Why This Liquid That Stores Solar Energy for Years Matters
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 ส.ค. 2022
- Exploring why this liquid that stores solar energy for years matters. To start comparing quotes and simplify insurance-buying, check out Policygenius: policygenius.com/undecidedwit... Thanks to Policygenius for sponsoring this video! Storing solar energy cheaply and efficiently is a key component for the future of renewable energy. Even though lithium ion batteries are great for solar power, they can still be costly and, depending on the chemistry, there can be safety concerns. There are ways we can store solar energy more directly though … and one of those is heat. For instance, concentrated solar energy plants can use that heat for producing electricity, cement, steel, green hydrogen, or anything else that needs high temperatures. Or for storing that thermal energy for days. A recent breakthrough could allow us to store solar energy directly into a liquid for up to 18 years. How’s it work? And could this be a viable path forward for solar energy storage? Let’s see if we can come to a decision on this.
Watch Exploring Solar Panel Efficiency Breakthroughs in 2022 • Exploring Solar Panel ...
Video script and citations:
undecidedmf.com/why-this-liqu...
Some b-roll provided by the K & A Wallenberg Foundation: • Can molecules solve th...
Get my achieve energy security with solar guide:
link.undecidedmf.com/solar-guide
Follow-up podcast:
Video version - / @stilltbd
Audio version - bit.ly/stilltbdfm
Join the Undecided Discord server:
link.undecidedmf.com/discord
👋 Support Undecided on Patreon!
/ mattferrell
⚙️ Gear & Products I Like
undecidedmf.com/shop/
Visit my Energysage Portal (US):
Research solar panels and get quotes for free!
link.undecidedmf.com/energysage
And find heat pump installers near you (US):
link.undecidedmf.com/energysa...
Or find community solar near you (US):
link.undecidedmf.com/communit...
For a curated solar buying experience (Canada)
EnergyPal's free personalized quotes:
energypal.com/undecided
Tesla Referral Code:
Get 1,000 free supercharging miles
or a discount on Tesla Solar & Powerwalls
ts.la/matthew84515
👉 Follow Me
Mastodon
mastodon.social/@mattferrell
X
X.com/mattferrell
X.com/undecidedMF
Instagram
/ mattferrell
/ undecidedmf
Facebook
/ undecidedmf
Website
undecidedmf.com
📺 TH-cam Tools I Recommend
Audio file(s) provided by Epidemic Sound
bit.ly/UndecidedEpidemic
TubeBuddy
www.tubebuddy.com/undecided
VidIQ
vidiq.com/undecided
I may earn a small commission for my endorsement or recommendation to products or services linked above, but I wouldn't put them here if I didn't like them. Your purchase helps support the channel and the videos I produce. Thank you. - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
Do you think molecular bonding sounds like a promising direction? To start comparing quotes and simplify insurance-buying, check out Policygenius: policygenius.com/undecidedwithmatt Thanks to Policygenius for sponsoring this video!
If you liked this, check out Exploring Solar Panel Efficiency Breakthroughs in 2022 th-cam.com/video/m8crjuL8FFs/w-d-xo.html
It would be interesting for thermal storage
Hi Matt, kindly cover solar thermal cooling, it's very important.
Matt, look up Polar Night Energy. They're using plain old sand to store energy which can get up to 600-1000 degrees Celsius. Cheap. Simple. Effective.
One could use any source of electricity to power a laser at the exact frequency need for molecular bonding. This would raise the efficiency of the system.
This does seem like what the future of energy storage should look like. Not sure how this would work with portable devices but anything like a car/motorcycle or larger could easily make use of something like this.
It would be good to plan for '1 Year later' or 'several years later' videos on some of these technologies. It would show which of these technologies did or will break through.
He did just like this one. th-cam.com/video/swdyGHvmXw0/w-d-xo.html
Yes this is a great idea
Would whatch
was just about to comment the same thing. More follow up videos would be good, even if occasionally there was a top 10 biggest flops of covered topics video.
I agree, but I am not sure whether one year is enough. It can take quite a while from a successful lab experiment to economic viable mass production. Take the lithium-ion battery, for example. It was developed in the 1970s. But it took until 1991 until you could buy one. Nevertheless, updates from time to time would be nice.
You didn't specify the energy density of the MOST fluid, so I found it for you. It's 396kJ/kg, which is 110Wh/kg. Lithium ion batteries are almost 3 times that.
Volumetric density is 359 kJ/L (100 Wh/L), compared to more than 730 Wh/L for Lithium ion batteries.
Maximum theoretical specific density is "966 kJ kg−1 = 268 W h kg−1 (unsubstituted norbornadiene)"
from the paper. I don't know if links are permitted. Anyway, they're using derivatives to increase the energy collection efficiency, and possibly stability, so you can have 3%, 18 years or 268 Wh/kg, not all at once.
The idea of using this to power headphones and mobile phones is ridiculous, "both" from the energy density, the flammability, the toxicity, the heat generation, and the fact you need a TEG or a Stirling engine generator in the device.
The chemistry is based on Norbornadiene-Quadricyclane photoisomerization.
Norbornadiene is flammable, Quadricyclane is flammable and toxic.
It might be useful as a way to extract/store energy from short wavelength sunlight (~300nm) as an addition to other technologies that doesn't perform well with those wavelengths. E.g. as a thin layer of fluid channels on top of solar cells. In that case it could probably cool the PV cells, increasing its efficiency. If it blocks too much of the useful light this would be useless of course.
A thin layer backing the solar cells might be a better idea; less heat absorption, but it'd act as a cooling loop that also uses the heat generated for power. I still think this is way less interesting as a concept than kerosene generation from solar energy.
Okay. Given your complementary informations, I think this is not going to be usefull. Honnestly, storing energy that long is not really the whole point. We only need like 1-2 years storage span (summer to winter). 3% collection is really really small, and energy density/volumetric density is awfull. Thus the only way to use it is in fixed storages, not on mobile devices.
And the toxicity/flammability of the produc just make it worse. Interesting to know, but I think it's doomed to fail. Tech is interesting though, maybe with another compounds.
