A battery system, combined with capacitors capable of massive power? This should be the answer to electrical storage problems.
Is it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_battery
http://www.mpoweruk.com/flow.htm
How do we build one at home?
.
Paul
NOW your thinking outside the box....
very nice indeed.
thanks for starting a topic in a much needed area.
respectfully
Chet
Paul:
Isn't a Maxwell Boostcap sort of a hybrid of a battery (electrolyte) and a supercap? They can hold a lot of energy and charge up very, very fast.
Thanks for starting this topic.
Bill
Yes, but they are ruinously expensive. Also, I tremble to think what happens if you are in a car crash and a charged supercap is crushed and shorts out.
We should be able to build a flow battery.
This is the first of 15 patent applications from Enervault:
http://www.pat2pdf.org/pat2pdf/foo.pl?number=20100003545
The crucial equations of their Fe, Cr reactions are supposed to be in "Fig 4" which seems to be missing.
There are batteries in development where the current to charge the battery is far less than the current output of the battery. Not OU just a change of electrolyte. Charge with freshwater to polarize the electrodes and then dump the electrolyte and add saltwater. Cool thing is that these generators could interrupt less than pure water flow heading for the ocean and mix with seawater in the plant. Do basically what a marsh does.
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/march/saline-rechargeable-battery-032811.html
Here are patent applications from Enervault:
20140272512 Redox Flow Battery System Configuration For Minimizing Shunt Currents
20140272485 Flow Batteries with Modular Arrangements of Cells
20140272483 Systems and Methods for Rebalancing Redox Flow Battery Electrolytes
20140186731 Operating A Redox Flow Battery With A Negative Electrolyte Imbalance
20140057141 PRESSURE BALANCING OF ELECTROLYTES IN REDOX FLOW BATTERIES
20130084506 MONITORING ELECTROLYTE CONCENTRATIONS IN REDOX FLOW BATTERY SYSTEMS
20130084482 REBALANCING ELECTROLYTES IN REDOX FLOW BATTERY SYSTEMS
20130022852 Porous Electrode with Improved Conductivity
20130011704 Redox Flow Battery System with Multiple Independent Stacks
20130011702 Redox Flow Battery System with Divided Tank System
20120308856 SHUNT CURRENT RESISTORS FOR FLOW BATTERY SYSTEMS
20110223450 Cascade Redox Flow Battery Systems
20110117411 Redox Flow Battery System for Distributed Energy Storage
20110045332 Redox Flow Battery System for Distributed Energy Storage
20100003545 Redox Flow Battery System for Distributed Energy Storage
http://www.pat2pdf.org
Germanys salt water car - it's yours if you have 1.7 million dollars in your pocket:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=141&v=RqLpqR0SPnQ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=141&v=RqLpqR0SPnQ)
There is something on the rise:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/5-billion-race-build-better-040103658.html
This battery quest is bullshit. They could have been using Thorium as a nuclear fuel and producing Hydrogen from water or methane or oil or sugar whatever forty years ago. Solar and wind and waves sounds nice but it is bullshit. Take the nuclear waste and ship it on a throwaway rocket to the Sun. There isn't enough chemical energy left to even manufacture enough solar panels to even come close to present energy demands. Never mind siting networking etc. and batteries suppose to be some kind of solution? They have the technology to store and transport hydrogen giving you hundreds of times the power density of any battery. Existing engines could be easily retrofitted for hydrogen fueling or just start making fuel cells. What the hell is Bill Gates thinking about investing in batteries for?
Thorium? I'm green about this. Is it so bad? Even without an alternative?
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=thorium+reactor (https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=thorium+reactor)