GE’s Molten Salt Battery Failure
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 พ.ย. 2024
- Hat tip to an anonymous subscriber for this topic suggestion.
In 2011, then-President Barack Obama visited a General Electric or GE facility in the town of Schenectady, New York. There, he mostly discussed wind turbine exports. But he also briefly mentioned an "advanced battery" business with great promise.
Obama was referring to a molten salt stationary battery technology branded as Durathon. GE CEO Jeff Immelt believed that it will become a billion dollar business.
But Durathon fell far short. In 2015, the company closed its battery manufacturing factory in New York after investing nearly $200 million. Nearly a hundred people lost their jobs.
In this video, we are going to look at General Electric's failed molten salt battery business venture.
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What other battery topic videos do you want to see on the channel?
I would like to learn about solid electrolytes
The highest power density batteries in use today for niche/expensive applications and why they aren't affordable yet at wide scale but what it will take to become more widely adopted.
Just wondering... Korea side somewhat government initiated hydrogen power industries were booming few times, and where they are now... previously US company called Nicola, which scammed hydrogen fuel cell driven car manufacturing was big issue, and many of big companies did invest and collaborate announcement made previously. What other Asian companies involved and affected then, and what they are doing now...
I want to see liquid aluminum batteries, I heard about those taking advantage of the metal’s insane latent heat of fusion
Not exactly batteries but dump mining and pyrolysis related tech
"Would you want a molten salt walkman?"
Actually, yes. If only for the sake of owning a molten salt walkman.
Take mu moneh!
The only music Molten salt walkman can play is the boss music~ 😂
Fun fact. That Walkman would come with the Doom Eternal soundtrack pre-installed 😂😂
Interesting, so it wasn't the molten salt technology itself that failed but it failed because of GE's poor business planning. They didn't build up the market and demand before massively scaling up.
Energy intensity is a big factor
@@mishmohd you mean density? Lol. Anyway even without the density, it would be valuable today because of the durability. But they kept trying to use it in places where it didn't work. Like the train where there's space and weight limitations.
@@shadmansudipto7287 Nickel-Iron batteries are already used in those niche situations where very long term durability and safety is required.
@@benjiunofficial
I think I just cut and paste my pervious post:
The potential advantage is it should be dirt cheap to manufacture when it reach mass market as the material cost is relatively cheap, at least when compared to Li ion battery. . Of course it do have lower efficiency compared to Li battery but if I was was not mistaken it still have higher efficiency than pump hydro. Another company (Ambri) right now is developing this tech .
@@remliqa Why not Edison battery? Also cheap, proven, indestructible, not the highest of efficiencies but even in the days of its inventor good enough to drive an electric car (the simple type they had developed) giving it a reach of several dozens of miles. For static applications it mostly does not matter much whether it takes up some more space or not and when the materials are cheap one can compensate for lower power density by simply adding (mounting, installing) more of it.
Pretty sure the "4,000 sold" quote refers to the Evolution Series locomotive model line as a whole (so he's making a point that it's a proven design with which they could experiment on a new propulsion system), not the hybrids they wanted to make within that model line, and the article's editing garbled that.
Pretty clear I would have thought that it refers to the loco model line - dissapointed he is making such an issue out of it.
If you want to try battery hybrids on railroads why would you build it into the Loco?
It would surely be best to just put it in a wagon near to the power end so you can experiment with it and if it fails you can still have your Loco.
It makes sense, pretty much all Locos have regenerative brakes anyway why not have a battery car to store this.
@@ajseusa1488 The generator powers the wheels only when needed I suppose you might call that hybrid but not in the modern sense of the word. They pretty much all have regenerative braking but the massive amounts of electricity produced is put through huge resistors and dissipated as heat, I don't think many if any have a means to store the excess electricity. It should be a simple thing to have another car at the front of the train with a huge battery pack after all trains don't care much about weight.
Alumina is Aluminum Oxide - Al203. It's the term used in the industry.
Diesel locomotives are actually electric - the diesel engine powers a generator that in turn powers the electric motor. This is necessary to overcome problems that come with the high torque needed to start moving the train. To have it really be a hybrid, all it needs is batteries. Since weight is not a problem, I would use the easiest to recycle and easier to produce.
I worked for GE Energy Storage. I spent many hours in that building. I worked for the metrology so I measured everything that came through the door including powders and liquids.
Good job
A lot of our missile systems in the Army used molten salt batteries. I always just heard them called "thermal batteries" and they got very very hot. I don't think they were long-term reliable though. All of the systems I know of that used them had pretty substantial dud rates.
WUT???? Ive never heard of that. are you talking about "portable" missile systems? Thats pretty cool tho
@@davidanalyst671 Well both. I think thermal batteries are used on almost everything that has a flight time of only a few seconds where you need a huge amount of power to run pneumatic solenoids or directly actuate flight surfaces or light steering rockets.
