Sulfur Better than Hydrogen for Energy Storage, Engineers Find
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For decades we have seen scientists and engineers trying to outdo each other in finding more efficient and cheaper ways of storing energy. A group from the German Aerospace Center now says that sulphur is the way forward. Let’s have a look
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Sulphur storage? Hmm. This concept smells a little funny.
Ha, wish I'd though of this 😅
The concept leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
Lol. Sulphur itself is odourless. It's the dissolved hydrogen sulphide that makes it toxic.
:P
Sulphur? Isn’t sulphur a tad infernal?
Ah yes, I believe Hell runs on a similar system.
nothing better than humongus tanks of Sulfuric Acid, best to put them your backyard XP
No, it runs on Argent, completely different. Sulfur is just their cologne.
No, it runs on Okuu
@@mememachine5501 Thats former hell, new hell has since been relocated (ironically due to an environmental catastrope that is "The abandoned Hell of blood" a sea of boiling hydrocarbons filled with the shrieking souls of the damned) and is now closer to the Beast Realm on the order of Zanmu.
They can convert sulfur to sulphur and back again.
For grid connection purposes, they might even convert it to soufre or Schwefel and back again!
All I have is this worthless brimstone
Apparently we have lots of yellowcake. Um... I don't think that's sulphur.
Do they ship the sulfur to England and then ship it back to America again? Seems like a waste of energy.
auto correct has been doing this for years😅
My first assignment as a refinery process engineer was to assist in the start up of a sulfuric acid plant. It mainly was used to burn H2S recovered from desulfurizing refinery products, but it could burn sulfur for startup, or to even out production. This process must be entirely different, since there is no way that process could have been converted to be so energy efficient to act like a battery. And it was a masterpiece of complex material engineering, with parts of the plant being plain carbon steel, lead lined sections, fiberglass ducts, acid resistant bricks, cathodic protected heat exchangers,etc.
Good call-out: this sulfur cycle is a redox battery, no? Different than an electro-chemical battery, but still relies on a reversible chemical reaction to exchange kinetic & potential energy.
@@timgerk3262 I wonder if it would be possible to mitigate the SO2 and heat issues by putting some H2SO4 in a container with some lead plates, put electricity in it until required then let it out again to power a toaster ... fewer processes and I'd call it a "acid/lead battery" ... anyone else got a better idea?
Hope she makes a video on it,,,
I hear you... The only number I could find is from this review which itself refers to an estimate from the 80s and tbh I don't trust this number at all www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306261919314205 Which is why I somewhat vaguely said I want to see a real world measurement. What hydrogen has going for it, if nothing else, is that it's at least a simple reaction (and a well studied one). And simple tends to be strongly correlated with energy efficient. Then again, not like I want to disagree with people who actually work on the stuff...
I do hope it isn't necessary to remind you of today's date . . . . .?
If only we had more fluklear energy, we could basically power anything we want indefinitely. Fun fact, the first anti nuclear protests were actually because of concerns that humanity would become too powerful when we would deploy enough fluklear plants. Such a shame we make decisions nowadays mostly on how people feel and getting reelected. Keep informing them Sabine!
It's still the primary objection to nuclear among old-skool greens: fluklear is simply too good, and using it will promote large-scale societies, energy use and consumerism. Their "solution" is asketic small-scale living in harmony with nature.
Nuclear power plants generate heat. Is it enough to also affect climate?
@@MB-xe8bb Well, most of the heat is used to create steam that drive a turbine that in the end will generate electricity from the generated heat. Since the heat is created by Nuclear Decay there is no CO2 emitted as that is a byproduct of combustion. The cooling towers of a nuclear plant are there to radiate out the waste heat which is to keep the complete system from overheating. However this heat is not enough to cause any problems to the environment. The issue there is that CO2 is really good at holding heat. What we're essentially doing when we burn something and we crete CO2 is that we are making a large blanket around the earth where the solar rays have a harder time reflecting back into space because of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses. The heat is essentially getting trapped in the earth's atmosphere hence you get global warming. The more CO2 and other greenhouse gasses we pump into the atmosphere, the bigger the warming will be. That is why Nuclear energy is so nice because it doesn't emit any greenhouse gasses in the production process of electricity where almost all other forms of electricity production do emit those gasses because they usually burn something to get the energy.
@@MB-xe8bb dude, solar panels generates around 2 times more heat than "nukkelar" palnts. Check the efficiencies by yourself ;-)
Regardless of all these thermal solutions not being perfect, I am heartend by the amount and diversity of entrepreneurs willing to invest in the sector.
We dont need "entrepreneurs" throwing tax money to all the elements of the periodic table trying to find a niche way we could store energy 5% more efficiently in 35 years. We need tax money to go on nuclear.
Blar, if nuclear was the best, sole solution we’d all already be toasting our morning bread with energy from nuclear reactors. Nuclear requires spectacularly huge government investments. I’m a nuclear fan, but solar and wind combined with batteries certainly works too. Right now, we are all throwing proverbial spaghetti at the kitchen wall to see what sticks.
