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Lithium Metal Batteries


Mr. Silly

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3 minutes ago, Mr. Silly said:

It all looks really cool.

Except for the terrible conditions that surround Lithium extraction from the Earth and the unanswered questions that exist at end of life.  It is a potential ecological disaster that gets little or no press.  One thing we could do with them is bury them with all the end of life wind turbines.

 

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29 minutes ago, Kzoo said:

Except for the terrible conditions that surround Lithium extraction from the Earth and the unanswered questions that exist at end of life.  It is a potential ecological disaster that gets little or no press.  One thing we could do with them is bury them with all the end of life wind turbines.

 

The extraction process is cleaning up.

One of the newest ways to mine minerals wastes almost no water at all. Lilac Solutions, a firm backed by Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures, extracts dissolved lithium directly from salty mineral brines below the surface, home to 75% of the world’s lithium. Reusable ion-exchange beads immersed in the brine pull out up to 90% of lithium, leaving behind unwanted minerals. The remaining water is then re-injected directly back into the original reservoir.

Also from that article: 

The US has just one opening lithium mine (pdf) located in Nevada, and a single facility to recycle lithium-ion vehicle batteries in Ohio, according to the US Geological Survey

So the batteries can be recycled. 

All positive developments.

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2 hours ago, maddmaxx said:

I wonder why anyone would take the time to collect all those blades in a pile like that unless there was some value in it. 

The blades are being collected in such a pile because they have no value, as they are too difficult and expensive to refurbish or recycle.  Since the turbines in a wind farm go into service around the same time, the blades will all wear out at about the same time, and they will all get replaced around the same time,  It's the most economical way to complete the project because it minimizes overhead costs such as mobilization, approvals from the Permit Lady, and bonding. 

As a result a large number of blades need to be disposed of at the same time, and the company that performs that aspect of the project is naturally going to contract for trucking them all to one place (or as few places as possible) to minimize costs.  So replacing of the turbine blades en masse results in the blades being dumped en masse wherever their final resting place is.

People often talk about 'farm to table' as a food consumption concept.  I like to expand it a bit and call 'farm to table to compost'.  One might also call it 'cradle to grave'.

Just about every system has the same process.  The pictures of the blade being buried is part of the end of life of a wind turbine system.  We often see and hear of the 'farm to table' aspect of wind energy - unfortunately we don't often hear or see the 'compost' part even though it's a very real part of operating a wind energy system.

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3 hours ago, Kzoo said:

Except for the terrible conditions that surround Lithium extraction from the Earth and the unanswered questions that exist at end of life.  It is a potential ecological disaster that gets little or no press.  One thing we could do with them is bury them with all the end of life wind turbines.

 

we need to figure out how to upcycle batteries into wind turbine blades and recycle wind turbine bladed into batteries!  FREE POWER!!!!

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4 hours ago, Mr. Silly said:

It looks like lithium metal batteries are a major step up from the lithium ion batteries currently used in things from cell phones to autos.  For automotive use they offer, lower costs, greater range, shorter charging times, longer total lifetime on the road, and improved safety.  It all looks really cool.

Lithium metal is very reactive, as are all the alkali metals. In college, we chemistry majors used to sneak alkali metals (lithium, sodium, potassium - covered in oil to keep air moisture from reacting with them) out and throw them in water to make them explode.  I just looked up the batteries, which I know little about and read:

Lithium metal batteries would have a number of uses, from smartphones to electric cars, if they could just stop doing one thing during lab testing: exploding into a fiery blaze....

The Stanford/SLAC team has addressed that issue through limiting what are known as dendrites. In a car battery, these are "tiny needlelike structures" that pierce the separator, which isolates the battery's cathode and anode and resides between its positive and negative sides. When these dendrites form, they're a problem in lithium metal batteries. Namely, they can short circuit within a battery’s flammable liquid.

Limiting dendrites is a huge step forward, the team says.

“We’re addressing the holy grail of lithium metal batteries,” says Zhenan Bao, a professor of chemical engineering, who is senior author of the paper along with Yi Cui, professor of materials science and engineering and photon science at SLAC.

The team tested its coating on a lithium metal battery's anode, or its positively charged end, which is where the troublesome dendrites form.

"After 160 cycles, their lithium metal cells still delivered 85 percent of the power that they did in their first cycle," reads the press statement. "Regular lithium metal cells deliver about 30 percent after that many cycles, rendering them nearly useless even if they don’t explode."

The coating prevents dendrites from even forming in the first place by preventing unwanted chemical reactions and reducing chemical buildup on the anode.

“Our new coating design makes lithium metal batteries stable and promising for further development,” says the study's other coauthor, Stanford Ph.D. student Zhiao Yu.

Many are starting to look past lithium ion batteries, in hopes of finding battery materials that would be less wasteful and more environmentally conscious. Some scientists, in fact, are looking past the material entirely and building batteries with iron.

 
 
 
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