This channel is one of the best on youtube. He talks to everyone from middle schoolers to PHDs and industry boffins and keeps the funding clean and ad free. A true public service
I've met Donald a few times and have been to his lab at MIT. It's a fascinating technology and he is a super interesting guy. I really really hope he can finally get this idea off the ground as it could be an absolute game-changer for grid-scale storage. Go Don!!!
He just got sacked from his own company. It looks like a patent troll rather than normal commercialization attempt and i bet all investors and people who waited for the product to materialize must feel awfully betrayed .
@@piotrcurious1131 oh super interesting. That does not surprise me one little bit. He was a strange cat who wouldn’t work well in a normal environment. Plus the technology never really worked unfortunately….although it wasn’t the fault of the chemistry.
I have always believe in Stock market and other Economics activities but Is really unfair that 2020 trading and stock market is just difficult and unbelievable which is too bad now i rather invest my money only on bitcion and gain more profit in return
IF Mr. Sadoway wants a cheap method of defeating the dendrite problem , he should investigate the use of ultrasound vibrations to prevent even the beginning formation of the crystals . The u-sound would not need to be applied non-stop , only intermittently . This strategy would minimize the energy required to keep the battery healthy , and thus greatly increase both it's lifespan and it's safety-factor . *To examine a possible extreme use of such batteries , read my post at : quora.com/If-you-try-to-drive-a-regular-gasoline-petrol-car-on-Mars-will-it-work-Will-it-explode/
@@Prof.Megamind.thinks.about.it. Sadoway is advocating for a battery technology not based on solid state physics, so dendrite formation isn't a problem. He started the design process by looking at what the requirements for a grid scale storage battery would be. ie; low cost. Made of abundant materials that are "locally available", safer than exitsing solid state lithium ion batteries, no use of so-called "rare earths". He took as a starting point aluminum smelting which has alumina ore and a separator electrolyte (cryolite) with a carbon electrode placed in an insulated vat. A large current is applied which melts the assemblage, reduces the alumina to aluminum and oxidizes the electrode. The refined aluminum is drawn off. However, if the system was sealed and the heat maintained, the process would be reversible and you would have what was essentially a high temperature storage battery. He then tasked his team with finding other chemistries with better electrical capacity, made of abundant relatively available elements (if you want to make something dirt cheap, make it out of dirt.)
@Kilal Googlestaffers Tanks , mahn ! I wagered that the man had more than one arrow in his quiver , so I floated that one in case he or others needed a big battery breakthrough . *After all , a rising tide lifts all boats !😎
If you read their papers, the big problems have not been the chemistry of the energy storage, but the container. In the early prototypes, the electrical connections were made with expensive precious metals, and as they've tried to develop something less expensive, they've struggled to build a container that won't react with the components (in one version, all the electrolytic salt combined with the ceramic), and can maintain structural integrity and a gas seal through continuous thermal cycling.
I remember that, it set them back quite a bit. What did they ultimately decide to use for the container material? Hopefully they can (have found?) find something that will still allow the technology to be relatively low cost.
Yep, the devil is always in the details. It's fun to wave your hands in a classroom and talk about your perfect solution and how it would solve all the worlds problems if only the Evil CosmiDemonic Corporations would give you a break, but reality has a way of kicking you in the ass in ways your blackboard solutions didn't anticipate. Still, I give them props for making a go of it commercially, and I hope they do figure it out soon. Remember, you aren't competing against one energy producing industry, you are competing against ALL of them, and they want to win too.
@@nicolaeivanescu2253 I'm not a materials scientists so I can't explain it but here's a copy paste job: "In particular, each liquid metal battery cell requires a high temperature seal that is hermetic, electrically insulating, and non-reactive to oxygen as well as the metal vapours and molten salt inside the cell." - I take it, it took them a while to find or create a material that fit that bill.
@@brwin I'm as simple as dirt, so maybe just as cost effective, too. So IF "each liquid metal battery cell requires a high temperature seal that is hermetic, electrically insulating, and non-reactive to oxygen as well as the metal vapors and molten salt inside the cell." doesn't that sound a lot like glass, ( Pyrex, or some specialty glass ) ? Once installed for a grid they are stationary, eliminating the obvious limitation of a glass battery. I'll go to bed, now, and dream about how up to this point an obsession with automotive applications has clouded the issue, so I'm a hero, until tomorrow when I check back and find someone points out the flaw in my thinking. G'nite : ) "Glass can only be molded at very high temperatures. It completely melts/liquifies at approximately 1400 °C to 1600 °C" much > than the 500 C operation temp required. ... See Properties of oxide glasses www.britannica.com/topic/glass-properties-composition-and-industrial-production-234890/Properties-of-glass
The big thing about LMBs is that they're much simpler to make unlike normal batteries(Tesla's car production is limited by the amount of batteries they produce/buy btw) which means they will scale much faster and there will be no need to transport them far - since most countries could have an LMB factory - that's what Sadoway said himself. Prof. Sadoway has also co-founded a co2-free steel production company, Boston Metal. He's a real interesting dude, his lectures are worth watching.
@@-LightningRod- Is there an operating liquid metal storage system on a grid somewhere today? I don't know of any. Until there is one and it's proven that the idea works skepticism is in order.
@@bobwallace9753 sorry i thought you understood that this is the process for making Aluminum, just fine tuned for energy storage rather than Aluminum Alloy Production. At the part where Dave says a dead batterie that is Aluminum and the process ends at that point.It works just fine my friend millions and millions of Tons of Aluminum cant be wrong, Just look into it lightly and see what i mean.
@@-LightningRod- Rod, I know quite a bit about Sadoway's liquid metal storage idea. I've been following it since he first introduced the system, well before he founded Ambri. I've had a Google alert set for liquid metal storage since way back then and I've read what's been posted. I know something about aluminum smelting. In fact, when I was very young I lived in Alcoa, TN. My father worked in the aluminum smelting plant. Do you understand that until people actually flew people had not flown? That until people walked on the Moon people had not walked on the moon? Do you understand that until Ambri or some other company hooks a liquid metal storage plant to a grid and operates it there's not there there?
My best channel on TH-cam, No ads and his delivery style is fresh. Zero ambiguity, just about enough humor to keep you glued and a very polished way of starting, fleshing out and closing the subject. wish we could donate from Nigeria.
I've been watching this technology for the last three years or so. It sounds compelling and has not made extravagant promises or looked shady. I'm hopeful. I seems to be passing the smell test.
Yes, I think the battery itself perfectly works, but there are engineering problems around it. No hard problems, just many. Like handling lots of asymmetric heat expansion cases, or so.
The technology is known for decades, and usual handling problems limit it - dangerous chemicals, heavy metals etc. It is not worse than conventional lead acid batteries but it seems the commercialization attempt was just a mere patent troll. That means they focused on removing it from the market by patenting everything and scaling up the final product so it reaches only "non disruptive" niche markets. God forbid small scale samples sent to universities and hobbyists so they could quickly figure out how to make it cheaper and improve it.
I simply invested in one of the investors of AMBRI, namely the relative cheap French oil company TOTAL. Recently TOTAL invested in buying a share of about 20% in an Indian solar company (Adani Green Energy)... so I think there might be a chance of application of this battery technology in solar production... and I also tried to bring the AMBRI technology to the attention of companies like UMICORE, a metal recycling company with (wrong 😁) battery investments... but ofcourse I also hope to invest more directly into AMBRI. Ok good luck.
martin Mb Hello. Not much to tell extra, you can find the supporting parties on the websites but remember that part of the financial stretch already took place ... Total (petroleum & solar) grew strong the last months but was falling down again, maybe a new rise will come when international travel goes up again. Another investor was Microsoft, they had an upward margin because of growth in those datacenters (internet)... But remember again, investing is never without risk!
@@brudo5056 Total's share price will barely be influenced by AMBRI, because Total is huge. So even if AMBRI takes off and completely dominates the utility scale storage market, it will not impact the value of your Total shares in a noticeable way.
I was wishing I could invest in Ambri when I first heard about them years ago. I'm glad I wasn't able to then, due to the issues, but I have always been positive about the theory and chemistry of them.
they did not need an economy of scale. But they were bribed to convince everyone they are better off living in a safe bunker in new Zealand while earth goes to hell on Microsoft payroll. I wish them a moldy future and crackers too hard for their fake teeth.
Your absolutely right we can't have all the batteries we need for cars and still have enough for grid storage. If you want a longer explanation see my main comment.
