{"id":67350,"date":"2024-04-16T19:13:39","date_gmt":"2024-04-17T00:13:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=67350"},"modified":"2024-04-16T19:13:39","modified_gmt":"2024-04-17T00:13:39","slug":"thermal-storage-hopium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=67350","title":{"rendered":"Thermal Storage Hopium"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Thermal Storage Hopium<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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Photo by\u00a0Photoholgic<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0Unsplash<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

After realizing that there is\u00a0not enough mining capacity<\/a>\u00a0to \u201cproduce\u201d the necessary amount of metals to build enough batteries (not only lithium, but copper, nickel and much more), a mad scramble to find an alternative electricity storage solution began.\u00a0Last time<\/a>\u00a0I revisited the problem, the hype was all about using aluminum waste to convert its embedded chemical energy into hydrogen and heat. Now its time for thermal batteries to receive their fare share of criticism.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Thermal storage is touted as a \u201cclean and sustainable alternative<\/a>\u201d to Lithium-Ion Batteries. According to media reports:\u00a0\u201cThe thermal batteries industry is in the nascent stage of development, but it is gaining increasing attention, as governments and companies worldwide look for alternative green solutions. These batteries work by\u00a0heating a substance to store thermal energy<\/a>, which can be converted into heat or electricity. Energy from renewable sources, such as solar and wind farms, can be stored to use when energy is not being produced on-site, to ensure a stable flow of electricity to the grid.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Well, where to start? It is one thing to store excess electricity generated by wind and solar as heat, it is quite another to convert that heat back into electricity\u2026 A \u201cproblem\u201d grossly overlooked by the technutopists pushing this idea. You see, the efficiency of such an energy storage system is\u00a0still<\/em>\u00a0ruled by physics, and thinking that this is just another \u201cproblem\u201d to be solved, well, is magical thinking at best. As\u00a0discovered<\/a>\u00a0by Nicolas L\u00e9onard Sadi Carnot in 1824, not even an ideal, frictionless engine can convert 100% of its input heat into work: that nasty\u00a0second law of thermodynamics<\/a> puts a fundamental limit on the thermal efficiency of all heat engines…<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thermal Storage Hopium Photo by\u00a0Photoholgic\u00a0on\u00a0Unsplash After realizing that there is\u00a0not enough mining capacity\u00a0to \u201cproduce\u201d the necessary amount of metals to build enough batteries (not only lithium, but copper, nickel and much more), a mad scramble to find an alternative electricity storage solution began.\u00a0Last time\u00a0I revisited the problem, the hype was all about using aluminum waste […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[4902,32578,34272],"class_list":["post-67350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-hopium","tag-the-honest-sorcerer","tag-thermal-storage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67350"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67351,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67350\/revisions\/67351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}