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I am a merchant mariner and it would be cool to have one of these in an exhaust boiler so when in port or anchored we don't need to use a oil boiler to generate steam. On ships its one of the ways we use "waste" heat for power. Heating fuel and the ships.

Let's de-carbonize with pure carbon!

Thanks, Z, and colleagues, for another well done video. I'm a 77 year old guy who is constantly encouraged by the brilliant, innovative thinking behind technologies such as this carbon battery and then having the knowledge and guts to start a game changing business. The young men and women of your generation have the future of our planet looking better and better. It's wonderful to see those who speak so negatively about our young people being proven completely wrong so frequently.

Solid graphite is also used for heavy duty arc plasma lances used in steel foundries, carbon arc steel cutting, high-powered searchlights (called arc lights), and more. Great use of this old tech!

Alternative energy storage technology is a very interesting toppic. On the vid side itself. Clear presented, flowing script without any "breaks" in the narrative. Well chosen pictures for visual representation and the audio balance for voice vs background music is very well done too. Nothing to add but a round of praise.

I like how he's also literally taking carbon out of the carbon cycle to make these heat reservoirs. The IR mirror returning unused photons back into the reservoir is genius.

At 1700C you would get a theoretical conversion efficiency to electricity of about 75% with a Carnot cycle. It increases with the temperature. I was wondering if you could molten sand as perhaps another option. You have a boiling point of 2230C and in its molten state heat conductivity would increase, and another thing is you get some extra storage capacity from the latent heat when it melts. Also one thing totally left out in the video is leakage of heat. You are up agaisnt the Stefan-Boltzmann law of sigma T^4. How do you mitigate this as T rises?

I've watched many many videos like this for years, new breakthroughs, that never happens! This is that kind of video!

How efficient is it really? First the loss in the wind/solar device. Then the heating of the block. Then MOVING the block to where it is used. Then the 40% of turning it back to electricity. And depending on the use, there are several more layers of energy loss. It sounds better to me to just use it as a battery on side of generation, acting as a buffer. Not having to deal with transporting back/forth, batteries. How well does it compete in that with other battery tech?

That was absolutely fascinating - thank you. You’re a great communicator with a way of describing relatively complex topics in a clear and accessible way.

When I was a kid we used solid carbon capture from the heating system. We called it soot, in the chimney

Planck is going to be proud of those guys... That mirror in a cavity is real genius. One question though: how do they prevent glowing graphite to react with air and burn?

I am not sure what battery storage you say has a 4-6 year lifespan but Tesla’s Megapack has a 15 year warranty.

This seems like a brilliant thermal battery for use in heavy industry, and a suboptimal battery to get electricity out of. There are other ways to store energy & get electricity out, besides lithium ion (which really ought to be reserved for vehicles & the like that require its particular characteristics), that seem more promising to me for storage at grid scale & residential scale - liquid flow & sodium ion come to mind. Different tools for different jobs, and it's great to see how all of them are coming along.

Concise, succinct, and clear enunciation conveying an interesting concept. This has excited my mind and curiosity. Well done.

You mentioned that materials like concrete or sand are not effective because they can't transfer energy fast enough. This, while true, hides the fact that the biggest limiting factor for emitting/absorbing energy is the ratio of volume and surface. While sand is not great at conducting heat, you can exponentially increase its surface area by changing its form (for example, creating a shallow layer of sand just using gravity). Once it's surface area has increased, heating and cooling becomes way faster. This is something you can't easily change the shape of a graphite block, though, so you're limited to only use the pre-existing shape

Insulation. Very important part you left out. Very difficult at these very high temperatures.

Thank you for another informative video. My son ans I were talking about the need to develop better large scale batteries for the future just yesterday. This sounds like another very effective option with versatility that other sources don't have. I first found out about the properties of heated carbon in welding class fifty years ago. With an arc welder, two carbon rods hooked up to the welder and brought almost touching together, creates the perfect brazing temperature. They glow like heated steel and last for an impressive time.

Finally, someone focused on the problem of thermal conductivity. This is a brilliant idea. Thanks for the great content!

Great video. It was well produced and easy to follow. Thanks.

video suggestion - here you mention at one point the heat in these can be stored for days. could be explore the need for and solutions to seasonal storage be it heat or electricity. so keeping it half a year if we get more renewables in one season vs another. i guess wind and solar counteract each other somewhat but how much and what will we do about the difference. probably not the short term goal but eventually when almost all energy is not made by burning stuff they will need to balance out over seasons.

I could imagine one of these being installed at somewhere with a constant need of heat like a large swimming pool and its charging only turned on when "the price is right". This would save them moment and reduce their useage of natural gas and offer themselves as a power-sink to the grid

Great video, great technology; and a very cool sponsor! I signed up. Thanks Z!

a lot of effort to build a giant barbecue grill. I want to see how they reliably guarantee that no air can enter the "battery" over a life span of 30 years. At these temperatures, they would need argon as an inert gas to prevent the graphite from igniting. If air will enter those red-hot "batteries", they will just go up in smoke (or CO2, that is, besides probably some not-so-healthy nitrogen compounds). Hence they also will need a completely IR-transparent but very durable "window" to harvest the heat. Mixed materials, mixed thermal expansion coefficients, frequent heating cycles over a wide range... that's what makes mountains crumble and housings rupture. I don't say it's impossible, but it's surely not as cheap as announced.

Coal power plants turning into Coal batteries

I would be interested to know how they contain and insulate the carbon blocks if the are hot enough to melt steel.

Just supersized storage heaters! Old tech upgraded!