@@TheSpecio You're wrong, really.. I advise you to watch Tesla Battery day presentation. The new Tesla battery will bring cost down to $50/Kwh .. Consensus is $100/Kwh is about cost parrity with ICE.. So Tesla cars will become MUCH cheaper than comparable ICE cars.. The transition to EV's is inevitable. Beside the cost aspect, EV's are BETTER in so many ways than Ice cars!.. Better performance, better handling, better safety, quieter, no emissions (thus cleaner air in cities!!), better software, longer lifespan, less depreciation, Charge at home, more storage.. I could go on and on.. So you could say an EV is MORE real than an old ICE car... It is so much better, you have no idea.. Once you have driven an EV, you never want back to ICE, really.. Brand loyalty for Tesla is the highest EVER, over 90%. I put the money where my mouth is, I have ordered a Model Y in June 2020, will come from the Berlin factory probably second half of 2021.
@@MarcoNierop No they re not. We need synthetic alkane fuels and IC engines. Production of such fuel will be negative emissions, which we desperately need in order to REVERSE climate change!
@@RoScFanWe must stop burning stuff and plant more tress to take out the CO2.. Way more efficient costs less and can be implemented immediately.. actually this IS happening, right now. It takes just one test drive to flip and realize ICE is stupid. Battery cost has come down 80% the last 4 years, and this cost decline will continue with improvements Tesla has revealed in September, economics of scale, new chemistries, etc.
the beauty of this technology would be that its more efficient to clump them all together tightly, that way you minimize thermal losses as well, so the efficiency would rise the more storage you need ( if you do it well ) thanks to the simple rule that volume increases faster than surface area!
I have been following this technology for several years and have been disappointed that it has not taken off yet. It really doesn’t seem to have any downsides, as it uses readily available and no rare earth materials. It would also free-up some of the other types of batteries like Li-Ion for applications that are better suited for those, such as EV’s and portable devices.
Downsides are low energy density and energy losses during longer storage periods. That metal have to be in melted state. Most of the time that mean 600+ C degree.
@@martingorbush2944 Energy losses are about 80% on average, which is better then for example pumped storage, which has an efficiency of about 70%.. This is very acceptable.. Low energy density is no problem for stationary storage, just add more batteries.
@@MarcoNierop Pump up is closer to 80% with at least one system reaching 85%. Efficiency is just one variable in the analysis. Capex and opex need to be included. Ease of siting and amount of time to install are important. Cycle life comes into play.
I'd like to interject in your disappoint over this lack of development with a thought, one that this video touches on but doesn't truly delve into: technology and science are largely dependent on economics, and the first and last element that capitalists care about is whether they can profit off of it. This goes for every tech and scientific endeavor, IMO. Fusion, space exploration, regenerative agriculture and permaculture, electric vehicles, etc - they've all been subject to the whims of capital. Again, if you ask me, IP and proprietarian practices stifle development instead of enhancing it.
I have tried to follow AMBRI for a long while now. I seldom find any news. I am impressed that Just-Have-A-Think has found so much information. How do you do it? Kudos to you!
Fantastic! We need every energy storage technology. It's not an Lithium battery verses Liquid Metal verses SuperCapacitors etc. competition, its about fitness for purpose - cost, safety, disposal, lifetime, density...for a specific application.
No, we need don't need energy storage at all, except for vehicles. And we have one: It's called diesel engine. Its energy storage is a simple sheet metal tank with a storage density that is unparalleled. Power plants, be it nuclear, gas or coal-fired, do not need storage because they are running 'on demand' whenever electricity is needed.
@@TheSpecio Please just take that sort of idiotic simplicity somewhere else. You clearly have NO Idea how grid level power works. NONE of nuclear, coal or gas are true "on demand systems." None of them are quick to respond to demand fluctuations. They all operate on a principle called spinning reserve and most have there own short term internal storage. In the case of nuclear and coal is the steam in the boiler. Try not to be so ignorant in future.
@@TheSpecio Sure, fossil fuels are extremely dense in energy - very hard to beat. They also produce incredible amounts of CO2, which is a bit of a problem, so some really smart people who care about future are trying to figure out how to replace burning fossil fuels for energy. Thankfully that is beginning to happen.
It has been about 3 years since I was waiting for this doco. As good as this doco is you did not assess the reason why this battery is not a commercial product yet. Questions that should be asked - How long can it hold the charge from 100% down to 90 %? and/or how long before it has to be recharged again? Maintainence? When (sorry, you did give this question)? Another great doco. nice work
Material science is in its infancy yes, however, the idea works. Research and development is the expensive part here. As the technology to do the science better evolves, so to will battery technology. I'm super excited about twisted bi-layer graphene and the things that are being done there. How about flapping two strips of the stuff together and getting a current from it...
Here´s the thing: there are about 1,5 Million tons of antimony worldwide. On the other hand there are like 77 million tons of Lithium reserves world wide. So the technology might be a complementary alternative for niche applications but it surely wont replace lithium ion on it´s own.
@@TheKoenigsParkour one of the reasons the progress on bring this to market is so slow is that they are still trying a lot of new chemistry's they have a number that work at different temperatures. If you are interested watch DSs online talks . From this I believe they will not have resource issues
Thank you for covering this important technology Dave. It would be good to hear a little more on the technological challenges they still face such as the ceramic seals and the welding as others have commented on below. Also why even though the materials and design are much simpler they are having a challenge getting costs below Li-ion.
PBS or another network should seriously consider giving you a bigger platform. You are helping people to better understand the issues of our time and the solutions that can be implemented.
I'm working on liquid metal batteries myself, there is still some time to go until we begin using it on very large scales, but once we have conquered the efficiency and temperature maintenance issues, it's a perfect system for grid power storage. This however can speed up if this technology is properly funded.
Great video, I came across this morning after watching a lecture last week about this technology~amazing what you can come up with if ‘you just have a think’.
Having researched the technology and the human minds behind AMBRI I am more than excited. Developed, literally, from a blank sheet approach by an MIT professor...I view this as the best solution to safe, large scale grid storage/release tech with low maintenance longevity.
And Ambri has a person 'special advisor' to the Biden administration. And Gates has been funding(along with many others) Ambri. Antimony is a deeply required part of AMBRI tech currently- Uamy.
Thank you for keeping the Ambri Liq. BATTERY IN THE CONVERSATION ABOUT GRID STORAGE ....I KNOW THIS IS THE ANSWER WE HAVE BEN WAITING FOR. JUST NEED TO GET THE WORD OUT. THANK YOU FOR DOING YOUR PART. CHin Ca.USA
Now, this is interesting technology. If Amri can make those batteries work, it would be a game changer in grid scale energy storage systems. Very least they got nice pilot plant with Terrascale in which they can test and improve it.
Its a manufacturing issue but when they had a problem auto welding the lids on they sacked half the staff and went silence for 2-3 years instead of pushing on , very sad I still hope they can get moving again but they are in the manufacturing hell
@@Jay...777 would be nice, but the failed to throw money at the issue at the right time they needed Industrial welding experts but scaled back and look to fix it themselves you think rocket engineers or nuclear reactor builders think 500 degrees and pressure issues that some time break there welds and sometimes are perfect are hard fixes that need 2 years to solve
@@christalbot210 I think it could be used only in a minor way as you need the heat so cannot cool the battery but if you insulate to the highest level there will still be leaking so you could in home systems build the system in the centre of the house to use this waste heat , safety allowing
I’ve been waiting for LMB to become commercially viable for some years now. NEC had an agreement with Ambri to use their patented technology, however nothing seemed to come of it. The really exciting thing about LMB is negligible capacity degradation over 10,000s of discharge cycles. This is at least 10x better than Li NMC, and translates directly into a proportional cost reduction per MWhr stored. I’ve not seen a price for Ambri LMB cells, however their websites implies the cost is expected to be ~40% that of Li NMC, which would make it competitive with pumped hydro from a capital cost perspective.
Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries have 10,000 or more cycle lives. Jeff Dahn is testing some sort of lithium battery that is holding capacity to 20,000 cycles. It will take longer to find the limit, it has taken three years to test the cells using typical discharge and charge rates one would find in EVs.
@@bobwallace9753 Here's a recent paper reviewing the LFP Li NMC and NCA cell degradation as a function of cycles, depth of discharge and temperature. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1149/1945-7111/abae37/pdf LFP batteries look to have an effective full cycle capacity degredation (to 80% of nominal) that is 5~10x better than Li NMC, and are the best candidate for large scale energy strorage currenty available at scale. Lets hope LMB can improve on that, particularly for grid scale ESS. What's clear is that energy storage will be the dominant cost component (~90%) of fully renewable electrical power.
