Recycling, Upcycling, Repurposing

Void · 2022-12-03 09:44:52

I searched and got this: https://www.paulsrubbish.com.au/differe … purposing/

As it happens, I had a need to move this here from: "Index» Science, Technology, and Astronomy» EV charging revolution"

From what was post #83 in that topic:

Perhaps there might be a better place for this, if so, then move it if you like.
To repurpose old Tesla Batteries for stationary power storage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sS6OEoBfyWU
Quote:
Company turning old Tesla batteries into storage inundated with orders
The Electric Viking
17K views 16 hours ago
Company turning old Tesla batteries into storage inundated with orders
Get a 10% discount on tickets to Fully Charged Live in 2023 (and meet me in person) us …
So, of course it would be good to get the maximum value from the battery packs, as it has been pointed out the production of them may well have involved the release of the dreaded greenhouse gasses.
And in his video, he suggested that you might be able to get significant money for your Tesla battery pack, or at least I thought that was indicated.
If so, then that reduces the ultimate cost of buying a Tesla.
Something to think about.
I suppose ultimately the hope is to then finally recycle the Lithium, presuming that these are Lithium. Sodium is not as high performance yet, (Or ever?). Well beyond that where do you get enough Lithium?
So, I took a look for some hope: Query: "New sources of Lithium"
General Response: https://www.bing.com/search?q=New+sourc … 98361d41d1
A specific article: https://www.aau.edu/research-scholarshi … hium-found
So, little by little pieces are falling into place, in spite of normal expectations.
That is good.
Done.

We will see if kdb512 wishes to move post #84, which was a reply.

Done.

Last edited by Void (2022-12-03 09:49:26)

SpaceNut · 2022-12-03 14:20:04

Repost

kbd512 wrote:

Void,
Repurposing old batteries as stationary storage only means that those Lithium-ion batteries are no longer available for powering vehicles, but in my opinion it's much better than dumping them in landfills where they might catch fire and burn for weeks to months. However, the batteries are obviously well-worn at that point and pose a fire hazard, so the only place they make much sense is a generating station with crushed gravel and concrete underneath them, and no vegetation. Anywhere else is a non-starter, which means they de-facto become part of the grid or perhaps industrial site backup power, which will be needed since we've opted to make the electric grid less and less reliable by adding more and more intermittent generating stations.
Mark P. Mills covered the battery recycling fantasy in some detail. In simple terms, it's not happening at any significant scale and never will unless manufacturers run out of economically recoverable Lithium or are forced to recycle them by law, which will then add even more cost to electric vehicles. Most of the Lithium-ion batteries end up in landfills as toxic waste, een thoug they're not supposed to be tossed in the garbage because they're a fire hazard.
I would hope that Sodium-ion batteries quickly become a much lower-cost / less hazardous and toxic alternative to Lithium-ion if the environmentalists are hell-bent on electric-everything. I also fail to see the point to the math deniers trying to match the range of combustion engines using batteries. A car with a 100 mile range is a perfectly serviceable vehicle, and if someone can deliver one at a good price because they forego the electronic gadgetry craze, then I could see myself owning something like that after our current vehicles bite the dust.
If they really want everyone to switch to EVs, then the car makers need to have a "come to Jesus" moment and realize that fewer and fewer people will be able to afford exorbitantly priced electronic toys that most of them know will become uneconomically repairable the moment the warranty expires. If their customer base disappears, then they go bankrupt. We're left with the existing fleet of combustion engines at that point. Somehow I don't think that's what they want, so they need to figure that out relatively quickly.
There are still hundreds of thousands to possibly low millions of vehicles that are essentially bricks on wheels, for lack of microchips. TSMC's assertions about resolving chip production problems within a few months didn't pan out the way they thought it would, did it?

SpaceNut · 2022-12-03 14:21:01

I do agree with this and would love to get my hands on a few of the used units, but I am not seeing them at this point in salvage yards.

Void · 2022-12-03 17:08:06

Well, I began wondering about the future of "off Peak Power Loading".

That is, might people have power packs in their homes even if they do not have solar panels? (But of course, also if they do).

Part of the problem with wind and solar, is that they produce power intermittently, and not necessarily as the loads on the power systems fluctuate.

Powerlines might be looked at as pipelines, in which case it might be worth the trouble to use a power pack as a "Future Load".

Of course, here I am thinking of solar farms remote from the loads they serve, and wind in the same situation.

I would not be surprised if someone may be experimenting on this already. You would need a power pack in your home, and an inverter and control methods to sync up, and an incentive of course. A power deal, for off peak, I presume. Maybe it is too expensive at this time.

I know you can do "Off Peak Heating" in some places already and get a power cost deal. And people with solar are allowed to sell power I believe.

But I guess if you had a power pack it would make sense to get solar, unless your home did not have a place for it.

Maybe I am just ignorant of what already exists. But maybe aging and low power density units might be used for that.

Done.

Last edited by Void (2022-12-03 17:16:38)

SpaceNut · 2022-12-03 19:20:50

The issue for a home use is the amount of energy to store in one battery pack. So, if you can do distributed then you are sizing them for a particular use such as an ups like design. Kbd512 purchased the power walls that are manufactured by Tesla to go with that solar panel set up.

Void · 2022-12-03 20:21:19

A good information resource then.

It already is at least partially understood that the more electric homes would become, the more electricity might need to be piped into them through power lines. So, creating an "Off-peak" load with batteries and also thermal reservoirs might help that bottleneck.

Done.

Void · 2022-12-04 23:22:12

I am putting this here, as I struggled to find a home for it.

I guess I will justify it, by suggesting that indeed these units when they get old might be repurposed into homes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Iv99IETvk4
Quote:

Electric cars will use Sodium-ion + lithium hybrid batteries in 2023
The Electric Viking
Electric cars will use Sodium-ion + lithium hybrid batteries in 2023

I do not believe that each homeowner should seek total energy independence.