@@freeheeler09 The only drawback of nuclear is the fearmongering it has going for it
@@freeheeler09 But it IS the best, you just have brainless morons howling about nukular pulushun (ignoring the fact that 99% of reactors produced none in their lifetime and the 4 with big problems were all unsafe military reactors and even in these you needed a big accident to screw up things) or nukular wepunz (absolutely impossible to produce in any civilian reactor). If we applied to same idiotic "safety" and "disposal" standards to renewables as we do with nuclear power they would be MILLION times more expensive and even less of a topic, simple as. And yes, big efficient infrastructure requires government. Same with roads, clean water, sewage, healthcare, and tons of other things. Really dumb argument.
@@freeheeler09 "Nuclear requires spectacularly huge government investments." Not true! This is government propaganda. Current designs all use water - or steam - cycle to cool the turn the heat into electricity. It is water that brought us the Chernobyl explosion. Without water the meltdown would have remained bad but local. There would have been no steam to carry radioactive material into the atmosphere. Water cycle plant should be abandoned as far, far to dangerous and costly. About 90% of the cost of water cooled nuclear plant is in the cost of melt down protection. There is at least one other type, far less costly, the helium (gas) Brayton cycle, more familiar as a gas turbine/ closed cycle. They operate at a higher temperature, so are more efficient. They, being gas turbines, have no water. Even better, they can 'burn' up the nuclear waste from older. water cycle, plant.
Dunkeflaute.😂. I like the rain detail, its a keeper🤪
I'm a mechanical engineer working to commercialize graphene. Came across some companies doing heat storage in graphite and running the temperature up to 2000c, then getting the power back with high temp infrared photovoltaics. It would work better with graphene because of high thermal conductivity.
a very suspicious concept with lots of unanswered questions
@@olggloDubious yes. But they got $150 million in funding.
Thanks for the new word "Dunkelflaute "
She already made a vid about that
What video, I thought I've watched them all ... ?@@Thomas-gk42
German words are fun
@@Aquamayne100 Except it is a Verschlimmbesserung. It's not funny when something happens to be one.
It took me by surprise, I fully expected her to say "United Kingdom".
Just the thought of heating up sulfuric acid to 1000 degrees is absolutely terrifying. I hope nobody ever has to go near that.
I think it's only the first part of the cycle that needs such high temperature.
@@SabineHossenfelder Project Orion also only requires high temperatures just for a split second when the propulsion cycle starts. No big deal.
The energy density is terrible and I'm almost sure there is no efficient way to use it later on.
Sand batteries are efficient enough. You can get back hot watter out of it to heat your house. when you live a bit north of Germany then energy balance what is needed for heating and what is needed for electricity. To get heat machines to work you need temperature difference. when you use steem turbine you add superheated steem one side and you got 45C watter another side 45C is more than 35C that is used in heatpumps to heat houses. you have like 4x8x6m storage unit 1m wallsthat have heatpump pipes around it to get hot watter constantly and that seals leaks. for example you need 50 000kwh a year 40k of those are hot watter and heating 10k electricity. Maybe to use peltiere elements to generate electricity is even better. The heating element can be molten salt battery buried inside sand so that innefficiency of that battery heats the sand in summer and day and night electricity difference gives you benefit. In Estonia currently it is hudge like 30-50€ MWh lets say you have 100kwh molten salt battery then got 15% of that energy as a waste heat into your sand and you can sell your solar at peaks or be totally off grid.
the ultimate nose cleaning spray, only after it cleans your sinuses they melt.
Balanced views of new ideas. TY Sabine. You are a great physicist. Your understanding and then helping ordinary people understand complicated ideas is remarkable. Gratitude.
I think it is great that so many methods of storing energy are being tried. Then we can weigh up the pros and cons and use the appropriate method for the circumstances. And of course that is what you are doing Sabine. Making us aware of the Pros and cons. Thank you.
remember that thermal transfer is flux through an area. Volume is 3rd power, surface area is 2nd. the larger the tanks are, the less heat will leak w/respect to the volume. raising efficiency with respect to "self-discharge" means making bigger vats. can it get easier. the remaining loss is an artifact of the exergy
and no problem.... 100% SA and SO is saaaaaaafe
Also, there is always a market for low-grade heat. Use the leaked heat for "Fernwärme", and gain some more efficiency.
Yes, indeed, very good point!
@@richardmetzler7909living in Australia where it has been 52c in summer with minimums of 16 in winter, yeah nah mate not a huge consistent market for that here 😂 Now if you could sell me some low grade coolth, you've got my attention.
@@zyeborm The carbon dioxide liquefication process that is mentioned in the video would actually produce cold while generating electricity. Even if they are storing the liquefied CO2 at high temperatures and very high pressures, they will still be losing at least some heat in the process, which will result in cold CO2 coming out of the turbine, and also likely a requirement for some heat to keep the liquid CO2 from freezing as some is drawn off and the pressure drops.
In general though, I think one of the best ways to deal with storage is to price energy by the minute, and have devices which react to this pricing -- both people and companies will get pretty inventive when financial incentives are given.