@@bromnader5196 Aren't the material costs less for LiFePo than NMC cells? Nickel and cobalt are not cheap compared to iron. If it's not materials might it be a scale of production issue? And if the materials are less expensive for the LiFePo cells shouldn't we expect their prices to drop lower than NMC cells with Tesla's new dry roll technology which is, IIRC, usable with both chemistries? Tesla is planning on using LiFePo cells in its less expensive versions of the Model 3 and Y which should give that chemistry a scale advantage. Nickel, I think, is being reserved for performance versions and possibly their long range semi. Cobalt is going away.
@@mikegofton1 Thanks for the paper. I'll print it out tomorrow so I can read in detail. (I need to underline and go back as I read.) Jeff Dahn has now cycled batteries 20,000 times with essentially no loss of capacity and I think I heard that his lab has now reached 30k cycles. But consider - Tesla's cell cost, based on Sandy Munro's Model Y teardown review, was just over $100/kWh. On battery day Tesla said they could drop the cost by 56%. Let's round a bit and assume a $50/kWh cell soon coming. And use 20,000 cycles. $50 / 20,000 = $0.0025/kWh stored. That does not include AC->DC->AC hardware or financing but it looks to me that the cell cost is danged low. When storing for a half-day, day, or couple of days it would seem that batteries would be hard to beat. Unless I've got something wrong.
I just had an idea - as you described the risk that Terrascale may be taking? I thought "I'd help offset risk if I could, for a green future". Do you think that something akin to kickstarter but for green technology adoption, could work? I know we shouldn't have to pay for it - but if we DID pay for it? Say a delivery company could move to electric but they can't afford to take the risk - a kickstarter like page where people offer to 'insure' against that risk? could result in that company adopting the technology where previously they would not have done. I know it sounds crazy but I personally would contribute for many a just cause.
The thing about Kickstarter and such is that someone needs to convince the general public that it is worth their money, especially because they can usually just afford to invest smaller amounts But I'd love to see someone try, charity streams and such a like clearly show that people care for important things But I wonder if a Kickstarter would be able to pull it off, I assume (didn't do any research) that such a project requires much more funding than the usual big Kickstarter project
@@thegreendude2086 - It may very well not be practical but I encourage the idea to be developed and shared - maybe one of us somewhere, will have the missing piece that turns it into a workable idea
@@Jay...777 - With some money? the tipping point can be bought forward. If all those that wish to see a green future were to band together as investors - we could be just as powerful as any hedge fund but specifically for green adoption. The key would be making it work for everybody.
The point is? that somebody donating 5 dollars a month or making a one off contribution - isn't going to mind if an investment is lost. They, We - are willing to take higher risk than others for something we believe in - with all the split risk benefits of 'kickstarter' on top
"The system has an efficiency of 80%, which is about the same as pumped hydro". Is that the efficiency for a full cycle for 1 day? In that case you lose 20% with the 1000 kWh unit, that is 200 kWh. That 200 kWh is a lot of heat. Easy to use to heat your home and bath water! This brings the efficiency more or less to 100%. Conclusion: purchase a 1000 kWh unit and charge it when the power is cheap. Discharge your unit when the power is expensive, the price fluctuations are huge. In the meantime, take advantage of the free heat.
They're not listed, but there might be some funds that are listed that own it. You should look into battery ETFs and funds, and whoever invested in them in their funding rounds
Sit and wait yet. It’s like the rushed covid vaccine. Never jump into the early stages of anything. Jump in when something obvious is recognized and buzz has turned into beginning flurry!
I've been watching Ambri long before the name change, hoping for an off grid solution to replace my current lead/acid bank. Sadly it's all grid scale based with huge shipping container sized cells.
Yeah I’m in the same boat. I think it will be quite a while before we see household units developed if ever for this type of system. I think probably the best at the moment for our use is zinc bromide flow batteries but they aren’t without issues too.
Likewise with you and Dave. The initial purchase might be a little much for a single cube but if it's also replacing a furnace and hot water tank here in central Alberta, the I will happily pony up 17.50/Kw/hr.
Because the duty cycle helps maintain the internal heat, these batteries work best under larger load conditions than single residences. They're overkill and the wrong solution for a single home. But maybe an interesting idea for a residential subdivision to install for dozens of homes.
@@Tanstaaflitis there are subdivision developers in Western Australia that are putting micro grids in. All of the homes have large photovoltaic systems plus solar hot water and one main lithium battery storage system feeding all the homes. These liquid metal ones would work well as a replacement.
I've just liked and subscribed you right away! I enjoy your video very much and thank you for the hard work! As English is not my first language, English subtitles would be greatly helpful to make me and many people understand your topic better. I hope it won't cause you too much trouble!
Ideally the temperatures stay pretty close to constant. They still advertise a life expectence of 25 years iirc, my guess is the ceramic is the first thing to go and they'll be able to just dump it in a new case and start over.
Storage is what we need and things are looking really good, thanks for all the wonderful explanations that you share and all the investigating as well, Cheers.
Wind farms have a much bigger issue to be dealt with. The majority of them do not have access to the grills they were built to service. I agree this could be a game-changer for that if the cost of production goes down enough to justify access, but that will do little to sell it to the public. The cost of energy will still be high. We need to get the oil companies involved with green energy production on a global scale and ensure they'll have a cut once it becomes feasible. Otherwise, there will always be a war
Outstanding topic as usual and am in full agreement that liquid metal batteries definitely have a future for storing energy. Thanks for doing this topic.
@@bromnader5196 Salts can corrode a lot of things., even some ceramics. It does depend on which salts this product is using, and which ceramics, but one thing is for certain; The metal conductors that transfer the power out of the molten metal will have to be some type of electrically conductive material (almost certainly a metal) and it will need to stand up to the salt's very corrosive nature. Many a power projects have failed due to the under estimation of salt's corrosive properties. This is one of the main hurdles holding back the development of molten salt thorium reactors. This is also the major problem that bankrupted the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy project.
I think all the work they currently do is bespoke for now, which is typical of a company at this scale and for a technology that is so new. Whether there are underlying issues in those areas that you noted should be revealed as their project with energos reno makes progress (or not). Ultimately, they have to build it to see if it works, but it seems a commercial partner liked enough of what they saw in private to put their money up for the project to happen. Again, still no guarantee, but it's an encouraging sign.
LMB just makes a lot of sense. Lithium-Ion production should be focused on EVs, which need solid batteries due to their mobile nature. Liquid-Metal takes best advantage of the fact that a power station doesn't need to move. If they were public, I would invest.
1000 kWh, 250 kW capacity liquid metal battery, voltage 500-1500V, response time < 500 milliseconds, and > 80% DC efficiency, which fits into and can be delivered in a 10 foot shipping container.
If you listen to Sadoway’s presentations he points out that energy density is not as important for stationary grid storage as are cost and cycle life. Lithium ion is a much better solution for cars and cell phones because of its superior energy density, but for grid storage energy density is less important.
the liquid metal batteries are hot. this is the negative side of the technology. There are massive loses over heat radiation. If you have no use for the heat the efficiency will drop massively
I guess one of the challenges is maintaining the heat without significant losses, so daily charging and discharging at bare minimum is absolutely needed to keep the efficiency high
Yeah. My question is same. Like if you need them heated - means you will have heat loss. So constant "use" is a requirement for efficient operation. I think that part will make or break this design. And maintaining efficient operation on scale probably is huge issue. Like how much of your capacity you can maintain at working condition and so on.
How many total Watt hours are needed to melt each cell? During an emergency, where is this energy going to come from? Or is it supposed to always be run even though it only has 88% efficiency?
Sorry Irvin, I'm by no means super optimistic for this concept, but when being critical you have to use you mind and look at the obvious. How much energy is needed to melt them. Its in the video, indirectly. If the whole system is 80%+ efficient than melting will take
@@michaelrenper796 I agree with what you put and I'd just point out one extra thing, to address the question "where is this energy [to melt the cells] going to come from?" As we only need the battery to be molten when we need to charge it (when we have plenty of excess green energy to store), the first bit of excess energy we put into the battery would make sure it's at the right temperature. Thereafter it will be kept molten until it's needed to discharge (once discharge every 2 days).
Lets see how this works, an industrial-scale battery at a significantly lower cost should help the windmills and such a bunch. Thanks for your insightful videos
Everything that is thought about needs resources. You need to research how much resources are available. For example, I understand we have a decade's worth of industrial sand, used in all technological products and has limited locations you can find it. Areas that are left are in environmentally sensitive areas, so it could be less than 10 years.