But it might be good to try for 10%-50%. In that case people might have better chances of weathering a disruption, or temporary loss of income. 10% might allow some communication, lights, and maybe one partially heated room and an electric blanket.

To get through a rough spell, you don't necessarily need 100% comfort.

But too much dependence on central powers is a thing to try to avoid.

Done.

Last edited by Void (2022-12-04 23:26:59)

SpaceNut · 2022-12-11 19:07:50

What Happens To All Of The Old EV Batteries?

The batteries are dumped into giant shredders that cut them into small pieces. This shredded mix is then dumped into water where the plastic (floats) is separated from the metal (sinks). The plastic is recycled, and the metal is separated and reused to make - you guessed it - new batteries! Many of these recycling companies are based right here in the US. And, while they might alter the process slightly here and there - the core essentials remain the same. The best part is that these companies report EV battery material recovery rate as high as 98-percent.

that is pretty good....

kbd512 · 2022-12-11 19:40:25

SpaceNut,

From the article:

Myths About EV Battery Recycling
Many people might hear the positive sides of recycling car batteries (and all batteries in general) and think that it doesn't come with a downside - but like most things in our world, it's not a perfect process yet. Waste is inevitably produced by the battery recycling process, and it creates toxic waste areas to deal with it. The good news, however, is that these battery recycling companies have a strong incentive to reduce waste because they can sell the materials that they save - the more they can save/recycle, the more money they can make. The factories that they build get better with each new design, to the point where they can save larger and larger amounts of material from the batteries they shred, smelt, and resell back to the hungry battery industry. This helps reduce the number of toxic environments created by mining and older-style recycling centers when going after fresh or poorly recycled products. However, it is important to note here that even in settings where there is refined waste produced by "dirty recycling" it is still better for the environment and a good investment when compared to the older ways of not recycling and relying on oil for new products. Introducing chemists and engineers into the projects makes the numbers increase with cleaner recycling faster and faster, almost to a 100-percent success rate in some cases.

A dirty recycling process is still "better for the environment"?

Who's environment are we talking about here?

How many barrels of toxic chemicals do we have to dump onto the doorstep of the clown who wrote that for him / her to change their tune?

Are these people mentally retarded?

Did all the dope they smoked in college, plus toxic chemicals in the waste water, cause them to lose too many brain cells to write logically coherent arguments?

Assume we can recycle 98% of the batteries. We don't have enough Lithium on the planet to power all the motor vehicles and farming tractors at the same time.

98% is happy talk.
Worldwide Regulations on Lithium-ion Battery Recycling

This is reality:

The valorization of waste lithium-ion batteries and their materials through recycling has gained significant attention in recent years. The recycling rate of lithium-ion batteries is still low at under 5%, however. The main reasons for this are cost and the complexity of recycling methods.

kbd512 · 2022-12-11 19:54:47

Recycling Lead-Acid Batteries Is Easy. Why Is Recycling Lithium-ion Batteries Hard?

By James Morton Turner, an environmental studies professor at Wellesley College and author of the forthcoming book “Charged: A History of Batteries and Lessons for a Clean Energy Future.” He published the lead op-ed in the journal Science’s special climate change issue last month (June 24, 2022).
The lithium-ion batteries in today’s electric vehicles outperform older lead-acid batteries by almost every measure, except one. Lead-acid batteries are still the single-most recycled product in the world.
Although lithium-ion batteries are set to power a clean-energy transition, more than 100 million lead-acid batteries are still sold each year in the United States, mostly as starter batteries for cars, trucks, and boats.
When those lead-acid batteries die, nearly all of them get recycled. In fact, the lead-acid battery industry claims a domestic recycling rate of 99 percent. In 2021, the U.S. produced nearly one million metric tons of recycled lead. Almost all of that recycled lead was used to manufacture new batteries.
What is interesting is that none of this is actually new. Lead-acid batteries have been recycled since the 1920s. As early as 1930, the industry described lead for batteries as a “loan” rather than a form of “consumption.” Prior to the 1960s, hundreds of small-scale lead recycling operations operated in and around U.S. cities, making this an early form of urban mining.
These urban lead recycling operations were also a significant source of pollution. One of the earliest epidemics of lead poisoning was tied to battery recycling operations in Baltimore, Maryland, in the 1930s. In some places, it is still possible to identify the sites of abandoned lead-acid battery recycling operations based on elevated levels of heavy metals in the soil.
In the 1980s, however, the industry went through a major restructuring. New environmental laws forced recyclers to upgrade pollution controls. In response, many small recyclers closed. Those that remained consolidated operations into integrated battery recycling operations with improved pollution controls. Today, a dozen highly regulated secondary lead smelters recycle the vast majority of the U.S.’s spent lead-acid batteries.
With global production of lithium-ion batteries now overtaking lead-acid batteries, it is worth asking why lead-acid batteries have been recycled for so long and so efficiently, and what lessons that offers for closing the loop on the lithium-ion batteries. Consider these three points:
First, the chemistry and format of lead-acid batteries is highly standardized, which simplifies recycling. Unlike with lithium-ion batteries, which come in a range of chemistries and a variety of shapes (cylindrical, flat, pouch, etc.), the relative uniformity of spent lead-acid batteries reduces the need for sorting spent lead-acid batteries by chemistry, shape, or size. That facilitates bulk processing.
Second, the metals content of lead-acid batteries is almost entirely metallic lead and lead oxide paste — both of which are usually recovered through pyrometallurgical recycling processes at more than 2000 degrees Fahrenheit. After processing, the recovered lead is both the functional equivalent of and cost-competitive with lead sourced from primary ore.
In comparison, lithium-ion batteries are far more materially complex. That requires tailoring lithium-ion recycling processes to recover a range of cathode materials (lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese, iron, etc.), anode materials (graphite), and conductors (aluminum and copper). These complexities pose significant challenges for efficiently recovering materials and processing them for re-use cost-effectively.
Third, starting in the 1980s, the federal government and states prohibited the disposal of lead-acid batteries, due to lead’s high toxicity. Although some spent lead-acid batteries get shipped abroad for recycling, most are recycled domestically. (Concerns have been raised about spent battery shipments to less well-regulated facilities in Mexico.) That has meant recycling has played an important role in ensuring the United States has had an abundant and reliable source of domestic lead.
Looking ahead, the scale of recycling of lithium-ion batteries is set to expand rapidly. High volumes of spent large-format electric car batteries promise to drive the economies of scale needed to close the loop on lithium-ion batteries. Studies indicate that recycling has the potential to reduce the cumulative demand for lithium, cobalt, and nickel needed to electrify the transportation sector by up to 30 percent between 2020 and 2050.
Scaling up lithium-ion battery recycling will also create opportunities to improve the sustainability of recycling operations. Existing pyrometallurgical processes for lithium-ion batteries often recover only a fraction of the metals content of spent batteries (usually driven by the value of cobalt). Direct recycling strategies, such as those being researched at Argonne National Laboratory’s ReCell Center, have the potential to substantially improve materials recovery and to reduce the energy inputs and potential pollutants from lithium-ion battery recycling.
Although there are growing private-sector and governmental initiatives to promote recycling in the United States, the flow of spent lithium-ion batteries, and the resources they contain, could easily be diverted overseas. In the long term, a robust U.S. lithium-ion recycling industry can play an important role in securing domestic sources of advanced battery materials. Although its significance is little appreciated, that is just the role the lead recycling industry has played in supporting domestic manufacture of lead-acid batteries since the mid-twentieth century.