'By the minute' is not the issue- we have plenty of great solutions for short term storage, like batteries, pumped hydro, etc. The problem is storage for medium term (3-20 days), and long term (basically- 1-6 months). For that, hydrogen kind of fits. Even if it is not efficient to produce it just for energy storage, it is better if hydrogen, and then amonia is made from extra solar/wind for agro, and only the excess of that is used for producing electricity during energy shortage periods.
Like lobbying to have a loophole in the pricing system or "green points" to still get cheap energy/subsidies. Coz that's most likely what happens when you ask finance to solve physics problems.
That's not actually dealing with storage though. That's trying not to store it. "Efficiency" doesn't actually create energy. In Australia at least the wholesale market is already priced at 5 minute intervals. I imagine many other places are the same.
That's the system they had in place in Texas which allowed the prices to rise by 7500% when temperatures went slightly below freezing. That system actually created a negative incentive to winterize power production. Furthermore, it leaves processes which can't be easily shuttered extremely vulnerable to price fluctuations to the point it would be much more financially sound to simply build your factories in another state/country without such a scheme.
thats nonsense. why the hell would you store energy at 20% efficiency. simply build a aluminium smelter near wind turbines and produce metals (with a bit of local battery stoarage). when the wind is not blowing you can simply switch off other smelters to recuce energy consumption and balance the gird. @@NeblogaiLT
Love the hypothetical at the end. Spot on.
May I suggest a heat exchanger in hell, which is great until hell freezes over. With the current supply of evil in the world that will not happen for hundreds of years the least
Actually, I think there are some merit to your proposal. A lot of areas are suffering from heat wave during the summer. If we can invent something that will use this excess heat to perform something - like sysnthesize a chemical, then we might effectively kill two birds with one stone. Use the heat of summer to store energy and cool our homes at the same time.
I know you're joking but Hel is an actual place in Poland and people even go there on vacation. 54.608600, 18.800506.
Dante would like a word with you about opportunities available in The 9th Circle?
The only energy you can store in an imaginary place is imaginary.
@@qazsedcft2162 Gr8 suggestion man. I'm going to hel as soon as I can. Pun intended, but it's an awesome place to visit.
You don't need two weeks of storage. Even on cloudy days you get 20% power from solar panels. So you just over provision them by a factor of 5. This is viable because of how cheap solar panels are. Now you only need 1 day of storage. You can improve this further with geographically diverse wind and solar. (the chances of cloud cover and no wind over a very large area is very small) A long running simulation in Australia shows you can get to over 99% renewable energy with just 5 hours of storage.
In Australia where solar will have a much higher capacity factor than europe sure. But germany with its longer windless and sunless periods I rather suspect nuclear power is indeed a better choice, at least in the near-medium term. However a good 60-70% of the worlds population lives in countries with more reliable sunlight like Aus, including sizeable parts of the US, so 5-10 hours of storage will probably do with both the price of solar and battery falling year on year it'll be a no brainer for these sunny countries.
Thank you for the video.
Your mastery to switch from content to the sponsored part without me noticing it scares me
I was waiting for something both sulphur and April first related. But the last time I saw Hell being presented as an energy source was in the Doom videogame or in an ACDC concert.
That was the worst april fool's day joke ever
You also need to include hydro generation in equation to use it as a glue between constant non-adjustable nuclear and chaotic green, hydro is most flexible and can adjust output in minutes, and lifting water up can be also used as excess energy storage.
Hydro is our best gridscale battery and will likely remain our best gridscale battery for quite some time. Unfortunately you can't just deploy it everywhere. You need to sacrifice a hill to build a big lake on top of which preferrably already has a lake underneath (or you make that one too). Soon you'll run out of hills. Also people aren't happy when you chop off their landscape.
This helps with the problem, but doesn't fully scale.
Yea if Sabine really wants to solve the intermitancy problem then Pumped Hydro is infinitly better then Nuclear, because Nuclear can't ramp up or down it always needs to be paired with another system anyways, and a Pumped Hydro facility is cheaper and faster to build then a Nuclear Reactor but can provide comperable power output, the duration is set by the size of the resevoir.