Calcium is the third most abundant metal on earth, after iron and aluminum. That makes it more abundant than sodium or copper. Antimony is a bit more of an issue. Current production is expected to run out in a few decades. However more caches of antimony have recently been discovered, though they aren’t being tapped yet, so these projections will almost certainly change.
The beauty of this Ambri battery is that it IS using abundant materials, readily available on the commodities market, quote from the Ambri website: Available materials The materials inside the system, calcium and antimony, are commonly available as commodities and sourced from multiple locations. Each GWh of Ambri batteries requires less than 1% of current annual production of these anode and cathode materials. No cobalt is used in Ambri batteries, a common ingredient in lithium-ion batteries.
Isn't it instructive that we are asking questions about the limits that our earthly resources can provide? It makes sense that exploration for minerals on other planets and asteroids although early days, is also being developed.
If that includes sand used n making concrete, we can almost eliminate its use there by using cross-laminated timber as a construction material. That has an added benefit of reducing cement demand and thus CO2 production.
I love Donald Sadoway' persistence & tenacity to commercialize the liquid metal battery / Energy Storage essential for intermittent renewables like wind & solar because energy grids need 24/7 output like Nuclear Fission reactor to replace coal power or to help decarbonize the grid from the stranglehold of natural gas & other carbon based fuels. Even the oil company executives are talking about the urgent need to decarbonize human civilization to reduce air pollution & stop contributing negatively to the climate change debacle //
Thermal cycles are usually problematic because they cause expansion and contraction in solid metal, creating weakness. I don't think it would apply here, as ceramics are very well suited for this sort of thing. Maybe it might be a problem with the metal conductors which connect the molten metal with the net.
Ambri's technology pays off at scale. So that's the irony of the start-up's viability since first articles of the company's products compare unfavorably with commercially available Li-ion offerings. The Ambri technology should be federally funded at the current phase to provide a long run alternative to Li-ion which has difficulty scaling and is subject to materials and production capacity shortages.
@@bromnader5196 I asked how a hermetic seal is going to hold up over decades of use at 500C Isn't there going to come a time where the temperature is let to drop to ambient? Do these alloys have a completely neutral volume over that swing? Most ceramics are pretty brittle.
@@jimurrata6785 This storage is heavy and stationary. Is a house made of bricks brittle? Surely there are insulators that can seal the electrodes and withstand a lot of cycles. For example the tall cylinders where monocrystalline silicon is made from molten silicon. Up to 2000 degrees in temperature and cycles up and down every few days for years.
Very interesting idea , but I think there are many different pairs of material that can be used. Some more expensive some even cheaper. Like a sulfur. We all could agree that for big scale storage this sort of huge cistern like make more sense then small units. What we also need to consider is the low voltage supplied by single unit, so many of those needs to be Connect to rise the voltage, or already design and build a stack with multiple layers.
One of my old students has just sent me the link to this video because about 10 years ago I started basing my university level student projects on the development of a FESS for use in the third world. My brief was that it must require minimal maintenance, it must have high energy density, it should be used for decades - even centuries - with no loss of storage capacity or efficiency, it must be totally sustainable, only require abundant and cheap materials and totally un-toxic to the planet - a challenging brief which only the FESS designs (or mechanical gravity based) designs come anywhere close to fulfilling. Over several years we decided that it was much better to go for low angular velocity (
Have you checked out Swedish company Azelios energy storage? It heats up a material(an aluminium alloy) and uses that heat with a Stirling engine to produce electricity. Apparently they already have commercial orders going as well.
I heard about this back in 2017 and had heard that they were struggling to find the best choice of materials as well as dealing with corrosion from the molten salts, I'm glad they seem to have sorted it out, because grid storage needs something that handles 10's of 1000's of cycles and is safe. This seems to be the ticket. It also takes the pressure off lithium supplies freeing them up for the global vehicle fleet.
For having to maintain temperature, the LMB is more like an energy temporary buffer than a typical sense of usage of a conventional battery. The charging and loading seem periodically compulsory. Kudos to terrascale to pull this idea to the real world application. I highly hope they all overcome every bump on the road. If this stuff really works, it will scale like crazy and be adopted as mainstream.
I think it's been 10 years since I 1st heard Don Sadoway talk about liquid metal batteries and I was intrigued. But at the same time I also felt he was overselling the capability & downplaying the difficulties so it'll be very interesting to see how this 1st commercial test plays out.
Due to the high temperature, it seems this would be great for a somewhat large city, with plenty of current sloshing around at all times. But there are a lot of those.
This channel is one of the best on youtube. He talks to everyone from middle schoolers to PHDs and industry boffins and keeps the funding clean and ad free. A true public service
@Colin Zayd why don't you two bots get a room together
⬆️... in a basement!
Well said
Thanks Norville. That's vey kind feedback. Much appreciated.
@@JustHaveaThink of course. Thank you for your work as a science educator.
I've met Donald a few times and have been to his lab at MIT. It's a fascinating technology and he is a super interesting guy. I really really hope he can finally get this idea off the ground as it could be an absolute game-changer for grid-scale storage. Go Don!!!
On the ground.
He just got sacked from his own company.
It looks like a patent troll rather than normal commercialization attempt and i bet all investors and people who waited for the product to materialize must feel awfully betrayed .
@@piotrcurious1131 oh super interesting. That does not surprise me one little bit. He was a strange cat who wouldn’t work well in a normal environment. Plus the technology never really worked unfortunately….although it wasn’t the fault of the chemistry.
I like your saying : we need all forms of energy storage, and then some.
And here is another: Gelion: The future will be about appropriate storage for green energy: th-cam.com/video/26SW7jZBlhs/w-d-xo.html
Energy storage is so 2010. The real game is WATER storage
Your absolutely right, if you want a longer explanation see my main comment.
All we really need is supercapacitors, and Thorium reactors.
I have always believe in Stock market and other Economics activities but Is really unfair that 2020 trading and stock market is just difficult and unbelievable which is too bad now i rather invest my money only on bitcion and gain more profit in return
"If you want something dirt cheap, make it out of dirt." -Donald Sadoway
IF Mr. Sadoway wants a cheap method of defeating the dendrite problem , he should investigate the use of ultrasound vibrations to prevent even the beginning formation of the crystals . The u-sound would not need to be applied non-stop , only intermittently . This strategy would minimize the energy required to keep the battery healthy , and thus greatly increase both it's lifespan and it's safety-factor .
*To examine a possible extreme use of such batteries , read my post at :
quora.com/If-you-try-to-drive-a-regular-gasoline-petrol-car-on-Mars-will-it-work-Will-it-explode/
"That's no moon" - Jean Luc Picard
"Preferably locally-sourced dirt" - Donald Sadoway
@@Prof.Megamind.thinks.about.it. Sadoway is advocating for a battery technology not based on solid state physics, so dendrite formation isn't a problem. He started the design process by looking at what the requirements for a grid scale storage battery would be. ie; low cost. Made of abundant materials that are "locally available", safer than exitsing solid state lithium ion batteries, no use of so-called "rare earths". He took as a starting point aluminum smelting which has alumina ore and a separator electrolyte (cryolite) with a carbon electrode placed in an insulated vat. A large current is applied which melts the assemblage, reduces the alumina to aluminum and oxidizes the electrode. The refined aluminum is drawn off. However, if the system was sealed and the heat maintained, the process would be reversible and you would have what was essentially a high temperature storage battery. He then tasked his team with finding other chemistries with better electrical capacity, made of abundant relatively available elements (if you want to make something dirt cheap, make it out of dirt.)
@Kilal Googlestaffers
Tanks , mahn !
I wagered that the man had more than one arrow in his quiver , so I floated that one in case he or others needed a big battery breakthrough .
*After all , a rising tide lifts all boats !😎
If you read their papers, the big problems have not been the chemistry of the energy storage, but the container. In the early prototypes, the electrical connections were made with expensive precious metals, and as they've tried to develop something less expensive, they've struggled to build a container that won't react with the components (in one version, all the electrolytic salt combined with the ceramic), and can maintain structural integrity and a gas seal through continuous thermal cycling.
I remember that, it set them back quite a bit. What did they ultimately decide to use for the container material? Hopefully they can (have found?) find something that will still allow the technology to be relatively low cost.
@@brwin why not make it out of concrete? Also why the need for a seal? can't the anode and the cathode sit inside and be powered through induction?