@@KainYusanagi the MOST fluid can't be used for that. Its isomerization requires light in the 300nm to 400nm range. Those would be turned to heat in the solar cell. Well, it could be used same as water, I guess 🙂
@@phizc Oh jeez, that makes it pretty useless then, since the gained efficiency in absorbing those light waves would end up being losses for the solar panel below, plus the isomer would heat up itself and thus heat up the panel, lowering its efficiency further, wouldn't it? Yeah, I'm just going to stick with solar kerosene; it removes CO2 from the air and gives a concentrated liquid fuel storage that is vastly superior for energy return, too. Combine that with better offgas capture from combustion, and we could have plants producing some of their own power from what would otherwise be their waste, in a virtuous cycle of reclamation and less pollution.
@@KainYusanagi I don't know how much the "fluid solar collector" would block the cells below. I was thinking it might be possible to use the MOST fluid as a coolant. Flow cool MOST fluid (NBD) in thin channels. It cools the panel and absorb blue light, coming out the other side converted to its charged isomer (QC).
You're right it's probably not going to be worth it, but that's the only hope I see for it at all.
The problem unfortunately with these "meta stable" isomers that are high energy, is there is a substantial decay rate generally speaking. I wouldn't be surprised if that "shipped liquid" had lost at least 3/4s of it's "high energy" isomer. High energy states aren't really that metastable if they were easy to get to, versus say a redox reaction like reducing CO2 to methane, where substantial energy is involved, any oxidation/energy release would be completely insignificant. This is just an isomerization, granted a pretty good one but easy come easy go, it's not as if we have carbons being reduced here. Redox reactions generally just release more energy too, if you put it on par with Lithium I'd say head to head good ol' Lithium batteries would probably outdo this in energy density, couldn't say by how much, but guesstimate 50%.
Even if the conversion is higher energy than I think, say extreme UV wavelengths, most of that energy is filtered out by our ozone layer. This would make sense to me if it's decay rate is reallllllly small.
This isn't a jug of gasoline you can use years later. Similar to a nuclear isotope (or evaporation of gasoline from a lackluster container) there will be decay, and likely very very significant. Anything to stabilize it will invariably lower efficiency further by pushing the envelope of bond breaking higher. Also.... catalysts are generally not cheap, what they are using really matters here (is it Nickel mesh on carbon? is it palladium?).
I always thought photo switching was a cool concept, but after a Master's on this shit, it's still too much of a gimmick for real world high energy processes. I know it seems Im shitting all over it...I kind of am....it does have some pretty neat applications, as a SWITCH...not as an energy medium.
You would likely have much higher efficiencies with concentrated solar simply heating a material engineered to have ungodly heat capacity, versus a single bond based conversion of isomers. Capturing photons is best left to large conjugated bonds or metals chelated complexes with lots of happy d orbital electrons to do the jumping states.
This idea needs to be shit on. It doesn't have much potential at all. Someone in the comments said the energy density is about 1/3 of lithium, and the real issue is the efficiency of 3%... That's 6-7x less than a normal PV panel! Think about the size of a whole house panel system( about 400sqft) now multiply that by 6-7x! That is absolutely not practical.. How many gallons of this liquid would you need? A few hundred or more? 2500 sqft of double pane glass outside of your house? This is just never going to go anywhere unless they somehow max out the theoretical efficiency of 16% like he said, but that's doubtful
Thank you for putting the detailed scientific refutation here! I had a gut feel this process didn’t make a lot of sense but without the chemistry background to dispute it, I was left with only a question of whether it was possible to be a good storage mechanism. Truly appreciate the insight!
Smart points but I'm going to assume the pros and investors involved in this project are aware of everything you mentioned *and still* see enough promise to continue R&D. Let's hope you're wrong and we get another useful tech 🤞✌️
Aww man, I had a feeling about it with similar reasoning, but I really wanted to believe that this could be a big thing. But you're the one with the Masters on the subject. Thanks for the heads up, bro.
@@randybobandy9828 I think you mistake energy efficiency for energy density. 3% efficiency does not necessarily mean more liquid. Just means to store 3J of energy you need 100J of solar. The video does not say if the solar receivers have been taken into account or not. But if they have not been taken into account, then a 20% efficient panel it will have to soak in 500J of solar for it to store 3J in the liquid. Please correct me where I am wrong. I am not all that good at math.
I had heard that the CSP tower plant you referenced had closed and was not currently active. This was mainly due to corrosion in the pipes, lowered output than predicted and an accident. It’s good to see they got it back up and running. Thank you for mentioning it, as I thought this project had been abandoned after this accident.
Yes, I heard the same. I also believe it's running at a financial loss.
It amazes me that people fall for rumors.
Aaron Schuck: Sir, a systematic design for easy and practical cleaning of the tube INTERIOR for such solar plant- should be provided during its construction stage.. A system of "threaded plug" on every corner of concerned tube- was enough to do a regular a regular cleaning of tube interior- against clogs, dirt, minerals, etc.. Any man. made inventions, designs, system, etc ALWAYS NEED a maintenance action- to maintained its peak efficiency level... Crisis Management was one of the MOST INTERESTING topic in Management Arts & Science!... To be ABLE TO SEE PROBLEM BEFORE ITS OCCURRENCE- and DOING AN EFFECTIVE REMEDY AGAINST IT IN ADVANCE- thats the AWESOME FEAT of a group leader, of a corporate president, military generals, etc..
@@arielhermoso4262 you can avoid all these problems with Fresnel Reflectors, a different type of power plant.
No rare materials needed like Solar Panels.
Longer lifetime, cheaper to install and maintain.
CNIM CSP Fresnel technology:
an efficient and environmentally friendly solution
1. Patented mirror support design for an easy local construction
2. Standard dimensions, easily available mirrors with easy handling
3. Boiler type receiver tube. Easy handling and maintenance
4. No heavy civil works, no concrete. Easy rehabilitation after dismantling
5. Common motorization with low electrical consumption
6. Standard steel structure with easy adjustment
Not sure if I missed it in the video, but do we know the storage density of this liquid? How much would be required in a closed loop to provide X amount of heat energy?