Yes, pumped hydro is an existing technology that will probably end up being the best solution to energy storage. It's capital intensive and takes a while to come online, but nuclear takes more capital and much longer to permit, construct and bring online. The other problem with safe nuclear is that the electricity it generates is very expensive compared to the combination of solar / wind and pumped hydro. Small, modular reactors produce energy that costs even more because they don't have the efficiency of scale of a large nuclear plant. Some innovative pumped hydro solutions look very promising. The first is river pumped hydro where the only storage necessary is the upper reservoir as water is pumped from a river and then delivered back to it. This can also be done with large lakes and even seas and oceans where the extra few feet of head provided by tides can be taken advantage of. The river system would also work with existing hydroelectric facilities where the upper storage, the lake behind the hydroelectric dam, already exists. If two dams are located close enough on the same river the water can be pumped from the lake of the lower dam up to the lake of the higher dam. But yes, pumped hydro is an existing, robust, low-risk technology that will provide the majority of energy storage long before most of these wonderful new ideas can be implemented at scale. P.S. And there are a lot more possible pumped hydro sites than you may think (616,000). The Australian National University (ANU), oddly enough, did a very thorough study and produced an atlas of these sites. Links sometimes don't work that well on KZhead, but all you have to do is Google: ANU Pumped Hydro Energy Storage Atlas
@@kreek22 Wondering why it doesn't scale. Most areas and municipalities have a reservoir, whether man-made or natural. Is it a matter of the walls of the reservoir not being high enough to store enough water to do any good? Seems like a method like this (without extracting and using a bunch of chemicals) would be preferable. Or perhaps the extreme highs and lows in water height would be detrimental to living things in the water. I can see that. Still, I've always wondered why this isn't talked about more (and perhaps that's because it just isn't a helpful method...)
Sabina I totally love your channel been watching you for so very long on the Television. Now I joined finally, you was one of the reasons!!!!!!!!!!! Keep rocking it........... you helped me to love physics and for that I'll be forever grateful........
Sabine is pure gold, please keep it up
I’m going to have a closer look at this.
The ultimate gravity storage in nuclear
Well done, Sabine! Such a wonderful parody! Up for the 'Lewis Carrol Prize' (Carrol, the inventor of the highly dangerous 'Snark' that must be 'hunted', only to discover it was an even more dangerous 'Boojum'. My goodness, how we live in dangerous times! PS And a happy April the1st to you too, Sabine!
Really interesting indeed! Thanks, Sabine! 😊 Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
Only in German will you be able to describe the "worst case scenario" with one word: Dunkelflaute, Weltschmerz, Schadenfreude...
Sure is a Schlimmstfall.
Please make an episode about Cellcius heat battery, also developed by Eindhoven university. It is based on Potassium carbonate and its hydrate - it can be easily harvested from wood ash.
Thanks so much for creating and sharing this educational and enlightening video.
Greetings from Bulgaria/ the US of A, live in Tennessee, originally from Sofia, also German and English are so similar, it’s fascinating to listen
Hi😊, yep this channel and this lady are remarkable.
Energy storage isn't the only solution to lack of sun or wind. Nuclear power plants can fill the gap as well, And very well, even though not everyone agrees to that.
The problem with filling the gaps with nuclear is that we then don't really need the sun and wind because we could just run the nuclear 24/7. And people really like the sound of the word "renewable", so we can't have anything that pushes them out.
No Nuclear dose not 'fill gaps' it is a baseload powerplant that is inflexible due to the physical nature of a reactor (Iodine pit) and the financial nature of high fixed overhead. Germany already has periods of all power on the grid being produced by renewables which are going to grow. Nuclear reactors output would be a total waste durring much of the year even if you had just one and the more you add the more wasteful it would become. Sabine is frankly completly uninformed about how the electric grid and nuclear power interact, she's treating it like a dispatchable powerplant when it's not. A Storage solution will easily outcompete Nuclear on cost.
@@kennethferland5579 rather it's the RE that's a total waste at those times, and similarly at most times, because the intermittent RE outcompetes itself far more than it outcompetes nuclear. Your assertion that "a storage solution" will easily outcompete nuclear on cost is simply wrong, and that's why we have videos like this, exploring yet another far-too-expensive and inefficient storage solution.
Nuclear baseline power is incredibly useful.
Nuclear is an expensive dead end. The combination of solar and wind with pumped hydro storage is a lot cheaper than nuclear at the moment and will continue to be so. Pumped hydro installations are capital intensive and take a long time to construct, but nuclear power plants are even more capital intensive and take a longer time that is (rightly or wrongly) open to the uncertainty of permitting that all new nuclear power plants are subject to. P.S. And there are a lot more possible pumped hydro sites than you may think (616,000). The Australian National University (ANU), oddly enough, did a very thorough study and produced an atlas of these sites. Google: ANU Pumped Hydro Energy Storage Atlas
Another idea that we will never hear of again anytime soon
The number of wishful new storage technologies is only exceeded by the number of revolutionary new battery chemistries. I will never find out about any practical ones because I can't bear to read another damned hyperbolic article about these damn things.
@@2ndfloorsongsthe 'Just Have A Think' channel has been reviewing a number of these claims, one or two years on, to see if any of them were more than just hype.
@@jeremymanson1781 Yes, I listen to just have a think regularly And yes I've seen a number of practical solutions that have proven themselves and a few that are on their way to production. These tend to be about one in 25 of the ones that are clickbaited. So I was probably exaggerating a little bit, but it does get tedious nevertheless. Thanks for responding, if I hadn't heard of just have a think that would have led me to it and it's a wonderful channel.
Where local terrain permits, it seems that Pumped Hydro Storage can be an efficient (70-80%) and simple way to store energy. If using 2 reservoirs, both upper and lower could be partially covered with floating solar panels to reduce evaporation losses and to generate additional electricity for pumping. Of course, you would have to limit the solar panel coverage based on the minimum amount of water allowed in each reservoir.