Yep, the devil is always in the details. It's fun to wave your hands in a classroom and talk about your perfect solution and how it would solve all the worlds problems if only the Evil CosmiDemonic Corporations would give you a break, but reality has a way of kicking you in the ass in ways your blackboard solutions didn't anticipate. Still, I give them props for making a go of it commercially, and I hope they do figure it out soon.
Remember, you aren't competing against one energy producing industry, you are competing against ALL of them, and they want to win too.
@@nicolaeivanescu2253 I'm not a materials scientists so I can't explain it but here's a copy paste job: "In particular, each liquid metal battery cell requires a high temperature seal that is hermetic, electrically insulating, and non-reactive to oxygen as well as the metal vapours and molten salt inside the cell." - I take it, it took them a while to find or create a material that fit that bill.
@@brwin I'm as simple as dirt, so maybe just as cost effective, too. So IF "each liquid metal battery cell requires a high temperature seal that is hermetic, electrically insulating, and non-reactive to oxygen as well as the metal vapors and molten salt inside the cell." doesn't that sound a lot like glass, ( Pyrex, or some specialty glass ) ? Once installed for a grid they are stationary, eliminating the obvious limitation of a glass battery. I'll go to bed, now, and dream about how up to this point an obsession with automotive applications has clouded the issue, so I'm a hero, until tomorrow when I check back and find someone points out the flaw in my thinking. G'nite : )
"Glass can only be molded at very high temperatures. It completely melts/liquifies at approximately 1400 °C to 1600 °C" much > than the 500 C operation temp required. ... See Properties of oxide glasses www.britannica.com/topic/glass-properties-composition-and-industrial-production-234890/Properties-of-glass
The big thing about LMBs is that they're much simpler to make unlike normal batteries(Tesla's car production is limited by the amount of batteries they produce/buy btw) which means they will scale much faster and there will be no need to transport them far - since most countries could have an LMB factory - that's what Sadoway said himself.
Prof. Sadoway has also co-founded a co2-free steel production company, Boston Metal.
He's a real interesting dude, his lectures are worth watching.
Sadoway has made claims in the past that haven't panned out. Maintain some objective skepticism.
@@bobwallace9753
theres nothing to be skeptical about,
SEE: Aluminum Production, only easier with less steps.
@@-LightningRod- Is there an operating liquid metal storage system on a grid somewhere today? I don't know of any. Until there is one and it's proven that the idea works skepticism is in order.
@@bobwallace9753
sorry i thought you understood that this is the process for making Aluminum, just fine tuned for energy storage rather than Aluminum Alloy Production. At the part where Dave says a dead batterie that is Aluminum and the process ends at that point.It works just fine my friend millions and millions of Tons of Aluminum cant be wrong, Just look into it lightly and see what i mean.
@@-LightningRod- Rod, I know quite a bit about Sadoway's liquid metal storage idea. I've been following it since he first introduced the system, well before he founded Ambri. I've had a Google alert set for liquid metal storage since way back then and I've read what's been posted.
I know something about aluminum smelting. In fact, when I was very young I lived in Alcoa, TN. My father worked in the aluminum smelting plant.
Do you understand that until people actually flew people had not flown? That until people walked on the Moon people had not walked on the moon? Do you understand that until Ambri or some other company hooks a liquid metal storage plant to a grid and operates it there's not there there?
My best channel on TH-cam, No ads and his delivery style is fresh. Zero ambiguity, just about enough humor to keep you glued and a very polished way of starting, fleshing out and closing the subject.
wish we could donate from Nigeria.
I've been watching this technology for the last three years or so. It sounds compelling and has not made extravagant promises or looked shady. I'm hopeful. I seems to be passing the smell test.
Yes, I think the battery itself perfectly works, but there are engineering problems around it. No hard problems, just many. Like handling lots of asymmetric heat expansion cases, or so.
The technology is known for decades, and usual handling problems limit it - dangerous chemicals, heavy metals etc.
It is not worse than conventional lead acid batteries but it seems the commercialization attempt was just a mere patent troll. That means they focused on removing it from the market by patenting everything and scaling up the final product so it reaches only "non disruptive" niche markets. God forbid small scale samples sent to universities and hobbyists so they could quickly figure out how to make it cheaper and improve it.
I like the elegance and simplicity of this battery design. Hope they IPO so I can invest.
I simply invested in one of the investors of AMBRI, namely the relative cheap French oil company TOTAL. Recently TOTAL invested in buying a share of about 20% in an Indian solar company (Adani Green Energy)... so I think there might be a chance of application of this battery technology in solar production... and I also tried to bring the AMBRI technology to the attention of companies like UMICORE, a metal recycling company with (wrong 😁) battery investments... but ofcourse I also hope to invest more directly into AMBRI. Ok good luck.
Me too! Give me the " thumbs up" if they do please?
@@brudo5056 Interesting, tell me more please?.
martin Mb Hello. Not much to tell extra, you can find the supporting parties on the websites but remember that part of the financial stretch already took place ... Total (petroleum & solar) grew strong the last months but was falling down again, maybe a new rise will come when international travel goes up again. Another investor was Microsoft, they had an upward margin because of growth in those datacenters (internet)... But remember again, investing is never without risk!
@@brudo5056 Total's share price will barely be influenced by AMBRI, because Total is huge. So even if AMBRI takes off and completely dominates the utility scale storage market, it will not impact the value of your Total shares in a noticeable way.
This looks incredibly promising. The question is whether or not Ambri can get to economies of scale were it can compete. Would love a video on that! 👍
I was wishing I could invest in Ambri when I first heard about them years ago. I'm glad I wasn't able to then, due to the issues, but I have always been positive about the theory and chemistry of them.
Your absolutely right, if you want a longer explanation see my main comment.
Economies of scale, and the right seal material and technology/chemistry to keep it sealed. That has been the bigger problem over the past 10 years.
they did not need an economy of scale. But they were bribed to convince everyone they are better off living in a safe bunker in new Zealand while earth goes to hell on Microsoft payroll. I wish them a moldy future and crackers too hard for their fake teeth.
I really hope Ambri will succeed and take over at least some of the utilities battery storage market... Keep the Lithium Ion for vehicles.
Your absolutely right we can't have all the batteries we need for cars and still have enough for grid storage.
If you want a longer explanation see my main comment.
Li-Ion is no solution for vehicles.
E-mobility is a hype for people who can afford an expensive battery-powered fun vehicle beside their 'real' car.
@@TheSpecio You're wrong, really.. I advise you to watch Tesla Battery day presentation.
The new Tesla battery will bring cost down to $50/Kwh .. Consensus is $100/Kwh is about cost parrity with ICE.. So Tesla cars will become MUCH cheaper than comparable ICE cars.. The transition to EV's is inevitable.
Beside the cost aspect, EV's are BETTER in so many ways than Ice cars!.. Better performance, better handling, better safety, quieter, no emissions (thus cleaner air in cities!!), better software, longer lifespan, less depreciation, Charge at home, more storage.. I could go on and on..
So you could say an EV is MORE real than an old ICE car... It is so much better, you have no idea.. Once you have driven an EV, you never want back to ICE, really.. Brand loyalty for Tesla is the highest EVER, over 90%.
I put the money where my mouth is, I have ordered a Model Y in June 2020, will come from the Berlin factory probably second half of 2021.
@@MarcoNierop No they re not. We need synthetic alkane fuels and IC engines. Production of such fuel will be negative emissions, which we desperately need in order to REVERSE climate change!
@@RoScFanWe must stop burning stuff and plant more tress to take out the CO2.. Way more efficient costs less and can be implemented immediately.. actually this IS happening, right now.
It takes just one test drive to flip and realize ICE is stupid.
Battery cost has come down 80% the last 4 years, and this cost decline will continue with improvements Tesla has revealed in September, economics of scale, new chemistries, etc.
the beauty of this technology would be that its more efficient to clump them all together tightly, that way you minimize thermal losses as well, so the efficiency would rise the more storage you need ( if you do it well ) thanks to the simple rule that volume increases faster than surface area!
I have been following this technology for several years and have been disappointed that it has not taken off yet. It really doesn’t seem to have any downsides, as it uses readily available and no rare earth materials. It would also free-up some of the other types of batteries like Li-Ion for applications that are better suited for those, such as EV’s and portable devices.
Downsides are low energy density and energy losses during longer storage periods. That metal have to be in melted state. Most of the time that mean 600+ C degree.
@@martingorbush2944 Energy losses are about 80% on average, which is better then for example pumped storage, which has an efficiency of about 70%.. This is very acceptable.. Low energy density is no problem for stationary storage, just add more batteries.