When the optics system for non-fire-and-forget missiles gets its power from the missile tube (i.e. the power is disposable) then there's a thermal battery in both the missile and left behind on the tube. When its something that's non-disposable but usually found in vehicles, then its usually either NiCd or disposable lithium batteries.
I remember one where we had a dud, it had enough power to go "pop" and spin up the optics and the missile gyro, so it was really obvious it was going, but the missile never launched. The guy had to sit there for like half an hour with a shaped charge 6 inches from his head before EOD came and took it away (i.e. 50 yards away) and blew the dud up with basically all the C4 they were carrying.
Usually when they're duds though they just go crazy and the steering locks in one direction. I've seen them do like 180 degrees before they crash. I've seen them flip over in the air and detonate their shaped charge back at the user (i.e. fukkin *ME*) and I've seen them pile drive into the ground as soon as they physically can in front of the user. Fortunately, they all have distance safety interlocks on the detonator and I haven't seen that fail yet.
Its interesting to see a shaped charge fire in mid-air. You just get a big green spike of smoke that suddenly appears in whatever direction the missile was pointing. (they all have copper cores and I'm assuming the green color is from copper oxide formation from the molten copper jet)
Anyway, nothing here thats classified, so I'll hit "reply".
Those are extremely reliable but not rechargeable.
@@0MoTheG Well... no part of a missile tends to be recyclable, regardless of whether its the part that flies or the tube that it was in. And we're talking about missiles that started at $10,000 a pop and on the higher end were more than $200,000.
I've seen the decommissioning pits where a lot of obsolete but still classified electronics go. Its literally just an endless pit of probably billions of dollars of electronics and they just have some guy with a tracked vehicle like an m88 wrecker driving back and forth for hours to crunch it all up. Seems stupid but a lot of stuff is.
Thermal batteries are ones which are not active until heated to a high temperature. In munitions, thermal batteries contain a Pyrotechnic device which rapidly hits the thermal battery in milliseconds and causes the battery to become active. Then the thermal battery can deliver high power for several seconds to upwards of maybe an hour depending on the application.
As a Locomotive engineer I operate the GE Evolution Series motors on a daily basis, it's one of the two Main Primary Movers we operate. Between Catapillar's Progress Rail EMD formerly owned by General Motors with the SD70 and GE's ES44C4/AC. Or Evolution Series 4400hp AC. Or the newer ET44C4/AC motors which are Tier 4 California Emission Compliant.
They are Hybrid, but I can't find any information on if after testing they went with the Na-NiCl2 battery or something different..
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A shame it didn't work out... Can't help thinking there's still a huge amount of potential in this sort of technology if someone gets the implementation right though.
It seems like it would be useful in combination with home solar and air conditioning. You could use solar to charge it during the day, and the waste heat from home A/C to heat it!
Tons of work is going into stationary storage for the grid
Solar panels are increasingly more common on residential rooftops in the US now that costs have come down further, it's still quite the expense and residential battery purchase are often just put off and homeowners simply use the grid.
In the coming years however, as solar panels are paid off, consumers will increasingly look toward their own battery options. Since weight isn't really a concern in buildings, lithium-ion alternatives do seem like a major market waiting for the right conditions.
There isn't enough lithium on the planet to replace 5% of the current US car stock, let alone all cars worldwide. And you think 8 billion people will be using it as batteries for their homes? LOL no way, sodium is far more common, it's literally common table salt and easily available from the sea. Sure it can only hold 80% of lithium's max charge, but it's much more realistic for the future.
@@thomascrabtree you understood the opposite of what Jake said
@@thomascrabtree
Firstly , this is factually false. We have more than enough Li supply to switch all the vehicles in the world to EV and have more to spare.
Secondly, the OP was suggesting for Li alternatives , not Li batteries.
@@Marco-hl6gz
I think he just wanted to spread lie about Li supply (we actually do enough Li for the entire world) rather than engaging in honest debate.
@@remliqa There might be enough overall, but the global supply in terms of extraction could not handle the battery turn over across the projected lifespan of the US automotive sector in addition to its other uses such as alloying and pharmacological production. Lithium extraction either needs to go up massively, which has its own environmental problems, primarily related to sulfur contamination of the tailings. It needs massively increased lifespan, which does not seem to be realistic considering gains in lifespan over the recent past. Or, we need to establish effective recycling of lithium batteries, which is something that has not been done at scale.
> would you want a molten salt walkman?
are you kidding? of course! having a device with temperature gradient of hundreds C over a couple millimeters and energy density comparable to modern Li-Ion? absolutely! 30 years ago, omg!
It's unfortunate that Li-ion is the dominant emerging battery technology. Lithium mining is ecologically devastating and should be a much more expensive process to offset its impact and encourage more operations to recapture and recycle them. The number of these frankly dangerous batteries that are being improperly disposed of is a looming disaster.
It's sadly always about the money, not for the better of humanity...
GE certainly made at least 4000 diesel-electric locomotives. This is what the CEO of GE was saying. Not that they built 4000 battery equipped locos.
which was nothing but shite, because all of the modern diesels are diesel-electric... xD
Any diesel electic locomotive that stores energy in a battery or capacitor can be called a "hybrid"...