Excited to see how these innovative storage methods will revolutionize energy systems. Keep the innovations coming!
Sulphur so good...😊
Interesting, hope it goes somewhere. Millions of tons of sulfuric acid. What could possibly go wrong? :) The thing is we already have baseload energy options, but not the political will to implement it. I am referring to next generation modular nuclear energy.
More like an anti-human agency called the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Since they were established, they have only approved 1 new nuclear reactor, and it took them 40 years to approve it! There's already a market incentive to produce cheap Gen 4 molten salt reactors, as well as small modular reactors, but unfortunately the government is getting in the way of the market.
You are right about this !! By the way I love the German concept "Dunkelflaute"
Have you looked into Rondo, Antora, or Fourth Power? They're using a "box of rocks" approach (specifically insulated containers of superheated graphite blocks) to build heat/electricity batteries and are really promising, with higher efficiencies than what you just described.
This was so interesting. Thank you, Dr. Hossenfelder. I’m going to start using Dunkelflaute as there doesn’t seem to be a comparable English word…at least, not as cool.
In SoCal we just call this type of overcast weather - June Gloom
Energy storage systems are not good only for renewals, but also for all the other types, there are always peaks of consumption and lows, having powerplants increase and lower production based on demand is less efficient than a constant production that can be first stored and then fed into the grid
Our grid works w/o storage as long as we have control over power production. That makes the difference between "renewables" and all the rest.
@@hanskloss7726 yes, and adjusting power production is less efficient than a fixed level or at least a smaller fluctuation in production, if energy storage becomes a cheap option thanks to renewals, it would be smart to apply it to the existing types of plants.
There is a reason our bodies use sulphur and nitrogen for epigenetic quality control. They maintain a cellular proton gradient quite well, especially when working alongside quinone type structures.
What I remember most about Michigan was that it clouded over in September and the sun didn't come out again until May the next year. During those months I spent a lot of time next to windows trying to get enough light. I hope we figure that fusion thing out soon.
"Dunkelflaute" - Yes, we Germans have a word for everything!
We English speakers have a word for everything too: ahem... *"Everything."* See?
@@rais1953But the English, especially American English, are the best when it comes to abbreviations - where the abbreviated word has 180° meaning from the words behind it.
@@JouMxyzptlkdoes that make it a palindrome?
Yes, but the translation would be "dark lull" which sounds like a D&D spell. And it gets even better if you mispronounce it as "dark lol"
@@theskilllessgamer5795 This "dull" translation somewhat misleading since "dull" has way too many possible meanings :D. A Flaute is a nautical expression when you have absolutely no wind. So "dead calm" would be my choice. Or, in full "dead calm darkness", which isn't a good condition for a good crop.
let's go for nukkelar
Thanks Sabina for the slice of humour in your videos, much appreciated ! And as the penguin says in Madagascar III : "nuculer"
I vote for flukkelar energy.
Let me guess. Practical and scalable applications are 10 years in the future. Meanwhile more research (money) is needed.
Thanks Sabine For my energy storage, I like sodium acetate hand warmers. Work well and are fun to watch.
In the 1980's I worked in the oil industry optimizing controls for Claus sulfur recovery processes. More recently I've worked with ammonium phosphate fertilizer industry controls where sulfuric acid (98% concentration) is produced to convert phosphate ore (fish bones) to phosphoric acid. Based on my industrial scale experience on the subject, I think this idea deserves to be "stored" indefinitely. The real trick to using sulfur for energy storage will be to convert SO2 back to H2S efficiently... maybe with iron sulfate catalyst. But then, where do you get the excess hydrogen? I too am a strong proponent for nuclear. I have a bit of experience with several PWR reactors in the US (over 4GWe total capacity). The future for nuclear fission, fusion, and possibly hybrids, looks bright.
I still prefer gravity batteries. Maybe just have a bunch of water towers that pump water upward, and have the water fill containers on a turbine when needed. At least there is less energy loss than with conventional batteries.
Pumped Hydro is better then 90% efficient, that just a bit below existing batteries in the electric round trip efficiency, but close enough to be comperable in the marketplace. Likewise systems which compress/expand gas and in other ways produce potential energy which release into ORDERED forms of kinetic energy will have comperable efficiency. It is the conversion to heat, aka disordered kinetic energy which causes losses.
@@kennethferland5579yes pumped hydro is mature, proven, understood, long-lifetime, long-dispatch time, and efficient. Off-river closed-loop pumped hydro seems to be massively overlooked. Even here in (flat, non-mountainous) Australia, there is massive scope for hundreds of these distributed around the country. I read a research paper from 2017 showing the potential along our east coast population centres. The cost analysis showed a very low cost per kWH including transmission infrastructure. We need to use current technology to get it done NOW. Not wait for new solutions. We can integrate new as it comes available.
