This Battery Claims It can Store Energy in RUST!

it's another week and another video about a possible revolutionary battery breakthrough what is it about energy storage that has everybody in the scientific community all riled up well as our mix of renewable energy in the energy grid goes up so too will our need for energy storage welcome to the decade of the battery so what's up on our agenda this week well that would be the iron air battery also known as a rust battery which probably isn't bringing up the most positive of memories the company forum energy believes storing energy as rust might be the breakthrough that our clean energy grids have been waiting for so is this just a wild research thesis or a product destined for prime time what are the pros and cons and does it even make sense we thought these questions deserve a deeper dive here on tupa davinci special thanks to nordvpn for sponsoring this video get world-class vpn service and save using the link in the video description iron air batteries are just one example of a category of metal air batteries these include lithium air zinc air and aluminum air which we've actually already covered on this channel each works pretty similarly they have an anode on one side in this case consisting of tiny pebble-sized iron pellets on the other side an air-breathing cathode then the whole thing is submerged in a water-based non-flammable electrolyte solution not too dissimilar from what you might find in a standard double a battery oxygen from the atmosphere flows into the cells where it reacts with iron through the electrolyte this reaction reduces the air to hydroxide and the iron oxidizes first into iron hydroxide where it then releases electrons to then become iron oxide rust as the battery discharges those electrons all that rust builds up in the cathode to recharge the battery you need an electrical current to pass through the cells which actually reverses the process we just talked about releasing oxygen once again and turning the rust back into iron it's this process of rusting and unrusting the iron that lets the battery charge and discharge electricity so it turns out rust is not always a bad thing and it means the iron air battery is a rechargeable battery or a secondary cell compared to primary cells like the aluminum air battery which are not rechargeable when applied to grid level storage iron air batteries also have the advantage of a longer discharge times according to form energy about 100 hours or more okay i need to take a moment here and provide a little clarity i'm starting to see claims like this pretty frequently and it can be a bit misleading let's say we have a theoretical battery that runs at 10 volts and has a capacity of 100 amp hours voltage times amps that gives us about a thousand watt hours or one kilowatt hour battery charge and discharge speeds for a battery are typically measured in c's where 1c means you can draw up to 100 amps of current at fill capacity at that rate you deplete the battery in one hour two cs and 30 minutes or one half c in two hours so the iron air battery can't discharge as quickly as lithium batteries for example and while this isn't exactly a benefit it's true with a c rating of .001 it will take a hundred hours to discharge the battery but to be fair you could just pull less current out of lithium ion battery too the crate is a max you can pull without harm in the battery but any lower amount of current is okay too it's like trying to empty a bathtub if you want to do it faster you've got a larger diameter hose which is like a higher c value in our battery okay so now that we got that out of the way one company that's been quietly refining this technology is form energy the company's ceo mateo jaramillo is a former tesla employee whose experience includes spearheading tesla's own moves into grid energy storage tesla of course effectively kick-started the grid energy game back in 2017 by making the classic subtle move of building the world's largest battery in south australia while working at tesla jaramillo recognized that as incredible and groundbreaking as ev technology is the technology can only do so much if recharging them still requires burning fossil fuels this observation inspired him to look at past battery technology both successes and failures to see if he could find a more promising approach he decided not to pursue lithium ion batteries for grid storage like tesla is currently doing as great as lithium-ion batteries are they have a few challenges one is flammable electrolytes which are dangerous and can cause thermal runaway events which is just an engineer's way of saying they can catch on fire or explode also with evs and grid storage demand for lithium is going to go exponential in comparison iron is far more abundant at over 50 000 parts per million now my personal view has always been to save all the lithium and other rarer materials for our more weight intensive applications like the millions of evs and airplanes will soon be manufacturing which is why many of the grid storage applications use a special formulation of lithium ion called lithium iron phosphate which ditches the nickel manganese and cobalt in favor of iron though they do still need some lithium before we get back to the show let me tell you about our sponsor nordvpn i often use public wi-fi now that i'm traveling again as a full-time youtuber i've actually been a customer of nordvpn for over three years i can connect up to six devices and secure them by encrypting and routing all my traffic through an endpoint in some other location this prevents people from seeing what you're doing and stops things like man-in-the-middle attacks where people pretend to be the sites you're visiting a vpn also prevents the sites i'm using from knowing where i am this has some other cool benefits too beyond security the video or game you're trying to access is region locked well north allows you to route your traffic through up to 60 countries making it seem to the provider that you're somewhere you're not where these sites think you're coming from can even impact the prices of things like plane tickets norn is also known for some of the fastest speeds so security doesn't mean a bad experience use my special link nordvpn.com two-bit dv to get the two-year plan plus four months free for just 89 a 73 savings big thank you to nordvpn and all of you for supporting the show in the four years since then the company has made some major strides and overcome some serious roadblocks that have previously kept iron air batteries from truly taking off now according to haramio the batteries a company is developing could be a major game changer possibly even displacing fossil fuels entirely in only a matter of years so how exactly they plan to do this one major wind performs iron air batteries are the materials simple easy abundant just air which is literally everywhere and iron which has a number of benefits over other battery materials that doesn't mean it's inherently better than lithium across the board or that we shouldn't use lithium for other applications iron for instance is less energy dense resulting in evs with less range for the same weight but by diversifying the materials we use and spreading them out