I did a quick search and Wikipedia says that MOST can achieve 559kJ/kg which is about the same as LiFePo4 on a good day. Their minimum target is 300kJ/kg which is also the same as a low grade LiFePo4 cell.
@@BobHannent That's pretty damn good...
When you release the energy in the fluid then it will heat up by around 60°C. That sounds way too low to me. Unless it has specific heat capacity comparable to water or higher (I doubt it) then it will be less capable than lithium ion. And I doubt it will be cheap to compensate that.
But assuming that the fluid has heat capacity comparable to water (4180 J/°C/kg) and the temperature difference is 60°C then 60*4180=250800 J/kg = 70 Wh/kg and lithium batteries have between 100 and 265 Wh/kg. Then you also have to remember that the energy is in the form of heat and quite small temperature difference so if you want to convert it to electricity then it will probably have low efficiency.
@@tomaspecl1082 Actually is not low at all. the water in many central heating systems comes to less than 50C, and goes back to room temperature.
now, if you add to that 60 C, you make it 80. is over what my radiator ever had. Now we have heating solar panels that works at temperatures close to water boiling point, and works even in winter in the version with vacuum tubes. but storing the hot water does not work for longer periods of time, Good for sunny days, but when is blizzard that goes for a week, you need alternatives. so that system, combined with this having capacity for about two months may be a great solution.
BUUUT. something that they did not mentioned is the cost. For example these vacuum tubes are pretty expensive too. But they work many years so the cost is recovered. Those interested could build an underground insulated tank, And store heat in the summer and use it in the winter. Even half of it is lost, the other half does its job. And the technology is here. This alternative can be useful by preserving that half of energy lost in a regular insulated tank. But if this system costs more than the energy lost in traditional way, obviously, does not work. As for the possibility of transforming the stored heat in electricity... hmm. Already the efficiency of capture is low, and conversion not so good either.. that direction is a long shot. Interesting from academic point, but practicality... who know if ever..
So... my question, it will be cheap? Expensive solutions are plenty.
@@ehombane The problem with this liquid is that it needs light of a specific wavelenght. It stores the energy of that specific wavelength.
If you have vacuum tubes I think going paraffin might be good. It stores heat at a temperature around 70...96 as a phase change material. You can buy it for the correct temperature.
It's not the same, but it's more dense than storing hot water, and hence you can do with a smaller good insulated tank.
I like it! It sounds like a trade-off between efficiency and convenience/affordability. The fluid doesn't capture a large amount of solar energy, but the energy it does capture is rendered into a stable, portable form that can be piped around and used in countless different ways. I don't think anyone will be storing it for years when the sun will still be shining tomorrow, but there's definitely a case to be made for storing sunlight in the summer and using it in the winter.
10:12 My new favorite acronym!
Wonderful Video. Thank you Matt.
I find the concept of light directly converted to chemical storage then converted straight to heat in a closed loop system very interesting. The conversion efficiency of light to doesn't need to be real high if you can collect for 8 months to get you through 4 months of heating during the winter especially since you would be collecting during the long days of summer to use during the short days of winter. Appropriate sizing of the system with long term storage would be easier also as you wouldn't have to over build your system in summer to insure enough in winter. I like the idea of having a 120 degree F heat source on winter days with a high of -10 degree F when even air - air heat pumps don't operate efficiently. It would be important to know life span expectancy of this system as I am disappointed in compressor life in heat pumps.
Yes it is interesting but think of the volume of this liquid needed to store, for that 4 months of winter heating. Since there was no data on the volume required in this video we are left to just guess. And mine is that it couldn't be done in an individual house level. You would need an infrastructure piping this liquid to each house, much like we do with gas.
I share this sentiment. The ability to storage energy in this molecular fluid and then release the energy as heat at any time up to so many years later would be ideal for warming homes and cities, both on the surface, and below, such as the eventual prospect of building a city at the bottom of the ocean and warming it internally with the heat released by this fluid. or warming underground cities on other planets. definitely a technology worth investment.
But how much of the liquid you need to store?
How is this much better than hydrogen though of the conversion efficiency sucks?
@@innosam123 I produce 3MW of excess electricity in summer and I'm missing 1.5MW for my heatpump in winter, I calculated saving this with hydrogen, it amounts to an enormous very dangerous tank and huge energy losses. But with a stable liquid molecule I imagine the tank being a fraction of it, and for a heat exchange system it would be perfect. The molecule must be very stable and safe if it can be stored for 18 years unlike the exploding gas counterpart. But yes, I would also like to have more details on the liquids stability and the energy density.
Hi Matt - I’ve been a loyal subscriber from almost the very beginning of your channel (you had something like 7.5 thousand subs at the time), and I’ve really enjoyed the way you present new tech and ideas in an easy to understand way, but I also love trying to catch all of the puns you sneak in throughout…..Anyway, I just happened to notice today that you reached the AMAZING 1 million subscriber threshold!!! CONGRATS! That’s a truly awesome accomplishment! As long as you keep making your great content (and clever puns), I’m sure you’re going to keep growing even faster! Keep up the great work! N.S.
Appreciate that.
@@UndecidedMF Congrats on 1 millions subs! You cover a lot of interesting content on here.
Someone else brought up, and I think it's a really good idea (could even be a central theme your channel, if you wanted it to), is doing some recap videos on past topics you've covered, which ones went big, which ones failed, and which ones are still progressing. I know you occasionally re-cover a topic, but a video covering a quick breakdown of various projects would be really interesting.
Congratulations Matt. There are now well over 1 million people on this world who are directly benefiting from your efforts. Not many of us ever reach that level of global contribution and you can be rightly proud. Your product is directly encouraging us to change our ways and improve our use of the fragile planet Earth. Many, many thanks from those of us who enjoy your work.
@@kindlinI really like that idea. I have been trying to revisit a topic or company when I think there’s enough “new” to share, but I need to do that more. I’ll rethink that strategy to do more revisits and updates.
