The coming EV batteries will sweep away fossil fuel transport-AEP
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
AEP is away with the fairies again!
The Argonne National Laboratory in the US has essentially cracked the battery technology for electric vehicles, discovering a way to raise the future driving range of standard EVs to a thousand miles or more. It promises to do so cheaply without exhausting the global supply of critical minerals in the process.
The joint project with the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) has achieved a radical jump in the energy density of battery cells. The typical lithium-ion battery used in the car industry today stores about 200 watt-hours per kilo (Wh/kg). Their lab experiment has already reached 675 Wh/kg with a lithium-air variant.
This is a high enough density to power trucks, trains, and arguably mid-haul aircraft, long thought to be beyond the reach of electrification. The team believes it can reach 1,200 Wh/kg. If so, almost all global transport can be decarbonised more easily than we thought, and probably at a negative net cost compared to continuation of the hydrocarbon status quo.
Of course, now that we have such wonderful technology coming soon, there will obviously be no need to ban petrol cars, as they will become obsolete anyway.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Now that a journalist has predicted what will happen on a topic in the future, we know it wont happen.
It is not just an ignorant journalist predicting the future , it is just more green ecoloonie propaganda .
Aluminium air batteries have a higher energy/weight density than most others , but oxidisation means they have a very short life , days rather than months or years .
And Lithium also oxidises in contact with air . So Lithium /air batteries can have a higher energy weight density , but will not come into use as it would need a new battery possibly every week .
So AEPs dream about airliners flying using battery power with only about 6 or 7 hundred tons of battery , [ instead of 12 to 15 hundred tons ], are just another of his clueless lies .
Even if they do fly, landing at full weight will be *interesting* 😆
Possibly still just a little short of hydrocarbons?
Fuel Energy by mass (Wh/kg) Energy by volume (Wh/l)
Propane 13,900 6,600
Butane 13,600 7,800
Diesel fuel 12,700 10,700
Gasoline 12,200 9,700
Mr.Gullible spouts again.
It all makes sense if you just accept that AEP is paid to spout this propaganda.
Is he? I’d be keen to see your proof of that.
Try this: https://twitter.com/JamesMelville/status/1585540397601853443?t=-HotZHo1HGg9GHl7cS6T4w&s=09
And this: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/01/22/barry-brill-for-billionaires-climate-lobbying-is-hot/
With his level of credulity perhaps I should sell London Bridge to AEP? Can anyone advise me of a good opening offer price?!!
I think he’s going to be disappointed.
A couple of thoughts from a non-scientist (other than the usual “I’ll have a large one of whatever AEP’s been drinking”):
At that energy density or anywhere near it, you’ll be driving a potential bomb – and it won’t half take a long time to charge them up……
Quite correct, while lithium is not as violently reactive as the other alkali metals, sodium and potassium, it does react strongly with water, producing hydrogen gas and lithium oxide. So, once the ‘protective’ electrolite has been dispersed, say in a crash, better pray it isn’t raining….. And 675Wh/kg still means a very large bulky battery for an HGV.
Just like electricity from nuclear fusion, promised, but need more research and development. Just need some research grants, more staff and high salaries to attract the best. AEP is really gullible.
Imagine: charging a train engine – uhh, motor – battery . . . weeks?
‘New electric car batteries could lengthen ranges to a thousand miles or more’
Imagine: Backup at Tesla Supercharger as people put 1200 miles of juice in.
‘The Argonne Laboratory in Chicago is not alone in pushing the boundaries of energy storage and EV technology.’
Personal note: Gamecock’s Dad was at Argonne NL early 1950s.
‘The specialist press reports eye-watering breakthroughs almost every month.’
After years of nothing coming from all these reports, when do you give up? It’s like developing nations that never seem to be developed.
‘America, Europe, China and Japan are all in a feverish global race for battery dominance – or survival – and hedge funds are swarming over the field.’
Propaganda to get people to believe this $#|+ is real.
Charging a train engine? Easy and been done for years. Just add a Deltic Diesel engine as they did back in the early ’60s. …or have I got this wrong?
Close.
Diesel-electric train engines predate WWII* (Mom worked for Electro-Motive in early 1950s).
And the diesel engines don’t “charge” anything. They drive generators, which power traction motors. There are no traction batteries on diesel-electric locomotives.
There is no mechanical linkage between the diesel engines and the drive train.
*WWII submarines were similar, though for obvious reasons, they did charge batteries, which drove the motors to drive the screws. Again, no mechanical linkage between engines and screws.
So true!
It is interesting to note that politicians and journalists, with no or little technical background, put so much faith in technical research organisations’ press releases and the forecasts of the performance of ’emerging technologies’.
In 2009 it was announced,
A new mini nuclear reactor based on Uranium Hydride powder, and invented at the Los Alamos Lab was to be built and trialled in the UK in 2013.
Eh NO.
Some of them even think that inventions will appear in a timely fashion to suit their future political plans!