Void · 2022-12-13 12:01:54

I cannot vouch for the reality of this, it only suggests a path forward: Sodium Batteries:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xodNEVG4baA

Quote:

Scientists discover cheap sodium batteries with 4x capacity of lithium

If it turns out to be as good as advertised, I might suppose that these might have several lives before recycle/disposal.
1) In cars.
2) In ships?
3) In homes and businesses?

But the number of cycles has to be improved, I would think also.

Well fire away

Done.

Last edited by Void (2022-12-13 12:17:36)

kbd512 · 2022-12-13 14:46:14

Void,

The issue is that cheerleading nitwits like this "Electric Viking" clown from the video you posted, simply spout off utter nonsense with zero understanding of basic physics or energy density. He starts off his video blathering about "if this is true (a Sodium-ion battery with 4X the energy density of Lithium-ion), and I assume it is, electric commercial aircraft being completely 100% viable".

Let's briefly fact-check that fact-free statement:

Current real-world Lithium-ion battery packs are 160Wh/kg, despite containing individual Lithium-ion battery cells with energy densities of 300Wh/kg or higher. Take your favorite new battery's capacity, divide by 2 and that's your realistically achievable energy density per unit weight. Recall that Rolls-Royce built their own electric waste of tax payer money "aircraft" to virtue-less signal, and they achieved that energy density "by removing all the fire safety features and packaging from a commercial Tesla battery pack" (as-produced a few years back). If Sodium-ion can achieve 1,200Wh/kg, then a real world battery pack is about 600Wh/kg.

Meanwhile, back in the real world...

Kerosene's energy density is about 42.8 MJ/kg, which is about 11,900Wh/kg, with a bulk density ranging between 775 kg/m3 and 840 kg/m3 at room temperature.

11,900Wh/kg (Jet-A / "kerosene") / 600 (reality-based Na-ion battery pack energy density) = 19.83X <- more than an order of magnitude less energy per unit weight

Kerosene contains almost 20X more energy density, per unit weight, as compared to Sodium-ion batteries that may or may not actually exist and be feasible to mass-produce after it's taken outside of a lab. All we have are claims at this point, with zero evidence backing them.

Modern large jet engines are about 50% efficient at converting fuel into thrust, so...

5,950Wh/kg (Jet-A in a real-world jet airliner) / 600Wh/kg (notional new Na-ion battery pack) = 9.9

Can you load ANY aircraft, regardless of type, with TEN TIMES more "fuel" (payload by any other name) than it presently carries?

Anyone who seriously cannot figure that out, should never be permitted to use the words "aircraft" and "battery" in the same sentence, because they're far too ignorant to ever speak about this topic. That's what our "Electric Viking" opened up his fanboy video with. Everything else that came out of his mouth must be scrupulously verified against known objective reality.

If I walked into my CFI's office and told him I wanted to load up the school's Skylane with 870 gallons of AVGAS, versus the 87 gallons it was actually designed to carry, he'd tell me to get the hell out of his office and come back when I'm sober. With 8.7 gallons of fuel onboard (the energy-equivalent in terms of Sodium-ion batteries), that same Cessna 182, which can fly as far as 1,070 miles with 87 gallons and just the pilot aboard, is reduced to about 107 miles of range- because that's how energy math works. How useful is a 4 seat aircraft with less than 100 miles of range (because it stays at MTOW for the entire flight)? Would anyone who is not intellectually mentally disabled ever buy a million dollar airplane to travel 100 miles?

This guy is like your roomie from college getting baked out of his mind. While he's getting stoned, he tells you that he thinks if he could build a bong big enough, then he could use the thrust generate from the weed fire in the bong to go to the moon. Meanwhile, our intrepid space cadet is blissfully unaware that he's already floating in space, completely out of his otherwise empty mind.