@@UndecidedMF
< 3 !
Just found your channel. Very much enjoy your attention to detail. Looking forward to more videos. Thank you.
Love your videos! I always learn so much about the topics you cover.
My first thought on this is using it to cool the photovoltaic panels so they'll work more efficiently. Then use a combination of battery storage and this to provide power when the sun isn't shining.
This is cool because it is a new technological concept I haven’t seen before, rather than just a refinement of an existing concept. The isomer + catalyst approach is fundamentally different from producing a liquid fuel that requires later combustion (and needs careful handling from combustion dangers), or straight thermal storage. And because it’s liquid, it could theoretically be made in sunnier areas and shipped to less sunny areas, if the energy density makes shipping worthwhile.
What excites me the the most is the solar “rechargeable” fuel is tailored to a certain spectrum meaning if you make other molecules Tailored to the rest of the electromagnetic spectrum (and they don’t react negatively to each other) you may be able to mix different spectrum fluids together to get a ton of coverage. So stacking these different tailored fluids in the same receiver may be interesting.
Exactly, this breakthrough alongside some breakthroughs in thermocouple electric generators would be a true storage solution.
could be the new oil, but reusable
LOHC Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carriers do something similar, good thing about it it uses existing petrol infrastructure
As always, a very informative video. Thanks!
really amazing high quality videos thank you very much sir! :)
I’m quite convinced we all need to capture as much of solar heat we can get and store it in materials that can stand the heat. Only non toxic materials should be used for underground storage where leaks may occur. Earth is a good keeper of heat which can free this energy during winter. Low temperature but mass heating (like floors) during winter is best for small energy losses. You don’t need 18 years of storage. And of course insulation counts.
Concept is interesting but 3% efficiency for storing thermal energy is amazingly poor. Consider that photosynthesis can be 6% efficient, takes CO2 out of the air, and cellulose can retain that stored energy for a very ling time.
Well, burning wood is the traditional energy source for humanity. Wood pellet stoves and heating is fairly economical in some areas. I wouldn't recommend a widespread return to that though with all the localized side effects like carbon monoxide and smoke pollution affecting air quality to worry about.
I'm not so concerned about efficiency ratings when the source of the energy is a gazillion-degree ball of fire floating in space that can't be monetized by any corporation. 3% of a gazillion is still more than what we need.
@@MrStrizver But you should be. Because the efficiency determines the amount of raw materials and embodied carbon you need per unit energy. It's why nuclear is still better than solar or wind, even excluding batteries. You need so much more material and during the process you create so much waste, including dangerous, chemical waste, that nuclear energy has both a lower carbon, environmental and toxicity footprint than solar or wind per energy produced. Without even counting storage.
@@patrikgubeljak9416 Yes and no. It's a matter of scale. There is so much solar energy hitting the earth that we don't necessarily need a high efficiency, just an environmentally friendly way to collect it. Again, 3% of a bazillion is a lot. Sure, it may be considered "wasteful" by conventional thinking, but it's not like we use up the sun faster by "wasting" it....it's literally free energy.
@@HermanVonPetri chimneys should make use of the smoke to generate a turbine generator.. also we can capture carbon and put it into use before it makes smog
Very interesting. I am always fascinated by the developments that are made almost on a daily basis. Great video!
Very cool topic! I remember thinking in college that storing excess renewable electricity in chemical bonds could be useful. My senior project in my chemical engineering undergrad was to study and present on the process of catalytic methanation, or turning CO2 and H2 into methanol, which could be burned later to recover some energy. Excess electricity is used to perform electrolysis of water, producing pure H2, and then it is reacted with CO2, preferably obtained through carbon capture technologies, over a metal catalyst. The process may not be the most efficient, but it was a useful learning opportunity and opened my eyes to possible alternatives to battery storage.
Very interesting tech! Engineered storage in molecular bonds makes a lot of sense long term. It is, after all, why traditional fuels have been so successful. It strikes me that the efficiency does not have to be terribly high if it is cheap to deploy a lot of surface area. Certainly a square meter of glaze red glass with a fluid flowing through it would be far cheaper than square meter of polycrystalline silicon.
Just discovered your channel 4 weeks ago, have been watching all the new video's that came out, really liking it. Happy I discovered it. Also happy to see a lot of development is going on to help us deal with current world problems. Good to see that not all is a crisis here and crisis there. Really like the topic you select and the clear explanation. All the best creating all the future video's.
Glad you're enjoying them.
If you just found Matt Ferrell, you may also enjoy Joe Scott. There is actually a deep well of amazing science TH-camrs right now.
Matt. Totally off topic, but, I have to say one of the strengths to your channel that I appreciate the most, is your ability to allow people to disagree with you, without you taking it personal, or turning it into some sort of battle of insults. You have impressed me over the years, with your responses to various commentors who disagreed with you.
I worked on a chemical bond solar energy system while in graduate school back in the 1970s. Iceland was interested in it at the time because they were trying to find a way to export energy produced by their geothermal plants. Chemical system was Norbornadiene/Quadricyclane. The idea was to use UV lights and a photo-initiator to generate quadricyclane from norbornadiene and use silver to catalyze the decomposition of quadricyclane back to norbornadiene. Heat was produced by the exothermal process. Project ended because like any other chemical reaction a small amount of impurities are produced with each cycle. It does not take many cycles to cause the system to become inefficient. That was some 40 plus years ago. May be they have come up with better materials and processes. Personally, I would in vest in other alternatives.
Cold climate heating during winter for residential.
Here in Canada a large portion of our carbon release is for heating, a system like this that could harvest and store heat in the warm months for winter use would be great but as always cost will matter.
Yeah, just think of the possibilities up north where the sun shines for 18 to 20 hours in the summer, but, just a few in the winter...
I wonder if you could bury large tanks (like water cisterns) below the basement of the home. Gather your heat during the warm months, use it during the winter months.
