More Powerful Electric Cars: Mechanism Behind Capacitor's High-Speed Energy Storage Discovered http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120223182646.h~ [A] polymer known as PVDF enables capacitors to store and release large amounts of energy quickly. Their findings could lead to much more powerful and efficient electric cars.
- "Looking at the success of electronics over the last century, I have always wondered why we should be limited to electric current in making circuits," said Nader Engheta ... of Penn's School of Engineering and Applied Science. "If we moved to shorter wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum — like light — we could make things smaller, faster and more efficient." - Different arrangements and combinations of electronic circuits have different functions, ranging from simple light switches to complex supercomputers. These circuits are in turn built of different arrangements of circuit elements, like resistors, inductors and capacitors, which manipulate the flow of electrons in a circuit in mathematically precise ways. And because both electric circuits and optics follow Maxwell's equations — the fundamental formulas that describe the behavior of electromagnetic fields — Engheta's dream of building circuits with light wasn't just the stuff of imagination. In 2005, he and his students published a theoretical paper outlining how optical circuit elements could work. - Now, he and his group at Penn have made this dream a reality, creating the first physical demonstration of "lumped" optical circuit elements. This represents a milestone in a nascent field of science and engineering Engheta has dubbed "metatronics."
Magnesium–Antimony Liquid Metal Battery for Stationary Energy Storage http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja209759s Batteries are an attractive option for grid-scale energy storage applications because of their small footprint and flexible siting. A high-temperature (700 °C) magnesium–antimony (Mg||Sb) liquid metal battery comprising a negative electrode of Mg, a molten salt electrolyte (MgCl2–KCl–NaCl), and a positive electrode of Sb is proposed and characterized. Because of the immiscibility of the contiguous salt and metal phases, they stratify by density into three distinct layers. Cells were cycled at rates ranging from 50 to 200 mA/cm2 and demonstrated up to 69% DC–DC energy efficiency. The self-segregating nature of the battery components and the use of low-cost materials results in a promising technology for stationary energy storage applications.
MIT team calls initial performance results of magnesium-antimony liquid metal battery "promising" http://www.greencarcongress.com/2012/01/sadoway-20120123.ht~ The team assembled Mg||Sb single cell batteries and electrochemically characterized them by cyclic voltammetry (CV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) using a two-electrode electrochemical setup with the negative electrode (Mg) as the counter electrode/reference electrode and the positive electrode (Sb) as the working electrode. Among their findings were: Cells cycled at 50 mA/cm2 for a predefined discharge period of 10 h to a cutoff charging voltage limit of 0.85 V achieved a round-trip Coulombic efficiency of 97% and a voltage efficiency of 71%, resulting in an overall energy efficiency of 69%. Cells were fully discharged at various rates ranging from 50 to 200 mA/cm2 with 0.05 V as the discharge cutoff limit. Operation at higher current density resulted in increased IR voltage loss and decreased capacity. Cells were cycled more than 30 times for periods of up to 2 weeks and did not exhibit obvious signs of corrosion of the solid-state cell components (current collectors and walls), as determined through optical imaging and scanning electron microscopy (SEM)/energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) analysis. After several weeks of cycling, the cells ceased to operate. The observed cause of failure was evaporation of the molten salt electrolyte into the surrounding containment vessel, a mechanism that could be mitigated by alternative cell designs with reduced head space.
Solving the energy storage problem, Liquid Metal Battery Corp raises $15M with support from Bill Gates http://venturebeat.com May 24, 2012 10:42 AM Ricardo Bilton - Liquid Metal Battery Corporation, which says it found the solution to storing energy from renewable sources, is getting a new charge in funding. - Led by cleantech investor Khosla Ventures, the battery tech company has raised $15 million in a second round of funding. LMBC has also attracted the attention of energy company Total and investor Bill Gates, who returned for this second funding round. - The company is the brainchild of Dr. Donald Sadoway, an MIT professor who developed the battery technology to be low cost and easy to deploy. - "The way things stand today, electricity demand must be in constant balance with electricity supply," Sadoway said in March during a Technology Entertainment and Design talk titled "The Missing Link to Renewable Energy." - One big problem with renewable energy sources today is that there's no good way to store power for when you actually need it (current battery technology hasn't scaled well for this). LMBC's liquid battery solves that problem, splitting energy demand from storage and allowing clean energy sources to have a hand in energy generation. - "With a giant battery, we'd be able to address the problem of intermittence that prevents wind and solar from contributing to the grid in the same way that coal and gas and nuclear do today," Sadoway said. - One of the biggest advantages to the battery is that it can be added to existing systems, eliminating the need for further build outs. This, coupled with its flexibility, means that the system is cheap — a factor that has kept much of energy investment focused on established technologies. - "We need to think about the problem differently. We need to think big. We need to think cheap," Sadoway said in the TED talk.