If you think education is expensive, consider the price of ignorance
An aspect of batteries, that is conveniently ignored by the eco-warriors, is the end-of-life issue. These devices have never previously been other than small parts of waste streams: they are about to become a large part of it. The unicorns will surely take them all away to an eco-heaven.
I commented on this in the DT.
New and better battery technology was ‘just around the corner’ when I was an apprentice…. in the late 1970’s
Still waiting.
In his gullibility AEP overlooks the fact that Argonne is a US National Lab which, like all the Nat Labs in the US, relies almost totally on Govt funding. So while they do employ a lot of high calibre scientists they also employ plenty of PR types whose job it is to keep issuing “breakthrough” reports like this to persuade the US Govt to keep funding them.
At least there is now an alternative to the scarce lithium.
https://www.timeslive.co.za/motoring/news/2023-03-07-the-jac-hua-xianzi-is-the-worlds-first-sodium-ion-battery-vehicle/
The range problem for EVs should have been fixed before even putting them on the market instead of government threats, laws, taxes and regulations to force people to buy these LESS practical vehicles.
EVs are a “Let them eat cake” solution.
EVs are a niche product suitable for a few people. When the elites decided there must be an end to organic fueled vehicles, artsy minds thought, “Well, they can just drive EVs! Aren’t we smart?!”
Even if these prototypes magically reach production (and do what is claimed), they will STILL need charging. With constant efforts to destroy reliable power stations which keep the grid operational, this becomes ever more difficult…
Does his 1000 mile battery increase in size and weight pro rata to the current heavy batteries? Will the countries electricity output be sufficient to power up these super batteries? Why does Evans – Pritchard insult those who support the logical continuation of fossil fuel use as having ‘vested interests?’ He seems ready to sell his sole with ridicule rather than apply his mind to the views of the opposing logic, and must be paid well from some source to do it.
Sadly for the idiot, while the range increase might be improved, there will still not be enough lithium to meet the demand especially as the batteries will need replacing in 10 or 15 years time.
Should it actually be possible it will be a huge fire hazard.
Most likely they are cherry picking the data and ignoring scale up issues. We saw a similar scam with fuel cells where they would claim 90% efficiency but practical fuel cells only have about 25% efficiency whcih is pretty much the same as internal combustion engines. Similarly in solar cells . The high efficiency bragged about is on a 1 cm cell under special conditions
“Away with the fairies” Is that the same as “on the pipe?” Either way that must be some good s**t. Energy density of Li-Ion cells is why they catch fire so often. Would not increasing energy density in these “new, soon to be available, magic unicorn cells” have a similar problem?
Stored energy always has the capability of escaping its confinement.
The more stored and the tighter the confinement, the more catastrophic the outcome.
Well said.
Agreed. Saved me making the same point.
These battery claims are 10 a penny, usually pie in the sky, merely people wanting research grants/gullible investors to keep paying their mortgages.
“Their lab experiment has already reached 675 Wh/kg”
Really.
The calorific value of diesel is 38 MJ/kg which according to my Google calculator equals 10555.6 Wh/kg, which divided by 675 equals 15.63.
The battery weighs the same fully charged or flat, so if we run the diesel tank full to empty, we can double that, so the diesel is in even numbers thirty times more energy density than these new super-batteries.
So no contest until the battery capacity gains better than an order of magnitude.
Then there’s the charging time, which to be competitive will require thousands of amps.
I can’t see that, somehow!
“The coming EV batteries will sweep away fossil fuel transport-AEP”
And of course, all of that will require transportation. And conventional vehicles will be used. They will “decarbonize” and sweep away” the fuels put into them.
On a brighter side, I am all for AEP because his nonsense brings forth just the very best comments. An excellent read on a gloomy afternoon.
🤣👍
I mean when has there ever been a problem getting a technology from the lab to commercial production?
The Chinese battery manufacturer CATL is to begin commercial manufacture of sodium-ion batteries later this year It’s first generation battery has an energy density of 160Wh/kg and can charge to 80% in 15 minutes. Still some way short of lithium- ion density which exceeds 200Wh/kg, or even 300Wh/kg.
Sodium -ion batteries are less flammable and , of course, sodium is far more abundant than lithium. However, it is likely that lithium-ion will continue to be used in upmarket vehicles and the 50% of EVs that are SUVs and require bigger batteries to travel the same distance. So likely sodium-ion will, at least initially, replace lithium iron phosphate batteries.
So 1/666 of the energy density of diesel (10555.6 Wh/kg) by weight.
A fair bit to go yet then!
The same Argonne Lab were proposing lithium sulphur batteries, and off peak storage in batteries to help smooth power generation – in 1976, all of which would be online by the late 80’s.
There’s an article from Autocar 18th December 1976 that reads like they swallowed the press release just like AEP presumably has now.
Overview hopefully here: https://www.osti.gov/biblio/7257367/
So a bit like fusion, they’ve been just 10 years away from a breakthrough, for the last 50ish years.
That read exactly like the blurb in my previous company’s R&D tax credit claims…..
So once everything becomes electric and peteol cars are obsolete, from where will the required volume of electricity be sourced?