The problem is that sites built for a gravity battery don't actually work that well (such as the crane system - stand alone or in repurposed mineshafts). Natural water reservoirs do work well, but are obviously not abundant. If you wanted to build out pumped hydro you'd need a location with a lot of hills that could be worked/processed. West Virginia would be a great location if you were to build pumped hydro in locations already wrecked by mining, especially in areas of mountain top clearing. And West Virginia already sports a lot of wind power projects...
@@Jesus.the.Christ I know the issues with stacking blocks. I wouldn't suggest that at all. That's why I mentioned having a bunch of enclosed water towers. It's not perfect, but any other type of batteries seem to lose energy, and water is a relatively cheap resource to store energy.
@@Hydroverse I give you credit for not falling for the obvious boondogle of stacked blocks, but I'm sure that water towers arn't viable either, the mass of retained water is just not sufficient to given the cost of making a steel or conctrete structure. We can do some back of envelop calcuations fairly easily to show this, www.cedarburglightandwater.org/sites/cedarburglightandwater.org/files/Water%20Tower%20Construction%20FAQ%20-%20for%20website.pdf is a municipal report for what looks to be a very standard watertower, this tower is 40m and hold 2000 m^3 of water which means potential energy of 784 million Joules. The tower costs 2 million, so 392 joules stored per dolar, at 36,000 Joules per kw/h thats $91 per kw/h for just the upper resivor. This compares unfavorably with Pumped Hydro which is estimated at $77 per kw/h for both upper and lower resivors.
On the plus side, this large array of partial solutions will give entrepreneurs and researchers a lot of different avenues to explore, and will give states and communities a lot of experimental options to try while we try to home in on a more global solution. On the other hand, it would be nice if we could just get to work on a new generation of advanced nuclear plants designed for high reliability and modular construction so that we could get their costs down into more viable ranges.
yes, all these partial solutions are neat, but we have to decide soon, which ones we chose and find the way.
@@Thomas-gk42 NO, NO, NO! It is a matter of using a blend of these. Solar wind and nuclear are sources of energy. We can develop various batteries with various efficiencies both in cost and energy efficiencies to store all of these energies to accommodate fluctuations in production and usage. I think pumped hydro is cost effective where feasible. Water can be pumped from a lower reservoir to an upper reservoir by power from the grid or these other sources, then used to power a hydro power plant when sources like solar are not available. This is already use in the San Luis reservoir of the California Aqueduct where hydro-power is from the outlet powers pumps to fill the lake. In places like California, such facilities would be a better investment than the high speed trains. They are low polluting too. We watch much needed water run into the ocean during rain storms. There was a Salt Battery system used to power Las Vegas. But it failed to meet the load and cost too much.
@@denniscummings5219yep, I totally agree with you. We need a varity of storage solutions for differnt areas/countries, and we need both, nuclear and renewable as sources of course. But politicians need to get good advice to find a fastest and best solutions for their region. If you distibute the research fund over too much approaches, none of them comes to success.
Thank you.
Great info
Each month so far in 2024, 100% of California's electric need was supplied by wind/solar/hydro renewables. Solving storage will enhance the effort. Whatever happened to raising water, then let it fall back through a turbine?
It's terrain-dependent. You're not going to find a place to put pumped hydro in flat places like Texas, since you need somewhere with an elevation change of hundreds of feet within a short distance. And California weather is also something that other places don't have.
@@willythemailboy2 It's dependent on the scale you have. On a farm you can have wind and solar pumping water from underground for irrigation. By having elevated storage tanks combined with ground storage reservoirs, they can power hydro-electric generators recycling the unused water. You can replace the wind turbines with elevated tanks with turbines on top of them. The skyline will be much the same. :)
@@denniscummings5219 Lithium batteries would probably be cheaper for the amount of energy stored. Pumped hydro is a lot less efficient than a battery and doesn't scale down very well.
I wish more sites would build advertising into their content stream, rather than telling me to turn my ad blocker off. I can't turn off my ad blocker because of security policy. If a site tells me I have to turn my ad blocker off, I never go back to that site. I might care enough about it to think "Oh well. Too bad".
How about you do your job instead of wasting time here
Please don't give KZhead any money until they stop their insane censorship.
@@area51z63 Let us keep it civil, shall we?
@@curtisblake261 Hey I am not the fool who bragged about misusing a company computer
You actually prefer sponsors to be able to directly influence the content? That's some black mirror shit to me personally.
5:13 - Yup!
Multispectoral glasses must rotate the polarisation before the light reaches the sunglasses.
I'm pretty sure a brimstone energy source is basically the plot of Doom.
I would support Flukear if people don't get funny about it.
Dunkelflaute? The name for similar conditions for about three months in the Pacific NW\Seattle is "Winter".
pumps, giant water reservoirs to hold pumped, desalinated water on a higher land gradient. use it then for AG as well as secondary energy production as needed.