Lloyd
Re: Technology
Make Helium and Phosphorus * According to this, http://www.cracked.com/article_19048_6-important-things-you~, the world is running out of both of these elements, as well as clean water. * I think the water problem will be easier to deal with. But it seems we may need technology that can provide enough helium and phosphorus, if the article is correct. * I believe the solution is transmutation. Helium has 2 protons and 2 neutrons. Phosphorus has 15 protons and 16 neutrons. Helium * Going to my list of transmutation formulae at http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3~, I see that there are quite a few possible ways to get helium from other elements. One would have to look up the literature on transmutation to see if an easy means is known, but, if there is no info available, then experimenting would have to be done. Some of the elements that could be tried are: Boron [yielding He + Li]; Oxygen [= He + C]; Sodium [= He + F]; Magnesium [= He + Ne]; Aliminum [= He + Na]; Silicon [= He + Mg]; etc. Phosphorus But it looks like the best bet might be chlorine, which could produce both phosphorus and helium. Other possible sources for phosphorus would be Fluorine + Carbon, Neon + Boron, Sulfur - Hydrogen, Magnesium + Lithium, Aluminum + Helium. * Do we have a volunteer to do this?
Let's see if we can get helium from lithium. Lithium has 3 protons and 4 neutrons
... our call is going out to every government to appoint a team of scientists to come and see our technologies at first hand. Then they can decide whether or not to make use of them. If you ignore this invitation your nation will soon have no choice but to follow the lead of the nations who have decided to develop them. ... The reasons for this invitation and the meeting are as follows: - On 21 September 2012 the Keshe Foundation will release the first phase of its space technology and the gravitational and magnetic (Magravs) systems it has developed, to all scientists around the world simultaneously, for production and duplication. - From that point on, international borders will cease to have any real significance. This is because, once the first flight system has been built and put into operation for the public, the time of travel for example from Tehran to New York will be about 10 minutes maximum. - The new airborne systems will enable every individual to make the same length of journey in the same time and at hardly any cost from any point on this planet. The craft will not be detectable with present radar technology. - The energy crisis will be resolved at a stroke, and once the technology is put into practice the powers that control energy supplies and through them the present financial structures will find their hands empty. - The world water shortage will be addressed and resolved by presenting this technology to the public soon after the release of our energy and space technology.
He plans to publicly demonstrate the technology to thousands of people in major cities around the world next year; and he plans to start booking flights for space travel – e.g. up 60 km above the earth – by 2014, and for flights to the moon by 2016, transporting thousands of people to those destinations for a small fraction of the cost of what fuel-based shuttle services are projecting. He'll even be accepting down payments with guarantees for both flight opportunities. You'll be able to put 20% of $50,000 Euros down to reserve your seat on a trip to the moon. "It may even end up costing less than that." Wait a while longer (past 2016) and you could even get to Mars in a matter of a few days, rather than months. http://KesheSpace.com is being set up for booking flights. ... his plasma reactor creates a local imitation of the Earth's magnetic-gravitational properties, complete with magnetosphere, providing protection from the cosmic rays that can otherwise be deadly outside of the Earth's atmosphere. Because the phenomenon is local to the reactor, a gravitational force of 1-G is maintained for all craft occupants, including during acceleration and deceleration. ... the technology is far enough advanced, and simple enough that a licensing party could be in production in a matter of several weeks, not including the 2-3 month training period for learning the technology. ... a 3-5 kilowatt [generator] unit might cost $200 Euros and last 20-30 years.
How to Make Helium * I found new info since my previous post above on this topic. This comes from the informative online book at http://creationscience.com.
- Neutrons will be produced in any material struck by the electron beam or bremsstrahlung beam above threshold energies that vary from 10–19 MeV for light nuclei and 4–6 MeV for heavy nuclei. - ... At electrical breakdown, the energies in the surging electrons were thousands of times greater than 10–19 MeV, so for weeks after the flood began, bremsstrahlung radiation produced a sea of neutrons throughout the crust. Subterranean water absorbed many of these neutrons, converting normal hydrogen (1H) into heavy hydrogen (2H, called deuterium)....
* Once there is enough deuterium to work with, it may be simple to transmute it to helium, because deuterium has one proton and one neutron, while helium has two each, which it can get from two deuterium atoms.