@@davidhollenshead4892 technically they can call it a hybrid exactly as it is, cuz it is
immelt was a bs-er and destroyed his own company on purpose
It's fascinating how no matter what the misrepresentation of the truth is there's always a guy willing to defend it because it maintains the status quo.
Without being too specific, we have a battery vendor who provides molten salt batteries. They are designed for long discharge >10 hours and slow charge, perfect for daily charge and discharge. However the market is mostly high discharge as grid support such as Global Adjustment where the energy demand is so high the price of electricity skyrockets and the discharge needed is < 2 hours typically. As a result the market for long discharge and charging is niche making it application specific.
Can't you just set a single unit to discharge over such period while others are charging?
For very short bursts then you could implement some different technology
@@GewelReal If you have say 4 units and you have time of day pricing, middle of the day pricing 2x higher, you would want all 4 discharging to maximize your revenue, then charging overnight when the price is low. Buy low, sell high kind of thing.
The fact GE wanted to (business) scale quickly has absolutely nothing to do with the failure of this technology! The technology failed because GE as a company did not understand where their product classified in the Greater Engineering Cycle - GE failed to properly distinguish the current state of the many existing technological institutions and their unique inefficiencies before attempting to sell a straw panacea that, naturally, failed to address any of those individual unique inefficiencies! Though I do agree that this is as a standard case of malign Silicon Valley influence peddling and that GE's executives were being "unreasonable" for their choice to act like they were selling software. This case is a good lesson for those who work in the "legacy" mechanical engineering industry as they are best served by avoiding reading the "Good Ideas" of the likes of Steve Blank and Eric Ries as their ideas are inapplicable to how the mechanical industries innovate! I have a video up addressing this subject of the Classification of Technology which relates what I am referring to as "The Greater Engineering Cycle" in this comment.
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no, this failed because Jeffrey Immelt, the failure CEO was managing the process. Imelt destroyed everything he touched. Would you like to buy an oil company right now when oil prices are at historic records??? so would immelt
@@davidanalyst671 you don’t take issue with any of my points, you are just being hollowly disagreeable.
While you are not wrong, Immelt was the ultimate bearer of authority. You are also not right to blame Immelt for the engineering errors of his subordinates.
If you’re going to talk like an angel investor it helps if you are actually an angel investor. It’s not like you invested anything in GE or Immelt.
Why are you so retrospectively interested in a personal decision that is both beyond your control and technically unrelated to the underlying engineering problems? You are exhibiting the very same magical thinking for which you blame Immelt!
Where is this video? I’m looking at your channel and see some stuff on war history and some playlists of other people’s stuff. Can you state the name of the video?
The sad part is, molten salt batteries would make perfect sense as grid scale storage for renewables. If they focused on that, they would have likely succeeded to grow a "six billion" market.. probably in ten years or so.
And how do they compare with something much simpler, say pumped hydro, where when you have extra energy, you pump water up hill, and then later when you need it, you extract the energy back out from the water flowing back down? That seems to be a lot cheaper and a lot simpler - it's ready to go today (and is in place today already) and doesn't need anything fancy - no 250*C sodium, basically unlimited lifetime, etc etc. Why are people always looking for a complicated / expensive solution to problems that already have simple / cheap solutions
@@gorak9000 A lot cheaper???? Pumped hydro needs a lot more land to store the same amount of energy as batteries. Even lead acid batteries will take lesser space than pumped hydro. and 250 deg is not that much tbh. Industrial furnaces are capable of much more than that. With good insulation, there won't be much issues....
Pumped hydro is massively limited by available locations.
@@reinerheiner1148 its also the least energy dense battery of all the solutions, yet it has a charm being more down to earth than any other tech
And would have paired perfectly with their windmill generator business.
I most enjoyed your commentary at the end about the endless thirst for growth. Growth for growth's sake is self-defeating, and this kind of grasping at straws proves it. Stability is where we should aim, even while the market craves volatility.
Two economic models to support this are doughnut economics and steady-state economics. Something along this line is the only way forward in my opinion.
@@BigFormula93 I'm honestly of the opinion these days: when we need big change only government regulations can create the right incentives for capitalism to do the right thing for society (or if we are lucky certain ambitious people's goal align, so basically luck and morality). And if we want to do anything big at the government level it's a global competition between countries so a sort of capitalistic free market between countries. Which means governments don't want to cripple their own economies/countries through regulations unless other countries will too. So something like COP26 failed.
@@BigFormula93 Yes, 'tis called 'Survival of the Fittest' in other words: Evolution.
And no, that does not mean going to the gym !
The Ambri liquid metal battery for grid scale storage is something I've been following for a few years and am interested in. I hope that they are more successful than the GE Molten Salt batteries.
They're competing with good old gravity - far easier, far cheaper, far less stable. Why should a hydroelectric plant jump through the hoops to melt metal, when it can just pump water?