We already have this actually which is called "Pumped Hydro".
water's messy. good for running large pumps downstream for pneumatics even electricity generation. also not as susceptible to EMP. mainly just gravity and pressure to run pumps as it goes back downstream.@@bluestone-gamingbg3498
and yeah that's my point. the tech is well over 100 years old. fool proof@@bluestone-gamingbg3498
good, then problem solved storing energy. what's the problem. just do that again and again in mass wherever you can. funny thing is deserts would be perfect for all of this. water storage and AG included. oh well, back off to my ivory tower, TATA@@bluestone-gamingbg3498
So the best energy storage for large amounts is probably still pumping water uphill, and then letting it run down through a turbine when you need it.
Well, evaporation is a problem there. And leakage would be an issue for the CO2 compression scheme. But yeah, mechanical energy storage still seems to be much better than electrical or chemical storage.
Entirely correct, unfortunatelly there´s some opposotion against storage pools in my country
Yes it's a good system in countries with plenty of water and high valleys that can easily be dammed. Australia is currently struggling with a huge cost overrun and technical problems with our "Snowy 2" scheme that was supposed to provide pumped hydro. It will probably work but very late and way over budget.
@@beastmastreakaninjadar6941 No it is not, in Northern Europe rainwater will fill a container faster then it evaporates. You have to go to a rather airid land before this is not the case like western US or southern Europe to get net evaporation, and even then you just tap into existing rivers to replenish the water.
@@kennethferland5579 Did I mention a specific location? Didn't know I needed to point out it was a generalization. And it is often brought up as a negative in reporting on that specific energy storage method. And then, pumping water in beyond what was lifted by the excess energy just wastes more energy. There are mitigations to evaporation, but they're not always feasible, depending on the size of the reservoir. Many wind farms aren't even near large water sources anyway, or elevated land for a reservoir. Now, that's when the compressed CO2 turning the wind turbines is a good idea.
I am simple boy. I saw the thumnail, I was touched, choke between tears...Read more
@Sabine : Prof, would love to have a video from you on regular topics e.g. nutrition, weight loss from a physicist's perspective !!
One US university paper presented a promising rechargeable battery. Aluminium, urea water solution and carbon. By weight half energy density, 2 V cell voltage, not burning, and coulomb efficiency was excellent, promising good durability..The most expensive part is aluminium. It's freezing at about -10C, so not useable in many cases, but even in Finland it would work fine underground..
A comment for the algorithme.
There is no existing hydrogen (or sulfur) infrastructure, but there IS a giant natural gas / methane one (and power plants that can use it). Concentrated solar is now a silly endeavor when photovoltaics is constantly beating cost records - nothing will compete with PVs in cost. This is why making methane with Sabatier reaction using purely PV source as electricity (no expensive grid electricity + no begging to connect solar farm to it!) is the most promising and most versatile solution. In fact synthetic methane from co2 capture may actually be CHEAPER in "a few years" than drilling. If that happens capitalism may solve climate change. Sabine doing an interview with Casey Handmer would be incredible. If there is anyone who could challenge him in physical first principles it is Sabine.
I don't think you understand the utter gigantic volume of CO2 in our atmosphere and yet extremely low concentration...in order for that to work, you would need highly concentrated CO2 in the first place, that idea is plagued by the same problem as carbon capture. Which is that humans so far haven't invented a financially efficient way to capture and isolate CO2 from the atmosphere, something required to make your idea work. Not to mention the extra massive energy/power required to capture CO2 and then to the required to use for that method to convert the gas (it requires high heat). Your idea is something that can come AFTER carbon capture becomes viable, and not before. I don't understand why the world's gas stations (oil/gas states) are not investing trillions into carbon capture research, it's the only way to keep their business future proof. Imagine selling all the oil and gas you want while simultaneously being responsible for capturing all of it from the air with solar power (most of these states are deserts). I think they are just frankly stupid, uneducated idiots sitting on top of temporary gold. The big human flaw of looking and thinking only about what's in front of you and not about the tomorrow. The funny thing is that they will absolutely come to this conclusion eventually but it will either be too late and they will go back to being empty deserts or it will be too late for this planet.
If that methane can be used with very little leakage (say, from transport like happens with natural methane), that could work.
Reading the headline I was sure this is just another april fools day joke. After seeing this video I am confused...
Here in Norway I read about a trial where energy from solar panels on a house is stored in a white power during the summer, to be used during the winter when the sun is gone or too low on the horizon. That seems like a good idea👌
The sun isn't always shining? Might need to check with an astronomer on that one...
As long as you don't move your solar panels or big reflectors into space - this idea already exist - the sun isn't shining t a certain point on the surface of the earth.
@@red.aries1444...and those space based solar panels are a crazy idea. Sabine already made a video about that last year.
The world has gone crazy because it wants to rely on renewable energy without energy storage. It's like a carpenter making a table but without legs
I had thought of sodium hydroxide a few years ago, hadn’t thought of sulfur. Thank you for the interesting video!
Well, having seen someone breathe the smoke from burnt sulfur, I think I'd go with burning the hydrogen. But, either way they're single use and then you've got to use energy to make more. I just don't see this as efficient, at all.
Seen another video and Graphite is well under way for this process. Vey good for high temperatures that are also used and needed for many industrial used of the heat directly. As well as being able to make electricity.
