CCNY-based team develops sustainable, high energy density battery
https://www.ccny.cuny.edu/news/ccny-based-team-develops-sustainable-high-energy-density-battery[font size=5]CCNY-based team develops sustainable, high energy density battery[/font]
[font size=3]Researchers at The City College of New York-based CUNY Energy Institute announce the development of a novel low cost, rechargeable, high energy density battery that makes the widespread use of solar and wind power possible in the future. It is based on manganese dioxide (MnO2), an abundant, safe and non-toxic material.
In a paper in the journal “Nature Communications,” the scientists report that the uniqueness of the battery is that it is able to achieve both high cycle life and high areal capacity. Achieving high areal capacity is critical for packing a lot of battery electrodes together into a battery case. In essence a high areal capacity is required to build a real, practical battery, as opposed to a small toy battery.
Past researchers have achieved either high cycle life or high areal capacity, but never both together, the team notes.
The innovation that makes this possible is intercalating copper (Cu) into bismuth-modified δ-MnO2, which is called birnessite. The latter was discovered by Ford Motor Company in the 1980s, but it was never known how to use it at high areal capacity. This was later discovered at the CUNY Energy Institute by a team led by Sanjoy Banerjee, Distinguished Professor and director of the Institute.
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http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14424
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...in a solar/battery powered nirvana!!!!!!
...Or maybe not. Every single element utilized in the paper, which is open sourced and can be read by anyone who wishes to go deeper and learn about this "breakthrough" at a beaker scale as opposed to a University marketing team blurb, is considered a "threatened element:"
Green Chem., 2015,17, 1949-1950
These elements are bismuth, manganese, zinc and copper. Three of the four are considered to be exhausted within 50 years, assuming we don't accelerate their use in our quixotic quest to make the thus far useless solar and wind industries useful.
They haven't been useful, they aren't useful, and they won't be useful, and the reason is physics, their extremely low energy to mass ratio. Making their energy to mass ratio even lower, by the use of batteries is a dumb, and unworkable idea.
But don't worry, be happy. We can plug along quite well destroying what's left of the planet while dreaming endlessly about our solar powered battery cars tooling around on future freeways that won't actually exist. That's not our problem, and we couldn't care less. It's the problem of every human being who will live after us.