Are there truly no YouTubers posting about batteries, who are minimally mentally-equipped to separate their fantasies from objective reality?

kbd512 · 2022-12-13 15:17:10

I'm starting to think education is producing diminishing returns. We send everyone to college these days, but now most of them come back dumber than when they went in. Seriously, what's the point of educating them if they believe stuff like this? Now they have a degree in fantasy-based thinking, so that makes it "all better"?

Current commercial battery-powered aircraft, that previously used gas turbines, can fly for up to 15 minutes using Lithium-ion batteries, before they encroach into their 30 minute reserve that the FAA requires for the type of operation they're subject to (FAR Part 91). Now they can fly for 1 hour in the sort of "short-hop" type flights associated with local flying. It can't be described as regional, because they can't remain airborne long enough for a regional flight, unless the aircraft in question is absurdly heavy and therefore expensive, relative to the range it can achieve. Commercial aircraft are priced by the pound, or kilo. If you double the weight, then it's at least twice as expensive. It may be possible to make that up in terms of fuel costs, but only if the battery recharges fast enough to allow you to fly multiple times per day. This is the current problem with existing Lithium-ion battery aircraft (can only fly once or twice per day, whereas the turboprops could fly pretty much all day long).

To Void's point, cars, trucks, and trains are now much more doable using battery power alone, assuming these batteries do everything claimed. If the sticker price matches the tonnage of the vehicle, and the batteries don't suddenly start arc-welding themselves internally the way malfunctioning Lithium-ion bateries do, then I can finally see myself owning a Sodium-ion powered EV as my next car.

Void · 2022-12-13 19:28:30

I sort of agree. I think that as long as we do not allow Neopaganism to convince us to give up technology and industry, the accumulation of best practices will over time make a more sensible new path of technology and industry.

Done.

kbd512 · 2022-12-14 11:29:23

Void,

The whole notion behind adding "war weary" batteries to existing stationary power plants totally defeats the assertion that we can burn fewer fossil fuels in the process of extracting virgin metals for new batteries. The old batteries don't go into the landfill, which I REALLY like, because then we don't end up with Lithium fires burning down the house or Lithium and other toxic chemicals in our drinking water supply, but we will NEVER save a single gallon of diesel fuel by preventing the extraction of more and more metals by doing this. Any assertion that we could do such a thing is a big bright shining L-I-E. Only infantile consumerists would ever believe such nonsense.

Back in World War II, they used to retire combat aircraft from frontline service that were shot up or worn out from the strain placed upon them from fighting the nazis. These planes could no longer perform the way they should, but some were still flyable if you didn't beat on them. The same thing can be done with batteries, but then there are serious limits placed upon what kind of current delivery rate those batteries can deliver. These batteries do not become part of the available Lithium supply because they haven't been recycled at all, though they may still be able to act as some kind of "energy buffer" to prevent having to incorporate insane levels of "over-capacity" into an electric grid that's powered by intermittent energy sources (photovoltaics and wind turbines).

There's nothing wrong with doing that, but in the same way that a "War Weary" P-51 or B-17 would never see another mission over enemy territory, they're useless for facilitating an "energy transition" for motorized vehicles. Those P-51s and B-17s, which took lots of energy and strategic war materiel and labor and money to build (and was therefore not available for recycling to build new P-51s back at the North American factory), would either add to the pile of spare parts (repurposing) to keep newer / fresher combat planes airborne (not possible to do with retired batteries, since the entire reason they're being removed from frontline service is an inability to withstand the strain placed upon them by motor vehicles) or they could be used for transition training to familiarize replacement pilots with combat planes if they were still airworthy, but overall they added nothing to the air combat power available to Ike and Monty to run the war.

At one point, aircraft engines could be swapped into tanks, an example of "upcycling" (because tanks still needed engines), but eventually aero-derivative engines were seen as undesirable and replaced completely with purpose-built tank engines that had the durability required to survive Pvt Snuffy gunning the throttle on his Comet or Sherman. After the Ford GAA engines became available in quantity, nobody in the Tank Corps wanted R-975 radials in their tanks, because those engines were designed to be run at constant high-power output and drank so much fuel at low throttle settings that they eventually designed an APU to power the tank with the main engine off (the "Little Joe" generators), whereas the GAAs were V8s with good throttle response, less issues at startup, and were not prone to over-stressing the rest of the drive train (GAAs had flat-plane crankshafts and revved up easily as a result, with the mountings and sheer mass of the engine and rotating assembly absorbing the vibrations associated with an unbalanced sequential rather than paired firing order). US Army kept their Ford GAA powered tanks after the war, which were later used during the Korean War, and ditched the finnicky and more maintenance-intensive R-975s (there were undoubtedly some exceptions, but those don't disprove the rule).

So, can we "upcycle" Lithium-ion batteries into forklifts or other low-speed vehicles like construction equipment?

We can, but not without total disassembly, re-engineering, and re-assembly of the battery pack with the used batteries to fit into the new vehicle, because no battery pack standardization is possible with packs that take up so much volume (another feature of low energy density). It's not as simple as a straight engine swap, which are also not very simple or easy to do. We can't easily "pour out" the "fuel" the batteries contain into another vehicle, either. You can't "jump start" a dead Tesla battery using another Tesla with a full charge. Maybe someone can design something that will allow you to do that, because it should be doable, but thus far they haven't. You need a diesel generator to recharge the battery to the point it can limp into a service station.

So, how do I see Sodium-ion batteries changing our "upcycling" proposition?

Easy. If you keep the range within the realm of sanity and stop trying to duplicate what a gasoline or diesel engine does, then a service guy with a fresh battery, maybe a hand crane / engine hoist / cherry picker, with special electrical training, can "swap-in" a dead battery if you're stranded on the side of the road. 15 minutes later, you're back on your way again.

