Technology Review
The Congressional stimulus bill could help create a new, advanced battery industry in the United States.
Provisions in the Congressional stimulus bill could help jump-start a new, multibillion-dollar industry in the United States for manufacturing advanced batteries for hybrids and electric vehicles and for storing energy from the electrical grid to enable the widespread use of renewable energy. The nearly $790 billion economic stimulus legislation contains tens of billions of dollars in loans, grants, and tax incentives for advanced battery research and manufacturing, as well as incentives for plug-in hybrids and improvements to the electrical grid, which could help create a market for these batteries.
Significant advances in battery materials, including the development of new lithium-ion batteries, have been made in the United States in the past few years. But advanced battery manufacturing is almost entirely overseas, particularly in Asia. As a result, advanced battery startups in the United States typically have their batteries made outside the United States. But this need not be the case, says Prabhakar Patil, the CEO of Compact Power, a subsidiary of the South Korean company LG Chem, based in Troy, MI. Battery manufacturing is largely automated, so labor costs aren't much of a concern, he says. Rather, the battery industry developed in Asia because countries there, particularly Japan, developed portable electronics and hybrid vehicles, creating a market for batteries.
Now, with the push to rely more on renewable energy and less on fossil fuels, a market for advanced batteries is starting to develop in the United States. This, combined with incentive for manufacturers in the United States, could allow an advanced battery industry to develop in this country. But many experts say that serious obstacles remain to getting the industry off the ground. Investors are reluctant to provide capital for battery plants because the markets are still relatively small. And the markets are still small in part because batteries are expensive, which is itself partly because they're currently made in low volumes.
The stimulus bill could help address both problems. It sets aside $2 billion in grants for manufacturing advanced batteries, plus tax credits to cover 30 percent of the cost of a plant (up to $2.4 billion in total credits). This is in addition to $7.5 billion in loans authorized in a previous bill for manufacturing advanced technology for vehicles, which includes batteries. Employees for these factories could be trained as part of $500 million in funding for retraining workers for green jobs. There is also $16.8 billion going to energy efficiency and renewable energy, which will likely include money for battery research to bring down costs and improve performance.
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The City of Homestead in south Miami-Dade County has plenty of inexpensive land inside as well as outside of its tax free zone for construction of a battery plant, as well as numerous vacant warehouse. In addition, there are thousands of homes for sale and rent ready to be occupied by its employees.
Great value for your money: gov't making industrial policy! </sarcasm> The dangers of govt promoting one technology causes us to slow directional changes when we find out it doesn't work (e.g. syngas boondoggle in the 1970's)
WE DON'T HAVE ELECTRIC CARS BECAUSE BATTERIES ARE EXPENSIVE, DON'T LAST LONG AND DON'T HOLD MUCH ENERGY! The emperor has no clothes, docu-dramas couched in vague generalizations aside.
I'm a big environmentalist but wanting the perfect non-toxic, huge capacity, cheap battery doesn't make the battery fairy go 'poof' and give you one, just as the 'Fusion Fairy' is still doling out hundreds of billions with scant results. (I laughed at La Rouche supporters 10 years ago who wanted $60 billion for govt crash development prog for fusion power, now I see them in front of my supermarket and it isn't mentiond)
It really is simple as that, the battery emperor has no clothes.
Sure stuff like nanotube batteries might help but advanced batteries are in research stage. Maybe at some point down the road will work out but looks like hype and promises to me. "give me more money so I can see if this.... works"
See the discussion with 300+ posts by engineers this site about the ultra-capacitors to power cars. They're even more fun! Apparently, if they short out they will explode with something like 10 sticks of TNT in an accident.
Chemical energy stores something like 100 times the energy density of batteries.
Gasoline is not the only chemical energy form and is heavily polluting and non-renewable.
If we combine any energy source (switching the energy source to renewable soon as possible) with storing energy in metallic form we can supply cars with 1) metal pellets, 2) water and produce pure hydrogen on demand to burn either in an engine or in a fuel cell (more efficient).
Advantages:
1) no need to store more hydrogen than is needed for power boosts like acceleration or hill climbing. The hydrogen is produced in a small heated reactor slightly faster than needed by the car.
Aluminum reacts spontaneously with water at room temperatur to produce hydrogen if a small amount of gallium is added to prevent the surface effect of aluminum (the same reason aluminum doesn't rust, it forms a protective coating unlike iron). Magnesium reacts spontaneously with water to produce hydrogen at an elevated temperature comparable to that which car engines operate now.
The end result is a metallic oxide which can be recycled, at a filling station (no longer called gas station). They would give you new pellets and water and pump out the oxide to recycle either locally or by tanker truck to a central location. The energy to drive is put back in, it takes ALOT of electricity to turn aluminum oxide to the metal but the process is performed already on a massive scale at aluminum plants around the world. I think magnesium takes less energy to refine from oxide.
2) you separate the chemical energy storage from the generating of electricity, which means this could be done today and renewable electricity phased in.
