Gelion: New Zinc Bromine non-flow battery

[muggins]

Gelion

https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/gel ... ry-mb0957/

Hope it is successfully commercialised.

[cthisbear]

See the Z-Cell in your post.
Another Aussie battery.

But did you know of this.

https://www.newcastle.edu.au/newsroom/f ... innovation

" Created by University of Newcastle Physicist, Professor Paul Dastoor,
organic printed solar cells are electronic inks printed onto sub-millimetre thin plastic sheets using conventional printers.

CHEP, a Brambles company, has become their historic first commercial
partner helping to explore the potential of the technology."

Chris.

[muggins]

It's not a competition Chris, but what about 1414?

[Flash]

I hope no battery chemistry that depends on zinc turns out to be commercially succesful.

When I was a boy there was a zinc smelter near the town where my mother grew up. The main road from the Interstate Highway to that town passed just to the north of that smelter. The wind blows pretty constantly from the south in that region, so when you drove by the smelter you drove through a cloud of whatever was being roasted from the ore. Everything to the north of the smelter was dead for as far as you could see in the smoke. The smelter shut down in the late '50s or early '60s. Eventually it and the land for a ways north of it became a superfund site.

It might be possible with great care and no small expense to mine and refine zinc without poisoning the Earth, but if zinc becomes a widely used battery chemistry, as lithium for instance is now, wildcat zinc smelters with no pollution controls will pop up in places around the world where laws against poisoning the environment are not strongly enforced.

[8Geee]

Yup Flash heard of that. I would think Sudbury would be included in entirety.

I've been a fan of LiFePO4 rechargables, though they have lower capacity. Enuff of Cobalt (a strategic metal) based Li-ion's.

[greengeek]

It's not a competition Chris, but what about 1414?

Brilliant. That would be a great method to allow clusters of homes generating solar power in a grid connected way - with the thermal battery forming the infrastructure centre of the community.

A way to be grid connected without the expense and inefficiency of massive distribution cable networks linking consumers to power plants hundreds or thousands of miles away.

I can imagine this sort of thing allowing the formation of solar arrays near communities all over the Aussie outback.

[cthisbear]

I agree with greengeek ...brilliant.

I hadn't heard of it either.

I like to look at Whirlpool Forum >> Green tech

https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum/143

and also SolarQuotes

https://www.solarquotes.com.au/

I often see other projects there but not the above.

Thanks muggins..

Chris.

[wiak]

So, I'm thinking steam powered cars should make a come-back, since even more than electric cars, steam engines really don't need a gearbox... and steam engines are very powerful for their size.
Okay, so that's not the current latent heat storage idea using molten silicon. However, maybe one day we could pick up an insulated molten-silicon brick at the garage and pop in into our steam-engine car (along with filling the water tank up...):

https://www.21stcentech.com/transportat ... xtinction/

So Why Didn’t the Steam Engine Take Off?

The beginning of the automobile age provided buyers with many engine choices. One of those was steam. Considering steam had a legacy of a century behind it one would have thought it would be the engine of choice for the new automobile industry. After all trains used steam. All the automobile makers needed to do was take the train steam engine and scale it down to fit something smaller than a locomotive. Soon steam-engined automobiles appeared on North American and European roads.

Steam had some advantages over ICE. Steam was quiet when compared to ICE engines with their noisy pistons and valves. Steam ran on water and a little bit of fuel to heat the boiler. The fuel could be almost anything – wood, charcoal, coal, kerosene. ICE required gasoline, a distillate from oil refining, used more as a solvent than a fuel. Although early steam-powered automobiles needed frequent stops to take on water, once water-condensing and recycling systems were added these vehicles could cover very long distances. One even was able to travel over 2,400 kilometers (1,500 miles) before making a pit stop.

wiak

[Flash]

The ICE beat the steam engine because a steam engine is a finicky thing. An ICE can go from a cold start to doing useful work within seconds. It takes a while for a steam engine's boiler to come to operating pressure and temperature. Plus, steam engine boilers were famous for exploding. Scalding steam and large, heavy pieces of steel would go in all directions. Many people were killed by exploding boilers.

The problem with an ICE for most applications is that its peak power is only available in a limited range of engine speed, requiring a transmission with multiple gear ratios and a clutch. The diesel-electric locomotive solved that problem nicely. Once it came on the market, it quickly replaced the steam engine for trains.