A light vehicle of the sort I want to build, which has a 10kWh battery pack and uses about 75Wh/mile (because it's 1/4 the weight of the Tesla), weighs in at about 20kg, given its 500Wh/kg all-up battery pack energy density. 20kg is the same as the weight plates I use at the gym. I can pick one up by hand, even from an awkward position. In point of fact, I mostly pick those up using one hand. If the pack has a pair of handles built into it, then most adult men can pick them up without any issue. If we ever do get to 1kWh/kg, then any adult can pick up a battery with one hand, solving their "out-of-gas" issue without outside help by lugging their battery to a service station for more juice.

1 pack provides 133 miles of driving range, meaning enough for 1 day's worth of driving for almost everyone who isn't a professional driver.

2 packs are enough for driving all day long at city speeds, or enough to get from Houston to Austin, which is a fairly long drive (3 to 4 hours).

There's little point to putting 2 or more batteries in the vehicle if you don't need them because the batteries are not free and all excess weight added to any vehicle is the exact same thing as dragging a boat anchor along while you're trying to sail a boat. You can obviously do it, but it's still dumb and totally unnecessary. Furthermore, special design necessity (mounting or building said battery pack into the chassis of the vehicle) and the severe range limitations are gone for all practical purposes. The battery can still be mounted to the "floor" of the trunk, similar to a conventional gas tank, in order to keep its CG low to the ground, but bolting it to the floor of the passenger compartment is not necessary and probably not desirable. We never put gas tanks under the floor of the passenger compartment because that's not a good place to put it. If the battery has enough energy density, then that sort of silliness becomes entirely unnecessary and counter-productive.

The battery pack for a semi-truck with a 500Wh/kg battery only weighs 2,000kg and should fit between the frame rails. No special designs or special materials (Aluminum and composite) are required.

A modern diesel-electric locomotive weighs 195t or so. A battery providing the energy equivalent of its 5,000 gallon diesel fuel tank would weigh 189.75t, so it clearly cannot go the same distance, but locomotives only fill up once or twice per week. Therefore, a battery of approximately half that weight requires more frequent "fill-ups", but it doesn't diminish it's hauling capability in any practical way. We could potentially double-up on bogies to redistribute the weight of a much heavier battery, but again, totally redesigning a train to try and make up for a fundamental energy density limitation of batteries is a rather silly and pointless proposition.

Anyway, a 500Wh/kg battery pack makes more ground transportation options using batteries much more practical to actually do. This assumes that the batteries cost less or the same as Lithium-ion, last just as long, etc. To date, all batteries of all types remain wildly inappropriate for aircraft and ship propulsion and for the same old reasons. I'm aware that diesel-electric submarines still use batteries, but those batteries enable them to travel over very short distances at very low speeds underwater.

If an aircraft or ship requires 1 ton of fuel to travel a given distance, then multiply that figure by 10 and that's the tonnage of 500Wh/kg batteries required to go the same distance. Since lift and water displacement are fixed values, that means all other useful payload is reduced by a multiple of 10. Can a ship tolerate dividing its cargo load by 10? Perhaps in some cases, but probably not.

An aircraft so-loaded will never leave the ground, or it's range is reduced by a factor of 10, which would make most aircraft (private, commercial, or military) rather useless. Alternatively, they need to be 10 times bigger / heavier, then they need to generate 10 times more lift and require 10 times more power to overcome drag (associated with generating lift) to remain airborne. An Airbus A380 can carry 500 people. Is it possible to economically operate an A380 that carries 50 people, even if the fuel is completely free? The airlines industry says that's a hard "no". An A380 that carries 50 people is a ridiculous proposition, so I agree with them. Butts in seats is what allows commercial aviation to remain profitable.

Void · 2022-12-14 12:10:07

Well, I will confess that there is much to learn. And it will be a while until the best technologies mature fully.

I suspect that cultural changes will also have to occur alongside of technical developments.

If self-driving cars become real, say in 10 years, you could perhaps rent one if you wanted to do a significant trip length.

Then it might make sense to just have a short-range car also of your own. In an emergency if there were a lot of charging stations available, you might even use the short-range car to go longer range but it would be a hassle. But if you could swap out your battery in say 5 minutes using robotic assistance, perhaps even going long range with a short-range car would become practical.

So, yes, I suppose then as well, if you fell short you might call "AAA" to bring you a fresh battery.

Covid-19 has demonstrated that private transportation is better than public transportation. Before high population places such as parts of Europe and Japan, NYC, might have gloated about public transportation. But we now know that the human community is a Petri Dish, begging to foster new pandemics, and we can also anticipate jerks even creating new ones on purpose.

We are lucky, it turns out that Covid-19 does not spread well with touch, just respiration, I believe.

I am not so worried about the climate. I am a Carbon Sinner/Denier, to a degree.

A scientist explained that in order to warm the Earth 1 degree from the industrial age, the amount of CO2 would have to have doubled the amount of CO2. I believe that we stand at ~1.33 times the preindustrial levels.

I don't consider my "Sins" to matter as I am in favor of getting more energy from sources not fossil fuels, for a variety of reasons, so if I am wrong, then I will have still promoted the better things. But I will not willingly participate in stupid, if I can understand what that is.

That scientist used a "Red Barn" method to indicate why CO2 does not increase the greenhouse effect in a linear fashion of %CO2=%Warming. Successive additional coats of red paint do not make the barn redder then red, after say 3 coats make it "Red".

So, the main reasons to do towards electric and other options, is to reduce the annoyance of the "Greens" nagging, and to provide for alternate means of energy which might also be useful in space, and indeed perhaps to eventually provide "MORE" energy for each person, which I am sure is a major sin to the "Club of Rome". I might like to be a Sinner just for that reason.