Jesus. Plant a tree, burn said tree for heat in a wood stove or steam burner
@@car0lm1k3 I live in Canada it takes about 5 cord of firewood a year for a smallish house. Then there is splitting, stacking, keeping it going day and night, cleaning ash. … not as romantic as it sounds
7:36 - Whenever I hear that something mechanical is controlled by machine learning and AI, I'm skeptical of it. That's entirely marketing speak. Why is there a need to adjust things 30 times a second? The sun moves half an arcsecond in the sky in that time. What mechanical system is going to have that accuracy?
Also "While most systems usually" -> "this system is capable of" sounds like this system has not yet been optimised and so they're throwing around big numbers to make it sound impressive. The point of the current systems heating to ~500C is because that's the operating point for the working fluid (salt). They could heat up much higher than that if they weren't cooled by the working fluid.
i don't see a reason to be skeptical when it's just obviously overhyped marketspeak bullshet carefully crafted to attract investors.
@@Alexander_Sannikov Thanks, I needed a laugh.
I have been storing the sun’s power in the trees in my backyard…every once in a while one needs cutting, and I burn the wood to make fire, which makes my family room toasty warm in the middle of a cold snowy winter night. I then reflect how great the sun and trees are to give me such warmth when I need it.
Thanks for yet another excellent video
Something to consider is using different storage methods to their particular advantages. Like you mentioned, MOST could be paired with photovoltaics to harvest some of the heat of the panels. Sure it's not the most efficient for electricity generation, but we often use our electricity to generate heat. Skipping a few conversion processes makes it inherently more efficient, and there should also be a way to qualify the ability to capture waste energy from other processes.
Wondering about encasing methane gas in two different lens type, one infrared point at solar panel...but the encased methane can trap some solar radiation to feed the panels.
I wonder if this could also be an alternative for long distance transmission via existing or converted pipelines. Wired power transmission typically has a 5% loss. How efficient would be the conversion be if you used a laser diode tuned to the best absorption frequency?
even working with the heat. This could be quite helpful here in the winter. Store up excess energy in small amounts through the summer to have a tank of stored energy that could slowly be used in the cold months to increase home temps and reduce heating costs would be amazing.
Forty years ago, we manufactured solar panels that collected hot air and ducted them to a closet or attic space where the hot air heated up plastic trays full of a salt solution. The salt trays stored the heat which a circulating blower would pass air across the trays at night to heat the building. Very simple system
Love your channel! This technology looks really promising. Now I'm curious... how toxic is the solution/waste after the 18 year storage capacity has passed?
I'd be curious to know how this compares to the original chemical method for storing solar energy: photosynthesis. Years ago I read about a project that was growing algae in tubes that had CO2 bubbling through them. The CO2 came from electricity generation (ideally, a solid oxide fuel cell) that used the algae as feedstock in a semi-closed-loop system. It doesn't seem to have gone anywhere, so maybe it didn't really work? But it sounded promising at the time.
Thanks. Love innovation and those of you who are willing to share it. The best to you always innovators
Definitely worth researching.
They had some CSP plants in the Kramer Junction/Harper Lake area of California. Spent billions and they are no longer operating. Any idea why they shut them down?
now that is cool and i mean that it's fantastic for thermal storage it means you can easily bunker heat for the winter on a relatively small plot of land BUT it still don't solve the real issue of making that thermal energy easily converted to electrical energy that is and has always been the main issue as most such systems are either horribly inefficient or very bulky and require very high temperatures to operate SO while this is very usefull and solves the storage aspect now we just have the HERCULEAN task of making low temperature THERMAL->ELECTRICAL efficient
low temperature differential conversion to electricity is inefficient fundamentally by thermodynamics. the higher the temp differential and lower the sink temperature, the better is the efficiency
Yup. In the video the device they used in China looked like a Seebeck effect TEG. Not very efficient.
You can't. If you want effeciency you need very high temperatures.
That Is a fundamental law of nature.
This type of storage would replace a certain amount of electrical energy currently used for heating in the winter anyway. None of these needs to be the solution for all problems. It can solve just the problem it is best at solving, and use something else for the rest.
@@rdizzy1 yeah that's what i said although with more sarcasm but this is indeed a step forward for thermal management during winter times
This is very well presented and enlarges my view of Solar Energy development. Thanks!
Very interesting! Thank you.
Wait…a liquid that stores energy…over long periods of time. I can’t put my finger on it, but I have heard of something like this before.
I run my truck on one which is collected by the sun. I use biodiesel produced by locally sourced food waste. All solar power, no new water or land use required, abundant and practically free.
NESTE produces billions of gallons of it, Shell, Exxon, and others are getting in the game, too.
And in doing so, we take oils and greases out of landfills which eventually become methane (the worst greenhouse gas) or leach into our waterways and kill off algae and other O2 producing biomass.
We can supplement our push to EV's with green energy fuels for existing vehicles.
But when Matt had the chance to cover it, he shit all over it, instead, failing to understand the waste stream source of biofuels and only focusing on the cost of growing food for fuel.
Shameful.
Nine minutes in and we finally hear about a new chemical for ... heat pads that can be recharged by leaving them outside. I'm sure IcyHot is excited. They must be targeting some really high latitudes if their home heating system had the fluid being sent back to a central plant rather than being re-energized on the houses' rooftops.
You don't want to use this highly toxic chemical as a heat pad filler…
open your mind to some possibilities. a heat differential also means the possibility of using something like a sterling engine to produce electricity. what matters is that we can store energy and release it at will, and reuse the storage medium.
Thanks. Informative.
Great episode (as always), thanks!
I love the idea of a single home dish style concentrated solar. Also, combining steam generator and water desalination.
Just imagine, a home with water catchment system where some is used as grey water (flushing toilets) and the rest is made potable by a solar still/ concentrated solar steam generator
The hardest part for me to imagine right now is a water catchment system providing any value... It rained 4 times this year
Nate, it's "black" water.