over different technologies we can create a more sustainable energy ecosystem which is not the whole point iron and other materials could help cool some of the geopolitical pressure building around lithium-ion supply chains while opening new doors to different energy technologies to truly thrive using more abundant and accessible materials could also have a major impact on cost cost is maybe one of the most critical factors to consider when it comes to energy storage coal was once king until natural gas came along cutting coal share of the energy price in half of the last two decades but if we really want to create a clean sustainable future we need an energy storage solution that can meet demand without driving up cost the materials used in existing lithium-ion batteries cobalt nickel manganese and of course lithium translate to roughly 50 to 80 dollars per kilowatt hour form says that swapping these materials for iron could bring down cost to below one tenth of that just six dollars per kilowatt hour or possibly even less even a fully packaged battery system would top out at around 20 dollars per kilowatt hour this could represent a major tipping point in the green energy storage game but let's talk turkey how do iron batteries stack up against lithium-ion batteries and other battery technology in terms of energy density form says that its large batteries use a giant iron anode and the company says that it's the biggest anode ever made the cells which are about a meter square are slotted into battery modules around the size of a washing machine and can be rolled out in mass and installations according to form their least dense configuration would get about one megawatt hour of capacity into about an acre of land with their higher density configurations reaching about three megawatt hours in the same space for comparison my tesla power wall is 13 kilowatts of capacity and i'd need 77 of them to store one megawatt hour of electricity but i could easily fit 77 power walls in my garage compared to a one acre complex for the iron air battery this is why nothing in engineering is ever easy we trade safety environmentally sustainable materials and cost for a much larger footprint covering acres of our planet with batteries has an environmental cost all its own but because of the safety of iron air batteries i'm optimistic that forum is working on multi-level buildings and other optimizations to drive the land usage down but with all these comparisons to lithium-ion it deserves to be said that even according to form ceo the idea is not to supersede or replace lithium-ion but to complement it possibly even designing systems where the two technologies are paired together lithium-ion batteries could be the peaker plants that can quickly provide huge amounts of electricity when there are sudden surges in the grid and batteries like iron air can provide steady baseline power at night stored from renewable sources like solar during the day for those familiar with the ebbs and flows of battery technology you may be asking yourself two things one what's the catch and two iron air batteries aren't new if they're so great then how come no one else has rolled one out already for the first question it's true iron air batteries first hit the scene during the 1970s and looked to be a promising contender for evs and energy storage during the oil crisis back then however the technology suffered from a serious and seemingly insurmountable roadblock basically during recharge a process called hydrolysis drained away about 50 percent of the battery's energy however in 2012 usc researchers were finally able to jump the hydrolysis hurdle when they discovered that by adding a small amount of bismuth sulfide into the battery they could reduce the waste 10-fold form has basically perfected the process in laboratory conditions and has plans to build a large scale megawatt level prototype capable of discharging for more than six days by the end of 2023 forum has some secret sauce here some intellectual property that gives them a market advantage in overcoming this critical challenge just how well it works and how reliable the resulting battery proves to be still remains to be seen form will have to offer good warranties to appease those wary of the unproven technology those of you that follow the battery industry closely know many technologies have been seemingly stuck in this validation process stuff like solid state batteries that are always seemingly just a few years away but you know what validates our process hitting that like button the challenge here with all batteries is in making a truly reversible process cycle after cycle without degradation no battery we will ever design will be perfect or last forever but a form can create a large affordable grid scale battery that can last for decades not years i think they'll have a very promising future already the company has attracted investors like bill gates and jeff bezos as the company develops over the next few years we may finally start seeing some major shifts in renewable energy storage but what do you think are you hopeful for iron air batteries and companies like forum or are you skeptical that this is all just another overhyped promise that will ultimately lead nowhere let us know in the comment section below so that does it at our look at the rust battery i love that name thinking about rust as a way of storing energy it's pretty fascinating we have done the aluminum air battery as well we mentioned that we have a link to that we'll put up here but both these technologies are being developed and worked on and they have their places and different advantages and stuff iron air batteries are rechargeable and while they're not very energy dense they're cheap and affordable aluminum error aren't rechargeable but they're crazy energy dense so this is the age of the battery i think the next 10 years will be all about batteries and we will cover as much of that stuff as we can when we hear more about it so thank you to all of you for tuning in to this episode and a huge thank you to our two bit tribe members that is our patrons on patreon and our youtube channel members you guys chat with us on our discord you get to participate in future scripts edit our videos we even have some more members helping with our website we have an awesome community of people who think the future is going to be awesome so that sounds like something you want to be a part of and support the show check the links below and come and join us as a member all right that does it for us here i'm ricky with tuba davinci and remember the future is going to be awesome

Channel: Two Bit da Vinci

Views: 118,486

Keywords: electric cars, metal air battery, electric vehicle batteries, million mile battery, iron air battery technology, iron air battery form energy, form energy, rust battery, iron-air battery, iron air rust battery, battery breakthroughs, two bit da vinci, iron-air, iron air, iron air battery, iron battery, Battery breakthrough, iron air rust, rust battery ev, cheap battery, better battery tech, future batteries, better energy storage, rust electricity, rusty battery

Id: -iBvxPm5lww

Length: 13min 40sec (820 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 27 2021