My Nissan Leaf has only a reduction gear box with one ratio and no clutch. Due to the more or less constant power output of its motor over its entire speed range, it doesn't need a multiple speed gearbox. Tesla put a two-speed gearbox in its original roadster, but the gearbox broke a lot, probably because its designers weren't familiar with the tremendous low-speed torque of an electric motor, and wasn't necessary in any case. Tesla left it out of later models.

[greengeek]

The diesel-electric locomotive solved that problem nicely. Once it came on the market, it quickly replaced the steam engine for trains.

I read recently that the Edison battery (Nickel, iron, Potassium hydroxide) was the storage medium for locomotives. Apparently those batteries are heavy but reliable and long lasting.

My Nissan Leaf has only a reduction gear box with one ratio and no clutch. .

How do fully electric vehicles (ie non-hybrids) heat the cabin? and how do they get the vacuum required for a braking servo? I wanted to build an electric car for myself but couldn't find an efficient way to solve those issues.

[Flash]

I read recently that the Edison battery (Nickel, iron, Potassium hydroxide) was the storage medium for locomotives. Apparently those batteries are heavy but reliable and long lasting.

I assume the storage batteries were just for starting the diesel engines, which provide all of the power to move a diesel-electric locomotive. However, the diesel engine could be replaced with a large lithium battery, at least for short haul work.

How do fully electric vehicles (ie non-hybrids) heat the cabin?

with resistive heat, powered by the 300 Volt traction battery. I've never needed to use the heater in my Leaf, but I understand that using it reduces the range of the car by a considerable amount.

and how do they get the vacuum required for a braking servo? I wanted to build an electric car for myself but couldn't find an efficient way to solve those issues.

The power assist for the brakes is by electric motor, nothing to do with vacuum. I must say that the brakes on my Leaf are the worst of any car I've owned. They're safe, in the sense that they always stop the car, but their action is a bit unpredictable, especially at low speeds. My Leaf is an early model. Maybe this problem was fixed in the later models.

[greengeek]

I read recently that the Edison battery (Nickel, iron, Potassium hydroxide) was the storage medium for locomotives. Apparently those batteries are heavy but reliable and long lasting.

I assume the storage batteries were just for starting the diesel engines, which provide all of the power to move a diesel-electric locomotive. However, the diesel engine could be replaced with a large lithium battery, at least for short haul work.
.

I always wondered how the diesel output was linked to the electric drive. I recall standing on overbridges hearing the diesel rev strongly during acceleration away from the platform, but there was no synchronisation between the diesel revs and rail speed.

I still don't know if the difference between diesel rev output and electric motor thrust is softened by the battery or whether there is some other form of regulation/storage linking the diesel and the electric portions of the drive. Maybe capacitors??

I don't think the battery is just for starting the diesel. Not sure tho.

[Flash]

You could just Google "diesel electric locomotive," but it's fun to speculate. What I am pretty sure of is that the generator is used the same way a constant-speed propeller is used on an aircraft engine. When the engineer opens the throttle, the engine begins to speed up which causes the generator's regulator to increase the current in the generator's field winding, which increases the output voltage (and current) of the generator. If the generator's output is connected to a load, such as a motor, this will slow down the diesel engine. This is about the only way I can imagine that part working.

I'm not so sure about how the generator's output is applied to the traction motors that drive the wheels. Early diesel electric locomotives probably used DC traction motors, because the technology to turn the generator's output into variable frequency AC to drive induction motors did not exist until perhaps the 1960s. In any case I am sure there's never been a need for any sort of filtering or softening of the generator's output. I doubt the batteries are for that purpose.

[greengeek]

In any case I am sure there's never been a need for any sort of filtering or softening of the generator's output. I doubt the batteries are for that purpose.

Yes you're right that seems to be the case. The "soft" link i imagined to be there is essentially magnetism and controlled by the field winding controller.

Amazing how much torque can be generated by electricity and magnetism.

[6502coder]

Amazing how much torque can be generated by electricity and magnetism.

The US Navy's Tennessee-class battleships of the 1920's (32,000 tons displacement) were turbo-electric: steam turbines driving generators that in turn drove electric motors. Since there was no need for a driveshaft, this gave the ship designers much more flexibility in laying out the positions of the boilers and engine rooms, allowing more efficient use of the hull space.

[8Geee]

Flash, et al;

A while back, I was offered a 'ground-floor' investment opportunity in Railpower Technologies. Guess what they make?

A Green Goat diesel/electric hybrid railyard switcher (commonly refered to as a Goat, and thus a local minor-league baseball team is also called The Yard Goats).
wiki has it here.

Regards
8Geee