Researchers have developed a water-based battery to store solar and wind energy

Re:Researchers have developed a water-based battery to store... by Animats on Sunday May 06, 2018 @04:15PM (#17008257)

Yes. Surface chemistry ("nanotechnology") seems to attract this sort of hype.

"The prototype manganese-hydrogen battery, reported April 30 in Nature Energy, stands just three inches tall and generates a mere 20 milliwatt hours of electricity ... The researchers are confident they can scale up this table-top technology..."

That is a really puny battery. It's 1/10th the energy capacity of a typical watch/hearing aid battery, which is about as small as you can buy retail. And it's 3 inches tall. So system energy density is currently something like 0.001 of commercial batteries.

They should have scaled it up a bit more before turning on the hype machine. It's embarrassing to see this out of Stanford.

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Re:Researchers have developed a water-based battery to store... by TTPrograms on Sunday May 06, 2018 @04:28PM (#17008330)

Utility scale batteries optimize for energy/$, not energy density or weight etc.

Your comparisons are totally irrelevant.

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Re:Researchers have developed a water-based battery to store... by vanderZwan on Sunday May 06, 2018 @06:26PM (#17008978)

On that note, does anyone have any idea how it might compare to Peter Allen's open source Iron Battery project? I know the latter is in a very early stage, but maybe there is already a theoretical limit that can be predicted given the properties of manganese and iron.

http://peterallenlab.com/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-t9a7XVoH9lDJzhUF2nyHQ

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Re:Researchers have developed a water-based battery to store... by 88e282102ae2e5b on Tuesday May 08, 2018 @09:01AM (#17020577)

I dunno...academic funding is dysfunctional and this kind of hyperoptimistic prediction can help you get your next grant.

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Re:Researchers have developed a water-based battery to store... by jlebrech on Sunday May 06, 2018 @05:09PM (#17008558)

it's might be a really crappy battery, but having it use something that's virtually limitless and nearly free is a good way to go.

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Re:Researchers have developed a water-based battery to store... by ianai on Sunday May 06, 2018 @05:46PM (#17008762)

It’s only nearly free if it’s salt water.

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Re:Researchers have developed a water-based battery to store... by fooker on Sunday May 06, 2018 @06:09PM (#17008882)

We do have a virtually inexhaustible source of salt water..

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Re:Researchers have developed a water-based battery to store... by ianai on Sunday May 06, 2018 @06:52PM (#17009096)

Fresh water, not quite so easily sourced.

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Re:Researchers have developed a water-based battery to store... by fooker on Monday May 07, 2018 @04:00AM (#17011085)

That is sort of the point of this article. Also read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_desalination

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Re:Researchers have developed a water-based battery to store... by bonesss on Monday May 07, 2018 @05:45AM (#17011446)

Atomic process heat is near ideal for water desalination.

Granted, investments in atomic energy eliminates a lot of the need for storage...

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Re:Researchers have developed a water-based battery to store... by jlebrech on Monday May 07, 2018 @08:37AM (#17012222)

remote deserted locations around the world could have a nuclear facility that also creates batteries.

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Re:Researchers have developed a water-based battery to store... by eloff on Monday May 07, 2018 @01:10AM (#17010530)

Depends where you source it from.

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Re:Researchers have developed a water-based battery to store... by jlebrech on Monday May 07, 2018 @05:40AM (#17011415)

luckily there's another upcoming battery tech that needs sodium

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