@@georgedang449 Because it's not an instantaneous continual load leveling technology and not everywhere has the topology or water to use hydro electric batteries. Cheap sodium batteries would just work out better, be more functional, and scale better.
You can't compare battery tech in the 90s to battery tech of today.. Lithium did not have 250wh/kg in the early 90s. It had around the same energy density as the zebra battery.
Excellent analysis and not 2, not 3, but 4 hands. How couldn’t Asianometry be my favorite TH-cam channel?
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" This eclectic mix feels more like 2nd day fried rice to me; everything that happens to be in the fridge. " -Asianometry
Thanks for giving us a new idiom to use lmao
Top notch documentary from this channel, as usual. Much appreciated.
Seems strange for the CEO of GE to Lei? General Electric pretty much invented the concept of "creative accounting". A.k.a. accounting fraud but pulled back a little
Jeffrey Imelt was the worst CEO in the history of CEO's. you're missing the point
@@davidanalyst671 not missing the point; simply pointing out something
GE creates "high temperature" battery and fails to realise it can't just replace a "cold" battery installation without serious modification. sounds like the sales guys took over from engineering and started to strap on features that didn't exist.
I astound how GE, a gigantic electrical company, failed to understand the energy storage market.
Seems like interesting technology, I hope they manage to course correct. People still use nickle iron batteries for grid or home storage, the increased physical footprint that the batteries required to match a lithium installation, is offset by the lower cost of obtain and maintain the battery.
There's definitely room for this in grid storage in the future, though. Most importantly, lithium battery prices are going to skyrocket once the easy reserves of lithium have been exhausted and we have to switch from lithium brine pools / brine flats to ore sources. And then energy density is much less of a concern for stationary storage locations, and molten salt batteries ironically don't have the problem of spontaneous energetic explosion chain reactions like lithium ion...
It's interesting to note that basically the tomahawk missile uses a type of molten salts battery that only initiates once the missile is launched
Thermal batteries are ideal for rockets and missiles, light weight, high energy density, almost instant start-up, and they can remain usable for decades. The downsides are that they are single-use, the chemistry consumes itself upon use, and they have a very limited lifespan once activated. Their use is very nitch. They are cool though.
@@pedrowhack-a-mole6786 Sort of like RTGs then. They have a very niche use but have often been touted as 'wonder-batteries' - in the case of RTGs, they can only provide the odd amp of power - but they will provide that amp day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, and even decade after decade, without any need for feul or other consumable chemistry - making them ideal for remote locations barely if ever maintained - such as unmanned spacecraft, ocean marker buoys, earthquake monitoring stations, and the like.
But utterly useless for general grid operations.
@@pedrowhack-a-mole6786 _"nitch"_ Arrrggh...the guy in the video said this as well, so irritating. "Niche" is pronounced like "neesh", not "nitch".
@@ferrumignis Though my spelling of the word niche was wrong, nitch IS an acceptable way to pronounce it. And for you, and your like, I will begin spelling it that way too. Have a nice day.
@@pedrowhack-a-mole6786 _" nitch IS an acceptable way to pronounce it"_
Absolutely not, it's unacceptable.
$200M failure is a win compared to $1B "wins" in crypto, ads or casino games..
“Would you want a molten salt Walkman?”
Fuck yeah!
A kickstarter in the making ?
It seems to me that the requirement to keep them hot (280dC) is a fundamental flaw. What percentage of the battery capacity do you need to use each day to keep the battery at operating temperature?
There will be some variation with system size but it means using a lot of resources just to keep them ticking over, much more than the amount required to top off loses due to internal discharge on other battery systems.
Not really, porotype shows that with good enough thermal insulation , you can keep a constants temperature with very little energy input once the desired temperature have been reached. Of course reaching them in the first place do take quite a lot of energy. The potential advantage is it should be dirt cheap to manufacture when it reach mass market as the material cost is relatively cheap . Of course it do have lower efficiency compared to Li battery.
@@remliqa Aerogel insulation.
@@brodriguez11000 I think Ambri was using something much cheaper and mundane than that in their prototype.
I've seen several datasheets.
One particular model discharges in about two days.
Ceramic at this temperature works as a resistor and you need to remove heat from it. It keeps itself molten partially because of self discharge.
"What percentage of the battery capacity do you need to use each day to keep the battery at operating temperature?"
The battery charging and discharging heats it up (because the battery isn't 100% efficient) so you might not need separate heating most of the time.
Interesting. What about Ambri? I understand their mouton salt battery is being trialled for grid storage. It seems to be a better approach using cheaper materials and has better life expectancy. Bill Gates is one of the companies investors.
Yeah, I'm kinda curious if they've scored any Asian partner agreements which is why I was watching this channel's video on molten-salt battery technologies to begin with.