@@Daniel-yy3ty Maybe if you live in the Sahara, but given that the average rainfall in the US is 30 inches a year, a 1,000 sq ft water catch (your roof) can capture almost 19,000 gallons of water a year. Enough for three (and a quarter) people to shower every single day of the year
@@darkfur18 well, as I said it rained 4 times, so take that average and go play in the rain you are getting since I got 5 inches since the start of the year
plus, don't go assume that people live in the US and have a big house all for them, our roof is half of that at best and there are 5 families under it
@@Melethasgar so whats grey water? My understanding was black (wouldn't want to use in home), typically smells, grey, and potable. But am admittedly ignorant in this area
This fluid solar storage could also be great for home heating systems directly, not turning the energy into electricity at all.
I live this channel! Thanks Matt!!!
Very cool. Thank you!
This seems like a very promising idea, even if it only helps with heating (and not electricity in general). But so many questions remain. How much does the fluid cost? What is the energy storage density? What are the environmental risks (biodegradability, health impacts, side effects of production, corrosion of pipes, etc). I wonder how stable the fluid is. Is there potential for a fiery runaway reaction like with batteries? Would it really be cost effective to pipe or truck this stuff around, or would it need to be produced and used onsite, and thus only applicable to a niche target like food and beverage factories? I feel it could easily take another 10 years of intensive research to find a mix of chemicals to achieve reasonably wide band sunlight utilization and still meet all the other requirements. And that's if they're lucky.
One way to find out 👍
As mentioned in your video, the efficiency of the system depends critically on the max-min temperature differential. IIRC, the chemical goes through about a 60 deg C change when it encounters the catalyst, which means it is useful only for direct heat, like heating water or warming a house, not for electricity generation. The comment that it could be used to power headphones really says it all -- such applications are 0.0000001% of the energy budget. We need solutions for generation of GW levels of power, not mW levels of power.
Or we need more efficient ways to light a room.
Great point on using to augment existing efficiencies. Looks neat
Awesome production as always thanks so very much
Into Solar Su
One minute into your video : Your solar panel do not transform "sunlight" into electron, it use the energy of the photon to create a difference in electric potential aka a voltage.
Let me explain : "Light is electricly neutral, the electron is not, you have to conserve charge".
And again 10 secondes after : Electron are not "store" in a battery, a Battery has an entropy.
Low entropy, all electron are move on the anode side, leaving a depleted positive side on the cathode. You have a potential between them, your battery is charged.
High entropy electron are on both side, both side are electricly neutral, no more potential, battery depleted. Charging a battery is moving electron inside the battery to a low entropy state with an external supply of energy. A battery is more like a spring than a can.
You don't need an IA to align mirrors at 30Hz, you just need to track the sun and do trigonometry to reoriente the mirrors. We do it for almost 50 Years. A raspberry pi could handle this.
An isolate container of pure steel to hold rocks, except steel have a very good thermal conduction propriety.
About the magic golden liquid that replace solar panel and battery, it's smell like manure.
1 - You don't mofify a molecule, you create a new ones if you change compositions or structure
2 - Molecule don't change shape with heat, they form or brake.
3 - When nitrate and silver ions receive photons above red, they combine to AgNO3. It cost you more energy to break the molecule, because this state is more stable. If your special liquide have 18 years of retention, must be very stable.
4 - It will be better, if we have a hint of what it's made of. The CGI structure look fishy chemicly speaking. Is this unicorn pee ?
5 - Molecules would be sensible to a specific frequency of light (not a range) corresponding to an electron orbital, enegy is quantize (you know quantum physic ?). By changing the electron orbit, it will be able to be share in a bond. To retrieve energy you need to break the bond.
Buzz words and as much science as in an Avengers movies. Clearly you and your "team" need to research the Dunning-Kruger effect.
We need to more posts like this, This dude been oil snaking us with these far fetched ideas
Yeah, the tower with the molten salts kinda failed in a big way....
@@dsloop3907 Have said and have nothing againt Tower with molten salts
It's a old but proven technology to store heat based on the solar hoven ( late 18 century ? ).
Wathever medium you use, you can store heat and retrieve it with a simple sterling engine. You can use oil, water, gaz, concrete, water even magic sci-fi liquid.
What's matter is the heat capacity.
Best one is water.
But you only store energy as heat and it can be more efficient than Chemical storage.
But thermodynamic won't let you keep this energy forever, even in a vacuum, energy is lost throught radiation. (see black body radiation )
Plant use sunlight energy to create sugar from CO2 and Water. Sugar store around 10-20 KJoules/g, if you fermente it ethanol give you 30 KJoules/g or feed it to an animal lipides are almost at 40kJ/g.
Water store around 4KJ/g/K.
And a battery Li 900J/g FIY.
@@vincentvoillot6365 The salt cooled and destroyed many things. I saw a video about that place on here. It would have been a great thing if it had worked. Cost more to run than it made.
@@dsloop3907 It's exactly what i said, molten salt are corrosive ( it's destroy "thing" ), salt are generaly high Ph, like caustic soda .
Oils are chemicly neutral but have a lower heat capacity.
Water can stay liquid at high temperature and high pressure, but it's highly corrosive in this state. This is why it's feed into a turbine and not store in a pressurize container.
But still, if you want to collect solar energy with basic mirrors , molten salt in a limestone structure, will do the job. It will not be efficient, but it will be cheap, better in a place with low humidity.
You can find it where it make sense, like in hot desert, solar panel don't handle heat very well.
Storing solar energy directly into a boiler is from far the MOST efficient and cheap solution. Even if it is only for warm water generation, it should be used much more as it is. The only missing element is a good brand that provide hardware that require almost no maintenance and cover all operation automaticaly (including protection in case of very low temp).
insulation is the key; the higher the temperature, the greater is the heat loss. At high temperature, loss by radiation is the largest and you will need a dewar flask that can hold at 500-700C
I don't believe so. Panels, generating electricity for a heat pump, making hot water, makes for a better solution. That's what most people are installing right now anyway. Together with low temp floor heating in a thick concrete slab you are almost optimizing it, at reasonable cost.
Super interesting. Kind of like an industrial version of the reusable heat pads but it can still flow. Crazy that they thought to take advantage of the molecular structure change.
