New battery could change world, one house at a time Ceramatec

[infringer]

Inside Ceramatec's wonder battery is a chunk of solid sodium metal mated to a sulphur compound by an extraordinary, paper-thin ceramic membrane. The membrane conducts ions -- electrically charged particles -- back and forth to generate a current. The company calculates that the battery will cram 20 to 40 kilowatt hours of energy into a package about the size of a refrigerator, and operate below 90 degrees C.

This may not startle you, but it should. It's amazing. The most energy-dense batteries available today are huge bottles of super-hot molten sodium, swirling around at 600 degrees or so. At that temperature the material is highly conductive of electricity but it's both toxic and corrosive. You wouldn't want your kids around one of these.

The essence of Ceramatec's breakthrough is that high energy density (a lot of juice) can be achieved safely at normal temperatures and with solid components, not hot liquid.

Ceramatec says its new generation of battery would deliver a continuous flow of 5 kilowatts of electricity over four hours, with 3,650 daily discharge/recharge cycles over 10 years. With the batteries expected to sell in the neighborhood of $2,000, that translates to less than 3 cents per kilowatt hour over the battery's life. Conventional power from the grid typically costs in the neighborhood of 8 cents per kilowatt hour.

Re-read that last paragraph and let the information really sink in. Five kilowatts over four hours -- how much is that? Imagine your trash compactor, food processor, vacuum cleaner, stereo, sewing machine, one surface unit of an electric range and thirty-three 60-watt light bulbs all running nonstop for four hours each day before the house battery runs out. That's a pretty exciting place to live.

And then you recharge. With a projected 3,650 discharge/recharge cycles -- one per day for a decade -- you leave the next-best battery in the dust. Deep-cycling lead/acid batteries like the ones used in RVs are only good for a few hundred cycles, so they're kaput in a year or so.

Source: http://www.heraldextra.com/news/article_b0372fd8-3f3c-11de-ac77-001cc4c002e0.html

[Goat]

@ infringer...Thanks for posting this!!!

That's great news hope it makes it to market soon without any obstructions, it would surely be a big boost in alternative energy markets at the $2K/5KW price, very nice 

Just one example I could see is charging during late night or early morning at offpeak power rates and being used during peak power periods to save the grids from crashing and save people money even if they aren't on solar panels to start.

Wonder what that refrigerator sized battery would look like in the back of my pickup truck....LOL

Regards,
Paul   

[onthecuttingedge2005]

There may be some things.

1. how will the depleted Sodium Sulfate be recycled?
2. if people dump this in their garbage it will highly corrode the soils and turn acidic especially when it rains or leaks into ground water.
the ground if contaminated will become to corrosive for plant life.

this is the product of a Sodium and Sulfate Battery after it is depleted molten or not.

Sodium sulfate is the sodium salt of sulfuric acid. Anhydrous, it is a white crystalline solid of formula Na2SO4 known as the mineral thenardite; the decahydrate Na2SO4·10H2O has been known as Glauber's salt or, historically, sal mirabilis since the 17th century. Other solid is the heptahydrate, which transforms to mirabilite when cooled. With an annual production of 6 million tonnes, it is one of the world's major commodity chemicals and one of the most damaging salts in structure conservation: when it grows in the pores of stones it can achieve high levels of pressure, causing structures to crack.

Sodium sulfate is mainly used for the manufacture of detergents and in the Kraft process of paper pulping. About two-thirds of the world's production is from mirabilite, the natural mineral form of the decahydrate, and the remainder from by-products of chemical processes such as hydrochloric acid production.

I am not against batteries because at this point they serve some purpose but in the long run batteries will be replaced by much greener technologies.
if everyone in the world had one or two of these powering their house and couldn't afford to recycle and replace then it would end up being dumped in some rural area or forest area contaminating the area.

Jerry

[infringer]

Contamination from all current lead acids has got to be at a peak as well...

I think if enough people bought into this technology they would be recycled much like lead acid batteries are now.

We are well aware that recycling processes are important to our future we keep making steps in leaps and bounds in this business.

It should be common knowledge that the amount of energy saved from recycling a single aluminum can is equal to running your television for 3hours!

We do need this type of technology and there is money to be made for anyone who can come up with a technology to be more green and pack a storage punch!

For now we need this this along with a lot of other things to tide us over until dinner is served to us on a green platter.

This world needs a lot in the way of energy a whole revolution is underway though so many people investing and inventing.