Of course there is conversion loss but so is there with petroleum - they burn petroleum to fuel the refineries and to drive the gas tankers to the gas station. Batteries also have loss in that way less than 100% of the electricity supplied to the charger ends up in the battery, and another percent is lost when moving from the battery to the wheels, and the regenerative braking, while nice idea is also subject to losses.
We have endless supplies of aluminum, it is in the top 10 most abundant elements in the earth's crust and we already recycle aluminum products (albeit not oxides) massively in form of aluminum cans and other aluminum products.
Just a suggestion, and I'm sure this system has its drawbacks but battery powered cars have huge drawbacks. Emergency crews won't use 'jaws of life' on hybrid cars with battery packs due to hazard. Many battery formulations contain highly hazardous materials and/or huge shocking hazards even if we move away from lead based formulations.
Your concern over ultracaps is that they explode? How many sticks of dynamite worth of energy is in 10 gallons of gasoline, pray tell?
I'm not even sure that your assertion that ultracaps explode is even accurate.
regular capacitors can explode. while we are using smaller and smaller ones in today's electronics, and they are reliable, if heated such as in a car fire they could.
If they short out they could. i.e. a manufacturing defect or pierced by a conductive rod.
I wasn't saying current chemical fuels can't explode either, more that batteries and caps have safety drawbacks also, and are not necessarily the 'ultra safe' alternative to chemical energy but that any form of energy storage may have the potential to release that energy explosively.
While storing metals plus water to combine for hydrogen on demand would seem to be the safest method, even hydrogen which we seem to deem as explosive because of hindenburg, is safer than gasoline in an outdoors car accident because it very quickly rises up into the atmosphere, whereas gasoline flows along the freeway and gives off explosive vapors for a much longer period, yet explosions rarely happen outside of impact accident conditions and we don't have the slightest worries that our car will explode when we get into it in the morning (unless you are a person who might be targeted by a car bomb).
If you like metal fuel, read Tom Blees book Prescription for the Planet and learn about boron.
Another battery alternative is ammonia, NH3 from hydrogen from decomposition of H2O at high temperatures such as produced in the liquid fluoride thorium reactor. That hydrogen can also be used to recycle CO2, making CH4 methane, a gasoline substitute, or CH3OCH3 dimethyl ether, a diesel fuel substitute. For an introduction to the technology and benefits of this energy source look at http://rethinkingnuclearpower.googlepages.com/aimhigh
Leave those African Nations alone. We have a big enough mess with the Middle East over Oil already. Why do you think we have those issues in Africa? They want those riches for themselves.
How about investing in Mass transit - this website has several interesting options.
Convert one lane in each direction on each freeway system that gets packed with commuters every day Monday through Friday with a rail system
Have the Feds raise gas taxes to encourage drivers to give up their cars for 5 days per week and commute using the rail system
After 24 months, buy up all the failed gas stations along the rail line routes who can't support themselves on the lower revenues, rip out those underground fuel tanks and replace them with big Flow Cells. Read the following article.
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/13093/
Tie the Flow cells to the rail system and then take advantage of cheap electrical costs at night to charge them for the morning commute, or place large stationary Biodiesel generators onsite to power thr rail units. An automatic transfer switch can be added to leverage the units to provide emergency power to the population in the event of a catastrphic power event like the one we had in Summer 2006.
Offset the reduced gas usage with biofuels we grow here in the US. It can be algae based, an oil seed crop or biomass of some type. Heck - even solar, oceanic and wind sources can be added over time.
Monday through Friday 150 million commuters use the rails to get to work, which reduces demand on existing oil reserves to make gasoline or diesel cheap for truckers and service persons who HAVE to drive their vehicles during the work week. Us cube dwellers can ride the rails and stay off the roadway - probably reduce our stress levels too.
Keep the taxes on a gallon of gas low for these Trucker and Service folks by having them register their delivery or service cars to obtain a rebate permit of some type (collectible by the Company not the driver), and make the rest of us poor schleps pay a higher gas tax for using gasoline for daily commuting if we choose to not use mass transit. By providing the permit to the folks who have to drive, there may be a way to prevent them from passing the expense onto the consumers.
The savings from not securing Lithium and Oil in unstable areas of the world using our Military should easily offset the expense and long term use of setting up Mass transit. The price of 5 pints of American blood is considerably more costly than a tanker of oil or sea freighter of Lithium Ore. Don't put our troops in harms way because we want to drive big gas guzzlers or electric cars. There's nothing noble about sending our kids into hostile areas to pay for a barrel of oil or perhaps ton of rocks with their lives.
On weekends or after hours - use your own car to get around.
Battery Manufacturing in the US
Instead of giving US Taxpayer money to foreign companies to build product in the United States why don't we put a tariff on imported goods so it would be cheaper for them to make it here -does that not make more sense?
Why is everyone so afraide of import duties, for the first one hundred and fifty years of our history we had tariffs averaging 40% - 50% and even now we have very high tariff of about 50% on ethenol.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
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lasertekk
146 Comments
One point
OK, one possible positive from the bill, oh, no pun intended.
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Handshake
19 Comments
Re: One point
USA and other big nations should "bring democracy" to Africa, because there are most reserves of Lithium and other similar materials, from witch a good "battery industry" is made of...
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