Let's not forget extremely dangerous, even current lithium fires well if you were in the car and didn't get out in time... Kiss yourself goodbye.
@@MarcoNierop Pump up is closer to 80% with at least one system reaching 85%.
Efficiency is just one variable in the analysis. Capex and opex need to be included. Ease of siting and amount of time to install are important. Cycle life comes into play.
I'd like to interject in your disappoint over this lack of development with a thought, one that this video touches on but doesn't truly delve into: technology and science are largely dependent on economics, and the first and last element that capitalists care about is whether they can profit off of it. This goes for every tech and scientific endeavor, IMO. Fusion, space exploration, regenerative agriculture and permaculture, electric vehicles, etc - they've all been subject to the whims of capital. Again, if you ask me, IP and proprietarian practices stifle development instead of enhancing it.
I have tried to follow AMBRI for a long while now. I seldom find any news. I am impressed that Just-Have-A-Think has found so much information. How do you do it? Kudos to you!
Thanks. I appreciate your feedback :-)
Fantastic! We need every energy storage technology. It's not an Lithium battery verses Liquid Metal verses SuperCapacitors etc. competition, its about fitness for purpose - cost, safety, disposal, lifetime, density...for a specific application.
You're absolutely right, if you want a longer explanation see my main comment.
Supercapacitor? lol
No, we need don't need energy storage at all, except for vehicles.
And we have one: It's called diesel engine. Its energy storage is a simple sheet metal tank with a storage density that is unparalleled.
Power plants, be it nuclear, gas or coal-fired, do not need storage because they are running 'on demand' whenever electricity is needed.
@@TheSpecio Please just take that sort of idiotic simplicity somewhere else.
You clearly have NO Idea how grid level power works. NONE of nuclear, coal or gas are true "on demand systems." None of them are quick to respond to demand fluctuations. They all operate on a principle called spinning reserve and most have there own short term internal storage. In the case of nuclear and coal is the steam in the boiler.
Try not to be so ignorant in future.
@@TheSpecio Sure, fossil fuels are extremely dense in energy - very hard to beat. They also produce incredible amounts of CO2, which is a bit of a problem, so some really smart people who care about future are trying to figure out how to replace burning fossil fuels for energy. Thankfully that is beginning to happen.
Finally! All that crushed type metal I've been hoarding since the 70s will have some scrap value.
It has been about 3 years since I was waiting for this doco. As good as this doco is you did not assess the reason why this battery is not a commercial product yet. Questions that should be asked - How long can it hold the charge from 100% down to 90 %? and/or how long before it has to be recharged again? Maintainence? When (sorry, you did give this question)? Another great doco. nice work
I'v been watching AMBRI for several years now, and thing this technology will change the world.
If they ever release it they are going to slow
Material science is in its infancy yes, however, the idea works. Research and development is the expensive part here. As the technology to do the science better evolves, so to will battery technology.
I'm super excited about twisted bi-layer graphene and the things that are being done there. How about flapping two strips of the stuff together and getting a current from it...
I think combining it with a datacentre that produces a lot of heat and needs cooling, seems like a good symbyosis
Here´s the thing: there are about 1,5 Million tons of antimony worldwide. On the other hand there are like 77 million tons of Lithium reserves world wide. So the technology might be a complementary alternative for niche applications but it surely wont replace lithium ion on it´s own.
@@TheKoenigsParkour one of the reasons the progress on bring this to market is so slow is that they are still trying a lot of new chemistry's they have a number that work at different temperatures. If you are interested watch DSs online talks . From this I believe they will not have resource issues
Thank you for covering this important technology Dave. It would be good to hear a little more on the technological challenges they still face such as the ceramic seals and the welding as others have commented on below. Also why even though the materials and design are much simpler they are having a challenge getting costs below Li-ion.
PBS or another network should seriously consider giving you a bigger platform. You are helping people to better understand the issues of our time and the solutions that can be implemented.
Another fascinating & informative video, Dave. Thank you!
"We need all forms of energy storage and then some", so apt
It's such a promising premise, hopefully Ambri are successful
Awesome new progress in batterie development, thank you
So if it's had disappointing results then what has changed since 2016?
Love the way you present information clearly and concisely. Thanks for the excellent work
I'm working on liquid metal batteries myself, there is still some time to go until we begin using it on very large scales, but once we have conquered the efficiency and temperature maintenance issues, it's a perfect system for grid power storage. This however can speed up if this technology is properly funded.
What about for propulsion in naval vehicles 100+ metres long? 😯
Great video,
I came across this morning after watching a lecture last week about this technology~amazing what you can come up with if ‘you just have a think’.
I really appreciate how this channel presents facts instead of opinions. Keep up the great work.
Having researched the technology and the human minds behind AMBRI I am more than excited. Developed, literally, from a blank sheet approach by an MIT professor...I view this as the best solution to safe, large scale grid storage/release tech with low maintenance longevity.
We need this stuff in East Africa too.
Thank you for covering this. I've been waiting for this move since 2018. I hope that this install actually happens!
Ambri signed a LOI with $UAMY US Antimony two days ago. Very interesting.
And Ambri has a person 'special advisor' to the Biden administration. And Gates has been funding(along with many others) Ambri. Antimony is a deeply required part of AMBRI tech currently- Uamy.
Thank you for keeping the Ambri
Liq. BATTERY IN THE CONVERSATION ABOUT GRID STORAGE ....I KNOW THIS IS THE ANSWER WE HAVE BEN WAITING FOR.
JUST NEED TO GET THE WORD OUT.
THANK YOU FOR DOING YOUR PART.
CHin Ca.USA
Now, this is interesting technology. If Amri can make those batteries work, it would be a game changer in grid scale energy storage systems.
Very least they got nice pilot plant with Terrascale in which they can test and improve it.
Its a manufacturing issue but when they had a problem auto welding the lids on they sacked half the staff and went silence for 2-3 years instead of pushing on , very sad I still hope they can get moving again but they are in the manufacturing hell
@@Jay...777 would be nice, but the failed to throw money at the issue at the right time they needed Industrial welding experts but scaled back and look to fix it themselves you think rocket engineers or nuclear reactor builders think 500 degrees and pressure issues that some time break there welds and sometimes are perfect are hard fixes that need 2 years to solve
@@Jay...777 additional note the hand made ones were almost always good
Great treatment of this topic!
as far as I understand, those 80% efficiency are after heating :)
The initial heating cost should be minor. While charging and discharging they heat themselves (with the 20% energy loss entailed by 80% efficiency).
Can that excess heat be utilized? You know, like heating up water for showers/dishwashers/washing machines/etc.
@@christalbot210 If you take away the heat, youll have to replace it with more power.
You need to keep the heat in the system.
@@christalbot210 I think it could be used only in a minor way as you need the heat so cannot cool the battery but if you insulate to the highest level there will still be leaking so you could in home systems build the system in the centre of the house to use this waste heat , safety allowing
@@alanrickett2537 Hence my use of the term, "excess heat".
Seriously great content! Subscribed!
I’ve been waiting for LMB to become commercially viable for some years now. NEC had an agreement with Ambri to use their patented technology, however nothing seemed to come of it. The really exciting thing about LMB is negligible capacity degradation over 10,000s of discharge cycles. This is at least 10x better than Li NMC, and translates directly into a proportional cost reduction per MWhr stored. I’ve not seen a price for Ambri LMB cells, however their websites implies the cost is expected to be ~40% that of Li NMC, which would make it competitive with pumped hydro from a capital cost perspective.
Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries have 10,000 or more cycle lives. Jeff Dahn is testing some sort of lithium battery that is holding capacity to 20,000 cycles. It will take longer to find the limit, it has taken three years to test the cells using typical discharge and charge rates one would find in EVs.
@@bobwallace9753 Here's a recent paper reviewing the LFP Li NMC and NCA cell degradation as a function of cycles, depth of discharge and temperature.
iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1149/1945-7111/abae37/pdf
LFP batteries look to have an effective full cycle capacity degredation (to 80% of nominal) that is 5~10x better than Li NMC, and are the best candidate for large scale energy strorage currenty available at scale. Lets hope LMB can improve on that, particularly for grid scale ESS.
What's clear is that energy storage will be the dominant cost component (~90%) of fully renewable electrical power.
@@bobwallace9753 LiFePO4 is still 20 - 30% more expensive than NMC. And A123 quality LiFePO4 is 2x more expensive.
