah but......

even considering this is the beginning of a new technology a fuel tank of 500ltrs would not be outragious for something like a bus. By my calculations a 500ltr tank could be 6' x 3' x 10", give or take. Even with the immature technology it might be practical in some circumstances.....

just as a thought, how big is the Tesla battery box in a model S....I think it's quite large if you start comparing to something like 500ltrs

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#6 Re: Liquid Battery

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ed wrote: Fri Aug 17, 2018 1:05 pm yeah but no but yeah but......

even considering this is the beginning of a new technology a fuel tank of 500ltrs would not be outragious for something like a bus. By my calculations a 500ltr tank could be 6' x 3' x 10", give or take. Even with the immature technology it might be practical in some circumstances.....

just as a thought, how big is the Tesla battery box in a model S....I think it's quite large if you start comparing to something like 500ltrs

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That does assume that a bus currently has a 50l tank, checking

https://www.volvobuses.co.uk/en-gb/our- ... tions.html

500L would certainly be possible (as it is). but the 10:1 theoretical maximum would mean that a 5000L one would be needed to be like for like.

Model S battery size seems to be roughly 290cm * 180cm * 10cm (ish). Which is about 500L If I did the numbers correctly.
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#7 Re: Liquid Battery

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So that means pumping half a ton or so of whatever this stuff is out of and in to the car at each fill-up, and increasing the fuel storage capacity at filling stations by a factor of ten, plus some clever logistics around storing “charged” and “spent” fuel. Big problem but not insuperable.
What is the process of “charging” the “fuel”? Would that be done at the forecourt location or would it mean ten times as many tankers, fully laden in both directions? Wherever it’s done, it’s going to be a pretty energy-intensive process.
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