I'm so happy to know we have these brilliant and various innovations on clean energy. Most of us only know of the basic ones so knowing that they have been innovating hard so we have a chance at reaching a sustainable future.
Wouldn't solar vacuum tubes be more efficient at producing heat?
BTW, this would make a great subject matter for a video, this tech is rarely mentioned.
Harvesting ? for sure. Storing ? no way.
There is no viable economic solution at the moment, that store the energy we can capture during the summer in using during the winter. Just imagine this for 18 years!
There's a company in Europe doing solar vacuum tubes. It's brilliant!
@@maurorossi8708 Not needed... Wave, hydro, and wind can easily power all the global needs as it is forever. Batteries will advance soon, he shows he here monthly as battery tech advances yearly now. The Solution Project Map details it, using good data
@@cd4683 Yeah, I am looking at them for winter next year (wood stove this year). €700-800 each panel though. I am renovating an old house and will add pipes for low temp floor heating, maybe wall heating too in some rooms, so these panels combined with an extra large tank could be perfect. Still running the maths on them, as I'd like to use these pipes for cooling too, maybe from the ice cold condensed water from the heat pump, and I'd like to use them for hot sanitary water too. When renovating, it seems that whatever you do, you need to "invent" everything. Not many people are specialized in low temp floor heating, for instance, even less use cellular glass floor insulation, etc.
Solar Trough concentrator systems use the vacuum sealed tubes. The problem isn't the collection of solar energy its the working fluids that limit the efficiency. CSP systems just arent economical and several CSP companies ended up going bankrupt.
I wish you would include some criticisms and or doubts in your video.
all those vids are nice. some of them are pure dope.. keep up mate!!!
No rare materials needed like Solar Panels.
Longer lifetime, cheaper to install and maintain.
CNIM CSP Fresnel technology:
an efficient and environmentally friendly solution
1. Patented mirror support design for an easy local construction
2. Standard dimensions, easily available mirrors with easy handling
3. Boiler type receiver tube. Easy handling and maintenance
4. No heavy civil works, no concrete. Easy rehabilitation after dismantling
5. Common motorization with low electrical consumption
6. Standard steel structure with easy adjustment
The molecular system for storing heat energy looks like a really good candidate for hydronic systems. They heat water to between 100 and 120 degrees Fahrenheit (38 to 49 degrees Celsius) and circulated the hot water through tubing under floors. Turn the panels on their edge when it is snowing and flat when it is sunny. Store the heat in the molecules in the tanks mentioned and then activate the heat with the catalyst to heat water to pump through the hydronic system when needed. This would eliminate the use of gas, oil or electricity for heating. You could couple the system with a groundwater well and a separate insulated tank to cool the water for the hydronic system providing radiant cooling. You would turn off the heating system by turning the panels on their edges again pointing them away from the sun. The only electricity you would use is that needed to operate the pumps and the tilting servo motors.
Yeah that seems to show promise for hydronic systems. I have a Sunamp phase change heat battery and I currently charge that with solar and you can pump water through those in traditional hydronic systems. Right now that would be more efficient than this liquid system though even at 16% efficiency. I think it would have to be quite cheap to be competive or maybe used as part of a solar PVT system to cool panels, increase PV efficiency and store solar for hydronic heating. Wouldn't you want some long term seasonal storage though? Winter is not generally a time you would get enough solar output to cover heating requirements in winter. It would also have to compete with the likes of Caldera heat batteries and Tepeo ZEB. Very interesting stuff though
its true what you are saying , but we don't know the formula in the closed loop to understand its efficiency to make such things work..
@@magicray5088 Agreed. Interesting to see how it develops
"Converting sunlight into electrons" Shame.
I like it very much, thank you.
Great work Matt!
MOST is very interesting but I’d like to examine its environmental impact.
Is it possible to collect and transfer the light directly using fiber optics?
The light could be reflected and concentrated by any of the two mirror methods and then instead of heating the oil and transferring the heated oil to heat the water, the light could be transferred by fiber optics to heat the water.
Light strong enough to carry intense heat packed into tiny expensive plastic lines? Seems legit.
@@HonoredMule
Light is not hot. Light becomes hot when transforms to heat.
BTW fiberoptics are made from many things but mainly from quartz or glass.
@@drpk6514 Luckily, as we all know, sunlight is a focused beam that will obediently limit itself to the incident angle of reflection supported by the cables. I wouldn't worry too much about light dissipation, or that dissipation getting exponentially worse once things get hot enough to melt the dopants that coat it.
There have been such lighting systems around for decades. A limitation is the heat of concentrated solar light at the collection point has to be filtered or restricted so it doesn't melt the fiber optic cables. Good idea already in use.
Neat! The MOST sounds wonderful.
MY LARGE SUV IS 100% SOLAR POWERED
It works like this: The sun (solar power) causes certain plants to grow, these plants decay naturally and turn into an “All Natural” Energy source that can be easily converted into different forms. One form, called “gasoline” is easily transported and stored until the solar energy is needed. I can drive straight through from Maine to California and recharge my solar powered SUV in less than 4 minutes by conveniently located charging stations. The solar power, (in liquid form) is pumped into my vehicle in a couple of minutes, and I'm back on the road again. If you doubt me, ask any geologist. If there was no sun, there would be no fossil fuels.
You should try a solar powered vehicle, they’re great!
Matt, you didn't mention the most promising energy storage I've seen, look up Polar Night Energy. They're just using plain old sand. Cheap. Simple. Effective.
Thank you Matt.
Congratz with 1 million subs - great channel
I'm no physicist but "converting photons into electrons" is cringe worthy.
I'm a physicist. It's not only cringe worthy, but also impossible, because such a process would violate fermion number conservation.
How would you explain using solar to charge a battery then?
@@kevinmurimi2176, when you charge a battery, what happens is that an electron absorbs a photon and moves to a higher energy state, when it's discharged it moves to a lower energy.
The photon is absorbed by an electron. This is a valid process, because the photon is a boson, and the number of bosons is not conserved. To create an electron, you necessarily need to create a positron, too, but typical photons from the sun do not have enough energy to do that.