Pumped hydro is already proven, itis economical, and it is by orders of magnitude the largest energy storge in use today. Batteries are great for relatively shoet-term storage hours/days .. hydro is good for weeks. That is all you need really. Nuclear is fine .. but I doubt it can compete in price. Bottom line is we have tons of options to solve energy .. the real question is which ones solve energy at the lowest cost.
And just how much does it cost to build the pump storage facilities and how many suitable locations are there. More magical thinking. Tho at least better than pretending batteries are a meaningful contribution.
Pumped hydro _is_ the best available solution - the problem is just that it's not available in most places where you'd like to store energy, because it requires suitable topography.
Most pumped hydro is used for diurnal load balancing. We need longer term storage. Pumped hydro has few good locations & massive Capex.
Good news, interesting technology, but all these approaches make it hard for politics, to find the way and make decisions. Thereby we loose the time, we don´t have.
Yes, you'd really think we could have come up with a little more organized approach
@@SabineHossenfelder The more organized approach in Germany for long term storage is based on electrolysis and Hydrogen. Nuclear is too expensive for 14 days usage a year.
@@gerbre1Hydrogen is very problematically, Sabine already made a video about that.
@@Thomas-gk42 Less problematic than nuclear energy.
@@gerbre1 I think we need both to reach net zero. Renewables are not sufficient to satisfy humanities hunger for energy.
There are also other renewable energy sources that can be used along side of solar and wind. There's geothermal, tidal, current and wave sources.
I was prospecting for wind energy in 1980 with a Pet computer and an anemometer. I concluded the greater Seattle area has unusable wind. The energy is proportional to the wind speed cubed. Seattle wind is almost always too fast or too slow.
You got me Sabine 😂 i am on sulfur storage wagon now
That's the fourth car battery you made me dump in the river. Keep it up.
Im so glad for the Atacama desert again.
I would love to see a video on the most recent data from the "hope vs hopium" paper just released which has quite a lot of climate scientists talking. I think we'll need cloud seeding, and a lot sooner than anyone expected.
Zinc-iron seems like the best solution from what I've seen.
This sounds like salt hydrate thermochemical storage systems, which have been proposed plenty of times before and could store an entire winter's worth of heating in a bathtub's worth of salt. The charge and discharge temperatures for some of the viable hydrates are much closer to domestic hot water temperatures, so it's a good distributed solution. Also, please check out Highview Power's Cryogenic Air Energy Storage. It has a lot of advantages, including the potential for very high capacity, extremely cheap with ~60% round trip efficiency, can be built anywhere, and most importantly, the equipment is all existing stuff from the fossil fuel industry with large robust supply chains and a large skilled workforce.
Would like to see an analysis of the tech from Antora (resistive heating of carbon so it emits light, capturing of the light through a solar cell when extracting the energy).
The efficiency of the latest compressed air storage units is now high enough and relatively low tech so units can be casually dropped in as-and-where required even down to a few wind turbines, or scaled up much larger. But I guess those aren't flashy enough to receive government funding or research grants.
You have to consider capital costs and amortization in addition to efficiency.
5:07 I believe the term for which you're searching is 'Pumped hydro".
Great for those places that have convenient geography for it, and we should totally do that. It doesn't cover our total needs.
Would be interested to hear your take on project 1414 rè silicon storage
I'm pretty sure the sun is always bright and there's always some wind blowing somewhere
This is broken down to detail that even I can understand
They store heat from the summer for months to use in the winter in some cities in northern countries.
Joar wie auch schon bei Norio auf dem Kanal, Nischentechnologien die wieder in der Versenkung verschwinden. Bringts nicht, aber ist durchaus sehr interessant, danke für den Beitrag. Ich freu mich immer was es geben könnte.
it's some equivalent to photosynthesis.. a direct reaction with light that produce some chemical than we can burn (and recycle the product for the reaction)... maybe even some low energy photoisomeration would do the trick...
Germans like Sabine are producing more and more truthfully relevant KZhead content. The list of great Germans producing in KZhead has grown to five, Misha is king too
Plenty of sulphur deposited around the rim of active volcanoes. Personally, I'd take my energy from the magma. Don't dig into the volcano itself, however, like they did on Hawaii, unless you want to upset Pele. Yes, they were using magma heat from the sides of Kilauea. What could go wrong?
This is fantastic news!
Also check out other liquid-metal storage mechanisms. Also fluoride salts.
I’d love to see a video on iron oxide batteries, which you briefly mentioned. My understanding is that they should theoretically be reasonably efficient and cheap, with the downside that they’re large and heavy. Which means they are terrible for portable uses, but seem ideal for grid-level storage.
Far better to focus on Renewable Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis and "artificial photosynthesis"...You get pure, liquid hydrocarbon fuels that can be used in existing and advanced (higher eta) internal combustion engines and stored-transported with existing infrastructure. Let's all remember too that the transition to renewable (eternal) energy may give us a higher cost per unit of energy but we also have enough potential to make improvements in efficiency sufficient to compensate higher unit costs by reducing the units of energy we need to do the same things.