But yes, the fossil fuels will eventually run out. So, either electric or created Hydrocarbons, or something else, but "and" for all of them. as technologies that we should exercise to proficiency.

And while we are not repenting of Carbon, let us remember that Men are bad!

Done

Last edited by Void (2022-12-14 12:39:30)

kbd512 · 2022-12-14 15:09:50

Void,

This is not about culture, at least not to me. It's a pure dollars and cents proposition, plus not wanting to turn the entire planet into a giant metals strip mine because people who are ignorant of math can't understand how energy density works, or refuse to accept that it works that way because it runs afoul of their ideology.

I don't care about what car I drive, with respect to looks. It's not an object of affection for me, beyond doing it's job well. I care about having a functional car, period. I can live without power steering / brakes / windows / heating / AC. Yes, I've driven without AC here in Texas where it's mighty toasty during the summer. It's not pleasant, but that doesn't affect a car's functionality as a car. I cannot live with a non-economically-repairable arcade game on wheels that weighs and costs as much as a full sized truck, despite being a subcompact car. That's nonsense masquerading as a "solution" to a problem nobody actually needs to solve. The energy density problem is what needs to be solved. That's been solved for electric motors (and then some), but not for batteries.

Photovoltaics are forever hampered by energy density, even if they're 100% efficient. Presently, most of them are as efficient as combustion engines of the 1920s and 1930s (about 25% or less, with insanely expensive ones being 35% to 40% efficient, sort of like having EFI in the 1950s, which did actually exist in the automotive world but was very expensive and not ready for prime time for another 30 years). The same applies to wind turbines, plus the fact that wind power is only 1% to 3% of the total input solar energy. As to why you'd pin your hopes of a "green energy revolution" to the three technologies with the absolute poorest energy density of anything routinely used to make or store energy?... That's beyond my understanding, because it's so obviously about ideology. All the math is against it, and has always worked against it. Furthermore, all new technology has never, meaning not even one time under whatever special circumstances, reduced total energy consumption. We made LED lightbulbs, and now everyone leaves the lights on 24/7. We made EFI, so now the cars have big honkin V8s. We made gas turbines more efficient, so more people started flying. The entire fanciful notion of reduced energy consumption is tied at the hip to actual economic poverty and regression back in time to a world with less technology, less business opportunity, less education, less health care, and far fewer possibilities of living a life not made short / bleak / brutal by the confluence of those circumstances.

Battery swap convenience stations would require standardization of battery dimensions and sizes. Thus far, there's been none of that because the batteries are so huge and heavy that they require special integration with the rest of the vehicle chassis to be practical at all. Could we do it? Maybe, but only if energy density improves by a lot. When that improves to the point that Tesla can go to Energizer or DuraCell or Panasonic and say, "Yeah, I'll take about a millon of those, please.", and those companies can actually deliver that, then I would judge that we're truly "ready" for an energy transition over to using batteries for most types of machines. This does not cover aircraft / ships / large farming tractors / combine harvesters, but the more common types of vehicles and equipment that most of the populace interacts with. If Panasonic could crap out all the batteries that Tesla needed, do you think they'd bother with making their own? Tesla did that because the major manufacturers were all "tapped-out" on Lithium-ion production and it made little sense to build entirely new factories for a business that might not exist in 10 years because someone came up with a new Sodium-ion or Aluminum-ion battery that was 5X better on every metric that mattered.

If someone really could come up with a 1kWh/kg battery pack (not just the cell itself), then things like gas-powered lawn mowers make zero sense and the issue of producing fuel for that purpose takes care of itself, because nobody will make new gasoline lawn mowers when a lighter / cheaper battery powered mower can be made. The sole reason gas powered lawn mowers continue in use is the inability of batteries to do what the gasoline engines presently do. I think most people fail to understand how significant that is. A 12V 50AH (600Wh) Lead-acid battery weighs about 30 pounds. We're talking about something that provides about 22 to 23 TIMES more power, per unit weight (at 1kWh/kg). The same will apply to weed whackers, chain saws, circular saws, pressure washers, etc. A battery powered drill or circular saw with a battery that powerful is basically an all-day tool. Even most construction sites using industrial machine tools wouldn't bother with gasoline or diesel at that point, except for heavy construction equipment, which remains impractical without diesel engines to power them. Oddly enough, 1kWh/kg is where General Motors thought battery technology had to progress to, in order for batteries to become practical replacements for combustion engine powered cars. I think they're probably right.

A "self-driving car" is called a "bus" or a "taxi-cab" or a "subway train". A "person", who is also a "self", operates it on your behalf. That's what you do when you don't want to or can't legally drive your "self". You hire a qualified driver (another "self") who knows how to drive and has years of experience doing it. Allowing a computer to exercise complete control over a large number of independently moving and very heavy vehicles is a recipe for disaster. This is less of a problem for a factory wherein a qualified machine operator can easily flip a switch or pull the power cable to shut off a malfunctioning machine. It's an even greater recipe for disaster when they're all connected to the internet and some malicious @$$hat decides to throw a temper tantrum and instruct all of them to crash into something. Have you never seen Battlestar Galactica? The "Battlestars" were warships designed for manual user control over them, specifically so that no malicious AI-enabled computer code could ever remotely take over them and instruct the computer systems to kill everyone onboard or even people who were not onboard.

Our Aegis Integrated Combat Systems have an autonomous mode whereby all the defensive weapons (jammers, decoys / chaff / flares, intercept missiles, automatic cannons, and lasers) will automatically engage all threats to the ship or other networked vessels in a battlegroup, but the operator can turn off that feature at any time. It's typically activated AFTER you determine that someone has started firing missiles or cannon shells at your ship, never before-hand. If you think through all the undesirable possibilities associated with a completely autonomous system, said feature exists for a reason. Beyond that, the offensive weapon systems (cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles, and torpedoes) can only be operated manually by a human operator who has decided to attack a target that is not an immediate inbound threat to the ship. Again, that feature exists so that no attack can be carried out by a computer program alone. That's the way things should stay, now and forever.