The government really needs to fund electrifying some of the main cargo lines, our 3 big rail freight operators certainly won't ever even try, even though its constantly being shown it will pay for itself especially in high fuel cost years. the high up front cost is always the limiting factor even though once you have the lines and trainsets you're running for pennies on the mile for fuel
Why should the government subsidize it? The government should just force the shitty companies to eat some profit loss and get it done.
What the government needs to do is stay the f out of the way for the most part.
europe is decades ahead of USA with rail infrastructure, and guess what. most of the infrastructure is owned by companies which are owned by the states. you can make private rail companies. but you use public rail infrastructure and pay your share to use it. u could even build infrastructure, but u would have to share it (and get payments for sharing your infrastructure).
works fine, we have pretty dense rail infrastructure (could always be better^^), trains are reliable and the costs for the states are much much lower then maintaining car infrastructure.
so yes. the US goverment needs the f to get hands on all the rail infrastructure and come up with a plan to expand and improve it.
@@certaindeath7776 For every example of something good, there are 10 of government intervention that ends badly.
Ill give you an example,opeq, they are all state owned companies, and they are ran very inefficiently because of it, they kept saying on the last few months especially that they were gonna increase production, but always failed, wanna take a guess why? It has mostly to do with how inefficiently they are managed.
People who don't understand economics, who are weak etc... Have a tendency of relying on the government.
I don't think people like you have looked around the world, government is not the medium through which competition and improvements come, government ownership leads to Venezuela, to China, to soviet Russia, to extremely inefficient work, because when you are the government you don't really care about efficiency much as there is no competition. Or in our cases you have corporations and government in bed together, which is another bad thing as it leads to more corruption on both the government and business side.
There is a place for the government. The first question is what is a government and what is it supposed to do? A government main job is to protect the rights of it's citizen, and to protect it's borders. That means that the government primary job is military, courts and police. It doesn't say anything about continuing to meddle with the market at every turn, and to nationalize industries, or in general to have state owned means of production. There is another word for it, and depending on the variation, and how much is owned by the state, you have either socialism, communism, or fascism, which fascism is basically "The corporations should serve the interests of the government". China is an example of a fascist state at the moment.
No, leave the free market alone. The only times a government should get involved is in very specific cases, like fraud, or scams to punish the people who are doing it, because that's protecting the rights of it's citizen, by punishing criminals.
Also, id like to see where you got your numbers from.
In any case, this kind of reasoning is very appealing to people who don't understand economics, but pretend they do.
I like how both replies are polar opposite.
While premature scaling is indeed a big risk factor for failing, sometimes the "Field of Dreams" gamble of "if you build it, they will come" does lead to success stories.
Physics and chemistry don't care about risk factors.
@@actually5004 People possibly nearby a failing pot of molten salt care about of risk factors. And people asked to gamble on a high risk technology with poor prospects for success do also care. While I applaud people trying out new ways of doing things, it is just part of the game that most such projects will fail. Question is then how much money was burned before it became too hard to keep up the pretence that it was a viable technology to sell to the markets.
"Which is cool, because i like submarines"
That's such a simple truth. I like.
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I believe the company i work for has recently purchased several of those GE Locomotives, however, we have not taken delivery of them yet. We take delivery of a few locomotives each year and we need to install some infrastructure before we can use the battery Locomotives.
Your captions are perfect, and much appreciated.
Sodium-nickel-chloride batteries are currently in use in some Sandvik underground drill rigs
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Your end notes highlight why I dislike MBAs so much - The spreadsheet management style that can only accept constant growth and quarterly results above all else. Even it if means hobbling the company along the way. I am sure there are companies if fits okay with, but for technical, engineering base endeavors it is a great way to fail (I'm looking at you Boeing)
"Molten Salt Walkman" does sound pretty baller.
And great in northern Minnesotan winters.
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Glasgow? My hometown that is only tangentially related to the rescue sub mentioned? Nice to see that show up on screen.
Great video, I enjoyed your humour! The background research for these videos must take you ages
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Hey, I worked as a cell design engineer at the Durathon plant if you have any questions. Your video is very good..
Btw GE licenced the technology to a Chinese company, and they are making Durathon batteries today.
We now have many more use cases for battery storage, not only with vehicles. Renewable energy sources like solar start making much more sense of you are able to store the energy you get during the day and there are different considerations for such a system then there are for a vehicle. For example, the weight doesn't really matter, the efficiency doesn't also have to be as high and the deciding factor is cost and scalability.
Molten Salt reactors are different from these batteries. Molten Metal Batteries are another thing, which use 3 liquid metals and run at about 800 C. These are suited to units the size of a small house.
Nickel metal hydride was deliberately crippled in the 1990s. Search for patent encumbrance of nickel metal hydride batteries to find the history
Both for companies and countries, I absolutely love the way you make these case studies! Another home run!
My old chemistry Dr. Sadoway is working on similar molten-material batteries. Very interesting tech, GM didn't manage it well it seems.