@@kevinmurimi2176 It's done by using a PV panel ro the energy of the photons to move electrons through conductors. An electron is a fundamental particle, they're not made of anything, they just are.
@@felipelopes3171It's technically possible. That's just pair production. You'd need MeV-level gamma rays, tho😅.
There is little to no advantage to long-distance heating, since you still have to insulate all the tubing in the cycle presented by Chalmars University. A spill of that chemical into the environment would be very bad for the environment, probably also poisonous for living organisms. Btw, that 18yrs shelf life of the energized molecule only applies when the substance is 100% free of contaminants.
If you want to store energy for a long time, Hydrogen, alcohols, fats, sugars or batteries are still your best bet - on geological timescales, it's the formation of crude oil. Also "the liquid's temperature rises by 63°C" is useless information, since it only applies to an exact, unstated quantity. There is a reason why reaction enthalpies are stated in kJ/mol, kJ/kg or kJ/l.
You and your writing team lack the fundamental knowledge required for doing proper science communication. All you do is spreading unfounded hype and promoting unsustainable ideas, which directly results in more poorly informed people turning into science deniers due to most of these "breakthroughs/ideas/whatever" never getting realized on a large scale.
The 63 degree is useful information because the energy released is proportional to the mass of the liquid. Assuming the specific heat of the fluid is also fixed, the 63 degree increase in temperature will be a constant regardless of the quantity of fluid.
The search for AB-> A+B with heat, and recombines to form AB with a catylist with release of energy for cooking and heating should be a major priority for the world's chemists.
It is very clear from your videos that you enjoy discussing the details of technical developments, especially those with green credentials. You also show the same enthusiasm for the established versus the novel. However, what is missing is some comment on the inevitable slow progress from concept to a working model. Also on the possible time scale to reach commercial energy production at the megawatt level.
I also take issue with you on the viability of solar energy, particularly those installations which intensify sunlight. In order to maximise production, they are all located in dry, and therefore dusty, locations. Unfortunately dust on mirrors is bad news and frequent cleaning is essential. But these mirrors are large and quite delicate, especially the focusing mechanism. Cleaning, and maintenance, has turned out to be a much more complicated and expensive exercise than expected and enough to affect the financial viability of such schemes.
ivanpah solar project failure... forget to mention. You are almost a scamer with this cherry picking
There was a great program called Tomorrow's World in the UK and unfortunately, they canceled it. You are doing a very good job of keeping that spirit alive with much more scientific detail.
An additional heat and storing it at no extra cost is something of a great free power makes a sensible proposition.
Thanks to the propounded !
Propounded should be changed to propounder
This is awesome. Being able to store it in a liquid form would make it viable to transfer energy cheaper where and when needed at a reasonable cost.
Looks very nice, just make a big shallow pool and let it circulate. Its basically a form of photosynthesis. Brilliant.
Very cool idea! And your recap added a lot of good perspective. Thanks.
So a 63 degree C temperature change is about 145 F for us Americans. Cycling that past a low speed fan would be plenty of heat for your home, and probably enough for most home water heaters. I can't wait to see this as a commercial product in a few years.
Congrats on the million subscribers Matt!
This is truly quite a concept. THANK YOU
In the US, geothermal energy below the yellow stone park and San Andreas fault, if used and channelised properly, will give free heat and electricity for several states
Something I usually don't see addressed is the land displacement of these projects. The Gemini Project in Nevada when completed is supposed to occupy 7100 acres and will produce 690 megawatts. In contrast, the modest sized Chehalis, WA natural gas power plant produces approximately the same amount of power on 30 acres. A larger 850 MW solar plant in another area of Nevada has already been shot down by local opposition. It seems much easier to locate a 30 acre power plant closer to population centers that could operate 24/7 regardless of weather than a multiple square mile facility that requires virtually perfect weather for optimum efficiency.
The whole renewable energy industry is a scam. Newer rich people wanted to take a cut from older established rich people who made tons on money using coal and gas. So they funded Greenpeace to bring in renewables and got some market share. It is far better to make coal and gas more efficient and hopefully the government will have to release the Tesla free energy one day as pollution gets out of control. Free seems illogical but it is just like hydro, it is free, it just converts gravitational energy into electricity. There is e-m and gravitational energy everywhere around us.
I am really glad that the molecular storage of solar energy is a thing now, I've been trying to figure out if it would have been effective for over 10 years and now it's already in testing phase.
Excellent video.
The joyous aspect of this video is the realization of same concept in the Movie Treasure Planet Disney made in 2002, coming to near reality in 2022.
That was cool thank you ❤
Reminds me of reading many science journals in z library of all these new promising ideas that stayed in the library. Need fully comprehensive data including long term testing, cost analysis, real world efficiency studies Etc.
Congratulations on 1M Subs, for a tech channel that provides information on experimental and cutting edge of technology, 1M subs is like 20M. Thank for everything so far.
Incredible development. It seems very promising.
MOST is a tool in the toolbox. Hot Rocks seems more advanced and scalable in the nearer term. Great video. Thanks Matt!
Love your videos. Very informative. With this particular video discussion liquid energy storage, I couldn't believe you didn't make reference to 1980's Transformers and "Energon Cubes"!! LoL. (You are younger than I am, so perhaps a pop-culture reference before your time? LoL).
Looking forward to hearing about your future endeavors.
thanks! really novel idea with great promise, i think.
Sounds like a good Idea and a step (small one at this time) in the right direction.
It seems like one of the most promising used for MOST I could think of is as a survival item - you can store it away in your pack for years and it'll be able to warm you up at night. Basically, a reusable hand warmer that doesn't require boiling it or any other difficult labor to reset.
This gives the saying "A bottle of sunshine" a new meaning.
MOST interesting! I’d like to learn more about their molecular gymnastics, and whether they would consider working with kinetic architecture modeling groups, etc?
Very Interesting indeed, this should stimulate university research for identifying other molecules as well. Good story, keep finding these diamonds in the rough.