@@bromnader5196 Aren't the material costs less for LiFePo than NMC cells? Nickel and cobalt are not cheap compared to iron. If it's not materials might it be a scale of production issue?
And if the materials are less expensive for the LiFePo cells shouldn't we expect their prices to drop lower than NMC cells with Tesla's new dry roll technology which is, IIRC, usable with both chemistries? Tesla is planning on using LiFePo cells in its less expensive versions of the Model 3 and Y which should give that chemistry a scale advantage. Nickel, I think, is being reserved for performance versions and possibly their long range semi. Cobalt is going away.
@@mikegofton1 Thanks for the paper. I'll print it out tomorrow so I can read in detail. (I need to underline and go back as I read.)
Jeff Dahn has now cycled batteries 20,000 times with essentially no loss of capacity and I think I heard that his lab has now reached 30k cycles. But consider -
Tesla's cell cost, based on Sandy Munro's Model Y teardown review, was just over $100/kWh. On battery day Tesla said they could drop the cost by 56%. Let's round a bit and assume a $50/kWh cell soon coming. And use 20,000 cycles. $50 / 20,000 = $0.0025/kWh stored. That does not include AC->DC->AC hardware or financing but it looks to me that the cell cost is danged low. When storing for a half-day, day, or couple of days it would seem that batteries would be hard to beat. Unless I've got something wrong.
Fantastic videos. Thanks so much!
It certainly seems like they're better suited for our current energy storage needs than Lithium-ion.
The safety of lead-acid.
Facinating possibilities!! Always, always enjoy your videos.
I just had an idea - as you described the risk that Terrascale may be taking? I thought "I'd help offset risk if I could, for a green future". Do you think that something akin to kickstarter but for green technology adoption, could work? I know we shouldn't have to pay for it - but if we DID pay for it?
Say a delivery company could move to electric but they can't afford to take the risk - a kickstarter like page where people offer to 'insure' against that risk? could result in that company adopting the technology where previously they would not have done.
I know it sounds crazy but I personally would contribute for many a just cause.
The thing about Kickstarter and such is that someone needs to convince the general public that it is worth their money, especially because they can usually just afford to invest smaller amounts
But I'd love to see someone try, charity streams and such a like clearly show that people care for important things
But I wonder if a Kickstarter would be able to pull it off, I assume (didn't do any research) that such a project requires much more funding than the usual big Kickstarter project
@@thegreendude2086 - It may very well not be practical but I encourage the idea to be developed and shared - maybe one of us somewhere, will have the missing piece that turns it into a workable idea
@@Jay...777 - With some money? the tipping point can be bought forward.
If all those that wish to see a green future were to band together as investors - we could be just as powerful as any hedge fund but specifically for green adoption.
The key would be making it work for everybody.
The point is? that somebody donating 5 dollars a month or making a one off contribution - isn't going to mind if an investment is lost.
They, We - are willing to take higher risk than others for something we believe in - with all the split risk benefits of 'kickstarter' on top
It needs to be government that supports the transition. Incentives now with disincentives against carbon production looming in the near future.
"The system has an efficiency of 80%, which is about the same as pumped hydro".
Is that the efficiency for a full cycle for 1 day?
In that case you lose 20% with the 1000 kWh unit, that is 200 kWh. That 200 kWh is a lot of heat. Easy to use to heat your home and bath water! This brings the efficiency more or less to 100%.
Conclusion: purchase a 1000 kWh unit and charge it when the power is cheap. Discharge your unit when the power is expensive, the price fluctuations are huge. In the meantime, take advantage of the free heat.
Dear Ambri fans,
I have been fascinated about this tech for a long time already and have been looking into investment options.
Any idea how?
They're not listed, but there might be some funds that are listed that own it.
You should look into battery ETFs and funds, and whoever invested in them in their funding rounds
Sit and wait yet. It’s like the rushed covid vaccine. Never jump into the early stages of anything. Jump in when something obvious is recognized and buzz has turned into beginning flurry!
have you found a way to invest? I’m also interested. Cheers
Brilliant presentation, thank you.
I've been watching Ambri long before the name change, hoping for an off grid solution to replace my current lead/acid bank. Sadly it's all grid scale based with huge shipping container sized cells.
Yeah I’m in the same boat. I think it will be quite a while before we see household units developed if ever for this type of system. I think probably the best at the moment for our use is zinc bromide flow batteries but they aren’t without issues too.
Likewise with you and Dave. The initial purchase might be a little much for a single cube but if it's also replacing a furnace and hot water tank here in central Alberta, the I will happily pony up 17.50/Kw/hr.
Because the duty cycle helps maintain the internal heat, these batteries work best under larger load conditions than single residences. They're overkill and the wrong solution for a single home. But maybe an interesting idea for a residential subdivision to install for dozens of homes.
@@Tanstaaflitis there are subdivision developers in Western Australia that are putting micro grids in. All of the homes have large photovoltaic systems plus solar hot water and one main lithium battery storage system feeding all the homes. These liquid metal ones would work well as a replacement.
I've just liked and subscribed you right away! I enjoy your video very much and thank you for the hard work!
As English is not my first language, English subtitles would be greatly helpful to make me and many people understand your topic better. I hope it won't cause you too much trouble!
Can you do a video on Sodium Ion Batteries sometime?
Thank for your interesting and informative videos.
I just concrete how they would handle thermal cycling causing cracks to from in the ceramic housing.
Ideally the temperatures stay pretty close to constant. They still advertise a life expectence of 25 years iirc, my guess is the ceramic is the first thing to go and they'll be able to just dump it in a new case and start over.
I'm pretty sure the temperature will be maintained above 500 degrees
Storage is what we need and things are looking really good, thanks for all the wonderful explanations that you share and all the investigating as well, Cheers.
This is the battery for solar and wind farms, use them hard.
Wind farms have a much bigger issue to be dealt with. The majority of them do not have access to the grills they were built to service. I agree this could be a game-changer for that if the cost of production goes down enough to justify access, but that will do little to sell it to the public. The cost of energy will still be high. We need to get the oil companies involved with green energy production on a global scale and ensure they'll have a cut once it becomes feasible. Otherwise, there will always be a war
Outstanding topic as usual and am in full agreement that liquid metal batteries definitely have a future for storing energy. Thanks for doing this topic.
The question is with the salt. Molten Salts are extremely corrosive. I wonder how Ambri has dealt with this problem.
What is there to corrode? The container is a ceramic. Nothing corrodes a ceramic (maybe HF).
@@bromnader5196 Salts can corrode a lot of things., even some ceramics. It does depend on which salts this product is using, and which ceramics, but one thing is for certain; The metal conductors that transfer the power out of the molten metal will have to be some type of electrically conductive material (almost certainly a metal) and it will need to stand up to the salt's very corrosive nature.
Many a power projects have failed due to the under estimation of salt's corrosive properties. This is one of the main hurdles holding back the development of molten salt thorium reactors. This is also the major problem that bankrupted the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy project.
They haven't.. this is the true problem, well that and using molten anything..idiots
Love the content, but am also impressed by the communication. Absorbable data in technology is often a self contradiction. Bravo
Fascinating video but it all sounds too good to be true.
I really hope this will work, I'm stoked about this tech since I saw Sadoway's ted talk like a lifetime ago
Sooooo where's the economic analysis? Other than 1/3rd cost I've seen nothing about their production, maintenance, capital, running costs.
I think all the work they currently do is bespoke for now, which is typical of a company at this scale and for a technology that is so new. Whether there are underlying issues in those areas that you noted should be revealed as their project with energos reno makes progress (or not). Ultimately, they have to build it to see if it works, but it seems a commercial partner liked enough of what they saw in private to put their money up for the project to happen. Again, still no guarantee, but it's an encouraging sign.
LMB just makes a lot of sense. Lithium-Ion production should be focused on EVs, which need solid batteries due to their mobile nature. Liquid-Metal takes best advantage of the fact that a power station doesn't need to move. If they were public, I would invest.
The big question is how fast can they scale.
If it truly is these cheap materials I imagine very quickly.
@@markhaus not just cheap but earth abundant as well - which is what prompted the study in the first place.
Great episode, as always. Learnt a lot.
Interested to learn the specific capacity of these Ca-Sb batteries
1000 kWh, 250 kW capacity liquid metal battery, voltage 500-1500V, response time < 500 milliseconds, and > 80% DC efficiency, which fits into and can be delivered in a 10 foot shipping container.
@@charlespolk5221 he is asking for an energy density (kwh/kg) i think.