Edit: GE
GE General Electric
@@Jaker788 thanks, I generally get those confused
I had Ambrii batteries in the back of my mind while watching this video as well. I thought they were the first ones thinking about molten salt batteries but it seems people have been researching it for quite a while. Lets hope Ambrii can learn from GE's mistakes and successfully sell batteries. In my mind molten salt batteries are one of the most promising stationary energy storage technologies and are better suited than lithium ion for stationary storage.
They suffer the same problems. They need to scale up to be cost competitive but scaling up does not create the market. So if they organically grow their market their cost is not competitive but if they jump to quick scaling and reduce cost they have no market to sell.
@@penguinswithdynamite Considering Ambrii Prof. Sadoway stated explicitely that it makes only sense to build molten salt batteries using cheap, earth abundant materials...
IIRC. GE wasn't spending of "its" (shoarholder) money on Durathon, but it was using "Green energy" grants from the 08 Stumulus funding. They pulled the plug when the federal money ran out. I leave it up to you to decide if the whole thing was a scam or not.
The molten batteries I have heard of use heat pumps, to run engines, to melt aluminum. This should be interesting.
Wait, so this is just another aluminum battery???
This is very interesting, considering I drive by the CSIR in South Africa every day!
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I had to move a bunch of these across a building in Grad school in New York. They are heavy. The PI whom they belonged to said they were a great technology but didnt have a great use case, which I think is the general consensus at this point.
A reference is made to a Harvard Business School case study on this topic. I wanted to find that case study; what is the name or date?
How could a guy named "Immelt" fail to be a sucker for a molten salt promotion?
Because he was destroying GE. as the CEO
I guess we might want to return to this technology after we start running into lithium shortages. Also, I heard there was some substantial breakthrough in this area just recently, perhaps allowing to run such batteries at lower temperatures.
This general type of battery (molten salt) is already in use, it's just that they're really only used for infrastructural stuff, e.g. the hardware at railroad crossings. Because of the heat they aren't really sensible for non-professional uses, and honestly _should never_ be targeted at the consumer market.
For lithium-ion alternatives, I'd currently only be looking at sodium-ion (for hybrids & short-range), methane (because it can seamlessly transition to synthetic methane), etc. There isn't really likely to be any good alternatives to lithium ion for e.g. the US car market.
They thought they could break into backup power with that, but ultimately, a traditional generator accomplishes all the same goals with a more established supply chain for support. High risk in a world of guaranteed stability.
So the real question is whether or not GE, the gigantic mega-corp, owns all the patent rights to this technology hence stifling any innovation from others.
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Oh, you get bet on it. Them or some other they sold to. A person will be lucky if they don’t get a cease and desist order for buying batteries and salt at the same time.
Image transfer is smoother! Thanks for great video as always
As I understand it, as a portable battery there's too many problems BUT would work well for grid storage to help even out the solar and wind fluctuations so perhaps it still has a future
Hello, Mr. Jon. Lately, MIT professor Dr. Donald Sadoway and his student Dr. Bradwell made a lot of names in molten salt battery. Their startup Ambri has also received quite some attention. Now, Dr. Sadoway and Bradwell are mainly researchers. Still, what do you think about their invention? Whether the business model of Ambri actually works or not, what do you think of the technology?
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IF you fill the molten battery with power, do you have to keep it hot? If it cools, does it retain the juice?
Please analyze shipping companies. ZiM, SBLK and GOGL. Their Yield dividend is about 20%. Rated strong buys. However, risk reward formula says that impossible to make 20% risk free when treasuries are paying 2%. What’s the story?
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I would expand that to analyze the container shipping industry. In fact you could do an entire series on logistics. What is a freight forwarder? Ocean shipping, how do container terminals work, rail, trucking, air freight etc.
In the above case of ZIM their revenues and profits went through the roof because container rates went up 10x in the past year (i.e. they raised prices).
toyota started with NIMH not NICD while GE used NICD. The big difference here is reliability and longetivity. NIMH lasts longer and can withstand harsher conditions compared to lithium even with the lower density making it a lot safer. There are also many other alternatives to molten salt batteries.
would be nice to say more about Sodium-Sulphur, what is the problem ... since they are from plentiful raw-materials unlike Lithum bateries, so they are suitable for large scale grid backup
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wonder if it would ever be cost effective to put solar panels on top a hybrid train. I mean I'm assuming it wouldn't power the whole things, But if it already has a battery bank for an electric motor. Ideally they wouldn't be using heavy panels but the flex printable ones.
i remember CATL already put sodium-blahblah battery into use, i heard they work well in cold temperature, but lack in every aspect compare to lifepo4. but just as safe and cheap as a lifepo4 can be.
2:53
"Good lithium batteries can offer up to 250wh/kg"
While that is true, its also irelevant. That is the number for cells, not packs. The number for packs is more in the range of 180wh/kg for the top end, and really all the way down to 100wh/kg for hybrid batteries. 148wh/kg isn´t really that bad.
3:15 EV1 was produced from 1996-1999, so it certanly was not ditched in mid 90-tys. The dich date was more 2002.