We've already seen how drones in Ukraine can be brought down using very powerful jamming equipment that overcomes the ability of their onboard sensors to process input and make sense of it. There are lots of good reasons to have combat drones, but they're not even close to being adequate replacements for trained pilots in combat jets at the present time. The results of machines or remote operators flying 1v1 dogfights against human pilots have also been entirely one-sided, in favor of the "cockpit-enabled" onboard pilots who are not viewing the entire battlefield through the confines of the sensor input equivalent of a soda straw. Will that change in the future? Probably, but at the point the AI and sensors have become so advanced that they can fight without purely electronic sensor input (which means a cybernetic organism that no amount of electronic interference can overcome), we're no longer talking about machines which are distinguishable from humans. We're nowhere close to that level of sophistication, as evidenced by the continual failures of autonomous vehicles to follow an off-road course and end up at a specified destination. Humans routinely do that. Machines can do it, but only do it reliably using navigation aids like GPS and a lot of sensor input and computing power.

Calliban · 2022-12-15 02:27:33

As an aside: The Iranian drones that the Russians are using are an interesting technology. It isn't clear to me whether they are remote controlled or preprogrammed and autonomous. But they aren't particularly accurate and they fly at 60mph, so a large fraction of them are shot down. They carry a 60lb warhead, which on the face of it is pathetic. By comparison, the Tomahawk carries a 1000lb warhead and flies at high subsonic speeds at a height of 60', making it very difficult to hit with ground fire.

The thing that makes the Iranian drones interesting is their low cost - about $30,000 each. They can be mass produced at a low cost, using COTS technology. Lets say the Iranians fire 100 of them, simultaneously, at a $20 billion US carrier. If even a few of them hit the flight deck and put that carrier out of action for a few days at a critical point within a conflict, then those drones have done their job. A weapon like this does not need to be sophisticated to be effective, if you can afford to shoot very large numbers of them at a high value, concentrated asset. The carrier is almost a million times more expensive than one of those missiles. They only need to inflict light damage to disable it, for however long it would take to repair.

Al Qaeda demonstrated how a crude weapon can disable a high value target when they bombed the USS Cole back in 2000. Using a dingey full of explosives, with a cost of a few thousand dollars, they crippled a destroyer that probably cost at least $100 million. It took 14 months to repair. In a wartime footing, that would have put it out of the game.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-12-15 02:53:29)

kbd512 · 2022-12-15 17:58:39

Calliban,

What you're describing is the exact reason why I want our military to stop blowing mad money on high-end weapon systems that have vanishingly few credible threats / targets. We can use converted LPD-17s server as light carriers / sea control ships. Those ships are 2 billion dollars each, which is less costly than the newest Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyers, like the USS Cole. LPD-17s are diesel powered ships that can attain 20-25kts. A flat top variant is large enough for subsonic micro fighters optimized for attack and maneuverability. We only need a handful of Ospreys to act as COD and AWACS, SH-60s for SAR, and then we have a functional air wing at a fraction of the cost.

I want to arm these light carriers with 57mm cannons (the new "hotness" in naval gun technology, with programmable fuses and guided shells) and rocket launchers loaded with a new lower-cost / mass-produced Stinger missile variant for dealing with drone swarms and inbound missiles. We should be able to cut loose a half dozen of these new Stinger missiles, which do in fact fit inside the same rocket pods that the Apache carries, to intercept any inbound anti-ship missiles. This will drastically reduce the cost of the defensive armament while drastically increasing the opportunities to bring down inbound weapons. They'll be surrounded by 500t class escort ships using lightweight aircraft-derived radar systems and carrying ESSM / RIM-116 / Mk54 torpedoes, which is plenty of serious firepower for dealing with practical threats.

The pilots will be Petty Officer enlisted men and women. Each enlisted pilot will have a jet that stays with them throughout their career as a "slow jet" naval aviator. Fast jet pilots will still be officers. Pilots will also be responsible for airframe maintenance. Mechs will still maintain the engines, squadron safety will handle the ejection seats, avionics techs for the sensors and flight instruments, and ordies will still handle the weapons. To keep loadouts simple, we will specify 4 Griffin or Javelin missiles or Pyros guided bombs as the primary armament. No special skills are required to use those weapons, but they're exceptionally accurate and can kill most targets. That same new Stinger variant will serve as a micro fighter's defensive armament.

This will keep our naval aviation pipeline filled with trained jet pilots who can put ordnance on target, drastically increasing the real combat air power America has at her disposal, thousands of affordable combat jets that can turn inside anything- even if they can't out-run it, counter asymmetric threats like low-cost drones and missiles using much lower cost diesel-powered aircraft carriers with far fewer sailors aboard and as many or more aircraft as a WWII carrier air wing.

If any enlisted pilots wish to become officers, then they can attend college to become fully-fledged fast jet naval aviators who are qualified to operate Super Bugs or Lightnings from the flight decks of nuclear powered aircraft carriers. Alternatively, they can choose to remain slow jet pilots for their entire career, so that they remain combat power assets with considerable flight experience. Fast jet pilots might officially be aircrew for 20 years, but XO / CO / staff / war college / nuclear power school billets effectively means 4 to 8 of those years are devoted to something other than flying, while they're probably as proficient as they'll ever be as pilots or NFOs, which kinda defeats their purpose if the general idea is to have enough experienced / seasoned pilots available for combat flight ops in a war where significant attrition is likely.