@@charlespolk5221 thanks. around 100 Wh/kg by a rough estimate which is not bad given the much lower material costs
If you listen to Sadoway’s presentations he points out that energy density is not as important for stationary grid storage as are cost and cycle life. Lithium ion is a much better solution for cars and cell phones because of its superior energy density, but for grid storage energy density is less important.
Just found your channel today. I just... well, I just don't know what else to say, other than thumbs up, subscribed, and thank you!
What is the energy density of these batteries in Wh/kg?
67wh/kg
Certainly the best thus far!!
the liquid metal batteries are hot. this is the negative side of the technology. There are massive loses over heat radiation. If you have no use for the heat the efficiency will drop massively
Potentially quite useful for district heating systems.
@Peter Mortensen deutsch wäre einfacher für mich. Danke für den Input.
I guess one of the challenges is maintaining the heat without significant losses, so daily charging and discharging at bare minimum is absolutely needed to keep the efficiency high
Yeah. My question is same. Like if you need them heated - means you will have heat loss. So constant "use" is a requirement for efficient operation. I think that part will make or break this design. And maintaining efficient operation on scale probably is huge issue. Like how much of your capacity you can maintain at working condition and so on.
Liquid Metal Batteries are not only an economic possibility, they are an economic NECESSITY.
Wow this battery technology is definitely the way of the future, the concept is straight forward
What are the terminals made out of? Is there no issue with their durability over thousands of cycles?
Terminals are not a deal breaking issue.
I'm looking at various flow battery tech for a project. So this was a good video.
How many total Watt hours are needed to melt each cell? During an emergency, where is this energy going to come from? Or is it supposed to always be run even though it only has 88% efficiency?
Sorry Irvin, I'm by no means super optimistic for this concept, but when being critical you have to use you mind and look at the obvious.
How much energy is needed to melt them. Its in the video, indirectly. If the whole system is 80%+ efficient than melting will take
@@michaelrenper796 I agree with what you put and I'd just point out one extra thing, to address the question "where is this energy [to melt the cells] going to come from?" As we only need the battery to be molten when we need to charge it (when we have plenty of excess green energy to store), the first bit of excess energy we put into the battery would make sure it's at the right temperature. Thereafter it will be kept molten until it's needed to discharge (once discharge every 2 days).
@@michaelstreeter3125 the other pro is these batteries love the condition other batteries hate fast discharge frequent switching etc
Lets see how this works, an industrial-scale battery at a significantly lower cost should help the windmills and such a bunch. Thanks for your insightful videos
Everything that is thought about needs resources. You need to research how much resources are available. For example, I understand we have a decade's worth of industrial sand, used in all technological products and has limited locations you can find it. Areas that are left are in environmentally sensitive areas, so it could be less than 10 years.
Calcium is the third most abundant metal on earth, after iron and aluminum. That makes it more abundant than sodium or copper.
Antimony is a bit more of an issue. Current production is expected to run out in a few decades. However more caches of antimony have recently been discovered, though they aren’t being tapped yet, so these projections will almost certainly change.
The beauty of this Ambri battery is that it IS using abundant materials, readily available on the commodities market, quote from the Ambri website:
Available materials
The materials inside the system, calcium and antimony, are commonly available as commodities and sourced from multiple locations.
Each GWh of Ambri batteries requires less than 1% of current annual production of these anode and cathode materials.
No cobalt is used in Ambri batteries, a common ingredient in lithium-ion batteries.
Isn't it instructive that we are asking questions about the limits that our earthly resources can provide? It makes sense that exploration for minerals on other planets and asteroids although early days, is also being developed.
@@MiniLuv-1984 we are not even close to reaching the limit of resources our Earth can provide... do you know how deep the crust is??
If that includes sand used n making concrete, we can almost eliminate its use there by using cross-laminated timber as a construction material. That has an added benefit of reducing cement demand and thus CO2 production.
I love Donald Sadoway' persistence & tenacity to commercialize the liquid metal battery / Energy Storage essential for intermittent renewables like wind & solar because energy grids need 24/7 output like Nuclear Fission reactor to replace coal power or to help decarbonize the grid from the stranglehold of natural gas & other carbon based fuels. Even the oil company executives are talking about the urgent need to decarbonize human civilization to reduce air pollution & stop contributing negatively to the climate change debacle //
Flintstones, meet the Flintstones, with their heavy metal battery.
Keeping fingers crossed. A great idea, and effort.
The thermal cycle from these batteries seems to be the most likely source of degradation.
Thermal cycles are usually problematic because they cause expansion and contraction in solid metal, creating weakness. I don't think it would apply here, as ceramics are very well suited for this sort of thing. Maybe it might be a problem with the metal conductors which connect the molten metal with the net.
How do I invest ?
@@ramondrongonui1024 don't think they're public yet
Ambri's technology pays off at scale. So that's the irony of the start-up's viability since first articles of the company's products compare unfavorably with commercially available Li-ion offerings. The Ambri technology should be federally funded at the current phase to provide a long run alternative to Li-ion which has difficulty scaling and is subject to materials and production capacity shortages.
Calcium is pretty damned reactive though.
Getting a hermetic seal that works at 500C, _for decades_ is going to be no small feat.
How is calcium going to react with a ceramic?
@@bromnader5196 I asked how a hermetic seal is going to hold up over decades of use at 500C
Isn't there going to come a time where the temperature is let to drop to ambient?
Do these alloys have a completely neutral volume over that swing?
Most ceramics are pretty brittle.
@@jimurrata6785 This storage is heavy and stationary. Is a house made of bricks brittle? Surely there are insulators that can seal the electrodes and withstand a lot of cycles. For example the tall cylinders where monocrystalline silicon is made from molten silicon. Up to 2000 degrees in temperature and cycles up and down every few days for years.
@@bromnader5196 Is a house made of brick (not 'brick *s* ) hermetically sealed, full of molten metal and subject to 500C temperature swings?
@@jimurrata6785 -- If brick is plural, then why do we say "he threw a brick"?
Thanks for covering this. I'm a huge fan of Ambri!
Antimony is the problem. We need a good relationship with China for Antimony.
Very interesting idea , but I think there are many different pairs of material that can be used. Some more expensive some even cheaper. Like a sulfur. We all could agree that for big scale storage this sort of huge cistern like make more sense then small units. What we also need to consider is the low voltage supplied by single unit, so many of those needs to be Connect to rise the voltage, or already design and build a stack with multiple layers.
I'm not sure your report is accurate, are you out of date?
One of my old students has just sent me the link to this video because about 10 years ago I started basing my university level student projects on the development of a FESS for use in the third world. My brief was that it must require minimal maintenance, it must have high energy density, it should be used for decades - even centuries - with no loss of storage capacity or efficiency, it must be totally sustainable, only require abundant and cheap materials and totally un-toxic to the planet - a challenging brief which only the FESS designs (or mechanical gravity based) designs come anywhere close to fulfilling. Over several years we decided that it was much better to go for low angular velocity (
What is FESS? You lost most people in the first sentence.
@@francretief1 Flywheel Energy Storage System
You present a great program
Very very interesting
It stands on a fundamental basis of simplicity and Reason... Can't wait for the home version the size of a Chest Freezer.
Very very good information
Very exciting technology!!!
Have you checked out Swedish company Azelios energy storage? It heats up a material(an aluminium alloy) and uses that heat with a Stirling engine to produce electricity. Apparently they already have commercial orders going as well.
Thanks.
I wonder how massive of a current pulse it can put out. An idea of the internal resistance and discharge voltage profile would be nice.
I heard about this back in 2017 and had heard that they were struggling to find the best choice of materials as well as dealing with corrosion from the molten salts, I'm glad they seem to have sorted it out, because grid storage needs something that handles 10's of 1000's of cycles and is safe. This seems to be the ticket. It also takes the pressure off lithium supplies freeing them up for the global vehicle fleet.
For having to maintain temperature, the LMB is more like an energy temporary buffer than a typical sense of usage of a conventional battery.
The charging and loading seem periodically compulsory.
Kudos to terrascale to pull this idea to the real world application.
I highly hope they all overcome every bump on the road.
If this stuff really works, it will scale like crazy and be adopted as mainstream.
Well done
I think it's been 10 years since I 1st heard Don Sadoway talk about liquid metal batteries and I was intrigued.
But at the same time I also felt he was overselling the capability & downplaying the difficulties so it'll be very interesting to see how this 1st commercial test plays out.
Due to the high temperature, it seems this would be great for a somewhat large city, with plenty of current sloshing around at all times. But there are a lot of those.
plenty or Great points made here.👍😎