That there was no EV on the market prior to tesla is also a myth. While tesla launched in 2008, there first consumer car launched in 2012. Prior to that the fairly successful Leaf was launched in 2010 and the also somewhat successful i-miev in 2009. Also the Renault Zoe launched almost simultaneous as the Tesla S. Second get RAV4 EV also launched in 2012. First gen was produced between 1997 and 2003.
The reality behind EV1 and RAV4 gen 1 being dumped have nothing to do with conspiracy. The simple mater of fact was that the cars was expensive, bad and not really mature. People simply didn´t want them. There was actually quite a large number of EV produced between 1993 untill early 2000. Like Clio electric, Th!ink, Honda EV Plus and a few other.
The first somewhat good EV was the Nissan Altra EV that was produced from 1998 to 2002. Effectively a direct predecessor to the leaf.
9:36 No it was the evolution series that sold 4000 units, not the specific locomotive
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̼T̼e̼x̼t̼ ̼o̼n̼ ̼W̼h̼a̼t̼s̼A̼p̼p̼✞̼︎̼✙̼①④④③⑤③⓪⑦⑨⑦⑨🚀🚀🚀📉 ▶️.
"148wh/kg isn´t really that bad."
Are you sure that number isn't for cells as well?
@@seneca983 Well i don´t know about the 148 number, but i seen 120 for the full package.
Fully agree, back in the 80s Volkswagen made an electric Golf (US Rabbit) and transporter (T2) with lead batteries. At least no one wants them because of the low mileage and too heavy batteries. The only thing that Tesla was different, is the fact that they where founded as an EV only company and where not a former combustion car manufacturer.
@@matneu27 well.. th!nk wad prior to tesla. What tesla did was making an expensive car (that all ev are) and simply made it as if it where an Electric car... making the cost of investment much more resonable
Ignoring the trains use diesel engines to power electric motors part... it kinda really falls apart at the end with integration needs part. Integration systems *already* existed even then.
Pretty sure that GE *already had* individual systems because that is part of their business to begin and most of these systems are designed around the national power grid standards.
Even if they *somehow* didn't, just about anyone an Associates degree in electrical engineering could figure out a solution, especially since most of these use cases that are *described* differently are in practice actually the same and all need a certain key components regardless of the individual use case. Just off the top of my head, the vast majority of power backup systems basically come down to:
--batteries
--power source to charge batteries. If off grid, that would be the person's generator, solar, wind, etc.
--an inverter with output current limiting to use the power from the batteries
--an automatic switch to switch from source power to battery backup. I can't be sure if the majority of systems would need this, but enough do that it's worth mentioning as a common component.
The inverter specs and storage capacity are generally what will varies the most. There may be *some* minor variants in other parts of some configurations, but for the vast majority of cases, it really is rather simple. In fact, that's a big part of what makes home solar and/or wind kits
Again, this is just off the top of my head.
When did energy arbitrage first come up as a topic and what was the first example of it being available internationally, same question for the USA?
In general, any battery technology that uses lithium is going to fail if it's focus isn't "being as light as possible".
The molten salt battery didn't just focus on being heavier than it needed to be, it had to underlying cost of being constantly heated significantly above ambient temperature.
So it was never really meant to be viable technology that was implemented into existing infrastructure. It was a test of technology, and a grab at grant money.
The fact that molten salt has nuclear development applications is probably not incidental.
Thank you for an interesting video. may I request topic of "IR" (heat) lamps...I bought a few and keep getting surprised by them....for a start it appears to me that some of them which are supposed to produce invisible light seem fairly comparable to standard outdoor reflector light and if so much power is producing visible light....it is unlikely that much is left for IR side of the spectrum. They also seem to heat socket beyond expected levels, but are enclosed in plastic, and often have ducted fan designed to take heat away (usually under the roof) while heat is obviously needed in the bathroom. The whole design seems a bit strange to me...Unit I purchased has in instructions (one gets to find out about them after opening the box- if they read them) that it should not be used for longer then 30 minutes...but no visible thermal or timed cut-out system? Seems to me that someone is gambling with other people"s lives....
Most the energy burned in any incandescent light is emitted as infrared light across an extremely wide spectrum, some is absorbed by the materials the bulb is made of and this heat is conducted into the socket instead of shining where you need it. The visible light you see is also converted to heat when it is absorbed, you can test this by observing how a big LED or laser which emits no IR light can still warm things up.
Love the Paris Hilton reference. "That's Hot"
How much of that $200M investment was taxpayer dollars?
I was hoping it would be a discussion of molten salt nuclear batteries :)
Very good but there is a strong argument for running some high risk projects if they have potential for very very high payoffs. GE did not understand the marketplace and did not perform due diligence on the technical trajectory of the competing technologies.
You asked why Jeff Immelt would lie. Maybe it’s because competition within GE’s upper management had become so fierce that his direct reports were lying to him. The Welch model had become unstable.