Anyway... They enlist for 4 years, learn how to maintain the jets first, and then they can join the RAG to qualify as carrier pilots upon reenlistment. If enlisted can handle nuclear reactors, nuclear weapons, comms equipment, and the youngest sailors aboard the ship stand bridge watch at the helm of multi-billion dollar warships, then they can sure as hell become pilots, too. US Army has enlisted become helo pilots, and those machines are inordinately more complicated to handle than fixed-wing subsonic attack / trainer jets. You don't get flight pay or hazardous duty pay, but if we send you into combat then you get combat pay like everyone else. You're a volunteer in the strictest sense of the word. You still have to complete your physical, get your vision corrected, qualify with a pistol, go through SERE, meet the same scholastic standards as officers, etc. If you wash out, then you get sent back to the fleet, just like the officers do. Basically, performance demands are no different than officers, but you don't have the extra duties and responsibilities of an officer. You still report to a CO/XO, your Intel Officer performs the intel brief, etc. The only difference is that one of your fellow enlisted performs the weather and mission brief. You do get a pair of gold wings, same as any other naval aviator, but otherwise you're no different than enlisted aircrew. The jet still belongs to the Plane Captain while it's on the ground, all squawks are directed to your Maintenance Officer and Chief, but if it's airframe related then you're at least partially responsible for fixing it. It's literally "your bird", not shared with any other enlisted or officer, so you are overall responsible for the material condition of your jet. The junior airframers will help you, of course. Since you hold no title or office, it would be to your advantage to maintain good working relationships with the men and women who keep your butt in the air.

I'm sure this will be controversial at first, possibly seen by some in the officer corps as "stealing their thunder", but 22 year old men and women who have 4 years of prior enlisted experience are no less experienced than officers at that point in their naval careers, and no less deserving of respect for the work they do on behalf of our nation.

The net-net is that we end up with lots more qualified pilots, lots of stealthy light attack jets capable of servicing most targets in all but the most well-defended airspace, carried aboard much lower cost ships that can get closer to their targets. These low-cost jets and ship will still be very painful to lose, but the losses would not drastically affect our war-fighting capabilities. This is acknowledging that peer-level nation-state war will most likely result in attrition (losses of both ships and aircraft), and to respond accordingly so that we can continue to fight an advanced avdersary like Russia or China, while still being capable of fighting brush fire wars against less capable adversaries in a much more economical way. Russia simply could not afford to expend enough S-400s to bring down small combat jets that cost no more than the missiles they're firing at us. Long-term, that's a losing strategy for them, no different than having a literal handful of hyper-expensive ships and jets that we can't afford to lose. That's why you see them using more and more drones. If they could afford to make enough competitive combat jets, then they'd be fielding more of those.

Anyway, that's how I see this issue. We need a little of the high-end stuff for high-end fights (so-called "Day One" weapons), none of the wishy-washy "mid-tier" hardware that's neither affordable nor competitive in terms of capabilities, and a lot of capable lower-end hardware that's attritable. Buying more Super Bugs or Vipers or Eagles that now cost as much or more than stealthy F-35s is an absurdity if the assertion that they're too vulnerable is true, and Ukraine makes me think that nobody was lying about that. Subsonic micro fighter jets are not horrendously expensive "I feel the need for speed" compromises, they don't drink so much fuel that we can't supply it, yet they're still stealthy enough to delay radar detection to the point where an enemy loses initiative through lack of response time. We must start acting as if casualties will happen when the most powerful military forces on the planet start trading blows. IADS are not your primary targets, but you have to evade them (a good option), defend against them (worst option), or avoid them (always the best option whenever feasible) if your goal is to hit the targets that will change the course of a war.

It's difficult to have accurate but succinct discussions about this subject matter, because the details matter a lot, and there are a lot of details, as I've seen first-hand.

Calliban · 2022-12-15 19:34:06

Kbd512, that sounds like a sensible strategy. As things stand, those nuclear carriers are so costly that putting them in a conflict zone is a significant risk. The capital cost of that single asset probably equals what a country like Iran spends on its whole military in a decade. The sort of capability that it allows is just wasted on most adversaries.

Even without GPS, inertial guidance systems for ballistic missiles allow a circular error probability of about 200m over distances of a few thousand km. That is early 1970s technology. And that is assuming they don't use MIRVs. If the Chinese, Russians, North Koreans, etc, wanted to hit those carriers, then something like a V2 rocket, equipped with inertial guidance systems and carrying a 2000lb warhead, would do the job. All they would need is a fix on it's location to within a few hundred metres, heading and speed. If they fired a dozen such missiles, one of them would hit. Whether that would be enough to sink a carrier, I don't know. But past experience tells us that repair time would be months to years. Deaths would be in the hundreds.

Risk mitigation would involve spreading bets and reducing costs by having a larger number of cheaper platforms, whilst maintaining overall capability. That seems to be what your plan aims to achieve. The navy must have reached this conclusion already. And yet they are still investing in $2bn destroyers. That's a lot of asset. Astute Class submarines cost about the same. Modern ships are really costly. Bringing that down without losing capability will be a real challenge.

Void · 2023-08-08 11:23:12

So, this looks promising, where wind blades can be repurposed to support solar panels.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WEqXzZdFCg
Quote:

Swiss Startup Proves Wind Turbine Blades Are Perfect for Solar Panels

So, over time, skills can accumulate and make things more practical.

I might suggest that some of them might be repurposed into heat exchangers of some kind. Maybe even painted black, so that the air passing though them could be routed into a heat pump, and the sunshine would heat that air.

Done

Last edited by Void (2023-08-08 11:34:41)

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-08-17 04:03:11

Microplastics found in human hearts for first time, showing impact of pollution
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2 … pollution/

Recyclable Organo-Ionic Electrolyte?

How electric-car batteries could be safer and more recyclable
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02527-3

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