MIT engineers create battery alternative using cement and carbon black
www.dezeen.com
Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a low-cost energy storage system that could be integrated into roads and building foundations to facilitate the renewable energy transition.

Unlike batteries, which rely on materials in limited supply, the technology could be produced cheaply using materials that are readily available. Possible to charge electric cars while they are travelling across it.

  • @[email protected]
    19•11 months ago

    There has been a “new breakthrough in battery technology that will change everything!” every 3 months for every one of the 30+ years of my life

    • @[email protected]
      -2•11 months ago

      And everything is very different from when NiCd was the dominant technology. You’re welcome.

      • @[email protected]
        4•11 months ago

        But the real changes have been constant incremental progress rather than breakthroughs. If all the hype was to be believed, we would have been off lithium batteries at last a decade ago.

        • @[email protected]
          3•11 months ago

          Each breakthrough had elements that were messy and complicated and once you break through the hype and look at what the breakthrough actually was, you can see they’re in hearing aids, and single use applications and many of them (even ones not originating in lithium batteries) are now in lithium batteries.

          Hence why they went from barely more than lead acid in energy density with abysmal lifetimes to at around 90Wh/kg and <200 cycles to 500Wh/kg for pilot-scale (still larger than the total scale of lithium in the early 2000s) commercial batteries that do 1000s of cycles, charge ten times as fast and cost a tenth as much using no precious or rare earth metals and a 20th of the lithium. 2015-2020’s breakthroughs are gearing up to give us 700Wh/kg expensive batteries and 160Wh/kg dirt cheap sodium batteries.

          The breakthroughs happened and are in mass production, just because the charge carrier is the same (with good reason) doesn’t make the other parts the same. Stop focusing on a single word as if that defines the entire thing.

          That saie, this 'breakthrough" is pure hype. The concept is interesting, but the suggested application of residential energy storage is worse than a sodium ion battery by every metric.

          • @[email protected]
            2•11 months ago

            We’re focusing on this single word because it’s used to drive hype. We’re constantly told we’re getting a major breakthrough that changes EVERYTHING to keep us clicking on the news.

            Maybe we wish that instead of acting like we’re about to get a 300% increase in energy storage density every time something new is discovered, scientists and media were honest and told it like it is - it’s going to be just yet another improvement to our existing lithium batteries. Which is great, but not worth a minute of your attention every single time it happens.

            • @[email protected]
              1•11 months ago

              Then…stop giving it by making inane, tired, cliched comments. And stop blaming shitty journalism and mandatory PR department fake hype for grant money on the scientists. Downvote and move on.