T̼h̼a̼n̼k̼s̼~̼~̼f̼o̼r̼ ̼w̼a̼t̼c̼h̼i̼n̼g̼!̼!̼!̼
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Misread as Morton Salt. Lol
you seem to have missed MIT professor Donald Saturday, the creator of the AMBI"s liquid metal battery which runs at higher temperatures does not require constant heating actually charge and discharge takes care of that it has a safe mode that it simply goes solid and then you restart it again reliability has been reported to be extended to as much as well over a hundred years.
Science Non Domus,
(Knowledge has No Home)
antiguajohn
fun thing to think of as i get repeated medical imaging using GE machines since they’re the only brand that services me area
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Molten salt batteries have utilise molten salt....wait, couldn't we directly connect it to solar thermal power plant to not only store but generate electricity? Then we don't even require steam generation and all that complexity. It would be direct conversion. I'm right?
honestly i thought he was talking about a completely different tech at first, because as you mentioned solar towers use molten salt already. Its not for long time storage though, but as a short time storage (max a day?) and energy transfers between the focal point and steam turbine (just a guess, but even in this day most of our primary power still comes in the form of steam engines)
No. Just because you have already melted the salt does not mean they are charged. This are rechargeable battery you need to charge them. Getting melted salt is just preconditioning so that the battery can actually be charged.
@@kazedcat Plus the additional complexity added to the system.
can you do a video on the new photon processors and the new players on this market?
thank you for your videos, such good quality
A Paris Hilton that's hot joke! I make that joke all the time because it's funny and amuses me and no one knows what the hell I'm talking about because I'm old and Paris Hilton thankfully hasn't been relevant for a decade now. But anyway, THAT'S HOT
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G.E is the jack of all trades and the master of some they make everything ... the best MRI ct scan and other imaging machines to Locomotives and of course the most powerful Jet Engines ever that powered the Boeing 777X
Oh, this is interesting. I thought the Zebra battery technology became a dead end decades ago.
Recent advances mean we no longer have to use molten salt, making it much more feasible. Sodium (salt) batteries look just like regular lithium ones these days, hold around 80% of the max charge, are much safer, but the best bit - infinitely cheaper and easier to recycle.
10:36 Topped by concertina wire not barbed wire. It is designed to collapse on interlopers. Nasty stuff.
Molten salt is incredibly corrosive, far worse than solid salt, which is also corrosive. I think there was a solar power plant in Arizona (?) that used it, but it leaked out, and it’s now abandoned.
we need more batteries like that. we have enough solar and wind but lack storage for when its not sunny or windy
20 years is 5 times the lifespan of lithium batteries? So 4 years is the lifespan of a lithium battery pack? If that were true, then lithium batteries would be useful only for small electronics. A more correct figure might be 1.5 times the lifespan of lithium batteries, but even that is debatable.
9:56 - second day fried rice is definitely awesome, and yes, very chaotic.
Chaotic neutral. 🤣😋🤗
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Yes, solid analysis. Turns out that the pie isn't infinitely large after all. 👍👍👍
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I liked the video because you gave your subscriber props for the subject. Way too many contributors do the same and never acknowledge the person helping them out.
Were any of those so-called hybrid engines able to run on electricity, or was all energy derived from fuel burning in its combustion engine?
There was a recent closure of a solar farm in Nevada when there was a leakage in the molten salt battery, is it really that durable than what it is marketed to be?
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That was molten salt thermal storage used to run a steam turbine.
I heard operating costs for solar thermal plants weren't competitive and that's why they closed.
Can't wait to buy molten salt earbuds.
Might be nice on a winter's run
Would it not have made far more sense to simply drill a thermal borehole to the required operating temperature of the batteries? so that they would always be operational?
The improvements in Li-ION battery costs you cite were mostly for Li-polymer batteries and not for the Li-FePO4 chemistries required by the many target markets of the molten salt batteries (as well as by small and medium scale transportation). It is the failure to understand this which has caused us to loose decades of battery R&D to the profit motive whims of the ultra-rich who mostly don't give a damn about the multitudes in Asia (much less the common people of so-called Western nations and republics).
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I wonder if those hybrid diesels are out there. Hopefully someone will dig them up.
Maybe a mute point but i seem to recall 2 reasons why these batteries had potential.
Lithium and associated materials are predicted to increase by 700 pecent in price and also the electrolyte in lythium batteries due to its makeup formes dentrites which new molten salt batteries do not.
South Africa is lacking when it comes to capitalizing on its recourses. its really sad
It's really too bad this failed because Lithium does have some real problems in certain scenarios. It's longevity is very problematic as an infrastructure backup power solution as well as how catastrophically they can fail, which is a major liability for mission critical solutions like in military and hospital settings. There performance and life are greatly affected by ambient temperature too. Lithium is great for mobility focused solutions like vehicles and electronics, but when weight and space don't matter as much it's flaws start to surface. I guess its good ole Lead Acid for now still.
Of course two thirds in (10:55) there is a nice market space analysis of battery storage facilities.
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No mention of Ambri?
This was very cool!!! Learned something new today. :)
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