Lithium Ion storage also has the inconvenient habit, at high currents, of spontaneously combusting into a flamethrower that can't be stopped and gets more intense the more energy is stored in the battery. Hot enough to break the bonds in concrete or melt steel. And that's before we start talking about the damage to the environment.

A suggestion for a script edit: at 1:07 you say "...many magical properties..." I know it's just a figure of speech, but you are a science oriented channel. Maybe leave magic for other types of thinkers. Great video, though.

could you develop on what materials are used to thermally insulate a 2000C graphite core and on the photocells able to survive at such temperature?

worked in energy and this would be a game changer for many industries even if the conversion back to electricity is only 30%. buying excess energy to fill up batteries at zero cost would not only net the company a profit but also help the grid.

Thermal battery heat could be used to enhance the expansion stage of a compressed gas battery system (eg. Energy Dome). In the preheat stage before expansion, additional heat from the heat battery (eg. Antora) increases energy input to the turbogenerator for higher power output. Energy is stored as compressed gas, recovered heat of compression, and thermal battery heat. Advantages include 1. a (resistively heated)thermal battery can absorb energy spikes that a mechanical compressor cannot 2. thermal battery heat can increase turbogenerator output on demand 3. thermal battery heat can "make up" for reduced gas pressure and lost reheat energy as a compressed gas battery system discharges. 4. colocated battery systems utilize the same grid connection. Therefore resistively heated thermal batteries are complementary to compressed gas energy storage and with the variability(intermittent wind/sun) of renewable energy production.

good thermal storage, but practically useless as energy storage. got it.

you could have made this video 5 minutes if you didn't repeat things

Has the heat extraction been tested in an industrial setting? If so, at what temperature?

Okay you have been temporarily subscribed to. Make more really good videos like this one!

Ok this is interesting, but why not just use nuclear power instead?

So interesting!! And so many applications

13:00 this is why the periscope vertical solar panel stack idea I've been playing with may be able to help resolve that issue, by reflecting unused solar radiation down a chute of angled PV panels.

Calcium chloride has better potential for energy storage. Melting point 750 C; Boiling point 1935 C. So if you have high temperature pipes, pumps and valves (eg aluminium oxide) you can pump the liquid salt into heat exchanger or industrial furnace etc. It has great potential for solar thermal because sunlight can be focussed by mirrors straight into a CaCl2 heater. Very efficient.

Thanks for another informative video

This is the most logical way I have ever seen

Makes sense for heat applications but 40% efficiency is a big loss if the main use is to use it as storage

Industries in the business of creating generators, motors, or motor applications typically use thermo-piles (carbon blocks shorting out the electrical output... and huge fan driven heat exchangers to ambient air) to "waste" the energy (i.e. load their systems being tested).

Thanks, well done.

Great video!

Future is bright,we just have to survive till then!🙌🏼

the clip about CA energy being worth zero or negative dollars at certain times of day brings a frightening thought into view. If the value of the power drops to zero because we got good at it, we're going to have one of two things: either the power companies will drag their heels to preserve their incomes, or the power companies are going to shrink, aggregate, and/or disappear. Nothing runs on no input. If we make renewable energy and storage too good, and it knocks out power companies' financial survival, I don't know what will happen after that. But it will be very unstable.

thank you, very interesting

Thermal does look like a pretty good option. If nothing else, during the night when people are asleep, money is being spent on getting wind plants to curtail. Actually increasing demand overnight would be helpful for the folks who have to balance the grid. "Filling the bath" they call it.

Impressive project

The thing about heavy industry, is that much of the electricity is being used during the day when the sun is shining, so you can use the renewable electricity directly. Storing renewable energy is becoming a major factor, simply because peak electricity demand now occurs at night when we all get home from work. We are the problem, not heavy industry.

Awesome!

Any problem with materials (others than graphite/graphene) inside the "battery" reaching temperatures >2.000⁰C? I.e.: electricity>heat & heat>electricity converting system's materials?

Remember kids, never trust a single word from this kind of video, especially from this kind of channel. This is not like a movie or game review, where he has first hand experience and a proper understanding of the product. The company tells him what to say and he has every incentive to make it sound extra amazing.

great video dood :)

Article suggestion: Energy Dome CO2 energy storage. The first full scale dome is under construction right now, and they reckon they can hit 75-80% RTE to in a 20MW/200MWH configuration, IOW solving overnight solar storage, which is 'good enough' for most of the world's population which are reasonably close to the equator, and darn handy for the rest of us.

15:28 "especially if you're buying that electricity for next to nothing", except as energy storage takes off, that price spread will decrease. the price spread will settle at "whatever price spread the most efficient operator is selling at" and if your storage can't match that, no one will buy it. so efficiency does matter; hopefully the market will be properly regulated (setting fixed rates, or forcing operators to price based on levelized cost of storage, with regular audits on that calculation) to prevent an endless revolving door of lithium startups throwing a bunch of capital into batteries, pricing everyone else out of business, and then collapsing a few years later as the batteries wear out and replacement costs come due.

Now that I’ve watched, I can acknowledge that this is an excellent presentation of why lithium ion batteries are not the answer. I congratulate you on at least covering the question of electricity to heat back to electricity losses. I’m still willing to bet that this doesn’t turn out to be the answer, but I give them points for at least discussing the hard questions that others have glossed over in the past. I wonder how thrilled the people who are currently terrified of transporting nuclear waste quantities that are several orders of magnitude lower will be about having all these trucks transporting boxes with contents at 2000-3000 degrees centigrade. Each wreck would create an instant blast furnace.

For solar panels instead of reflecting the unabsorbed light out into space you could angle the mirror to bounce the light into some ultra-black painted solar water heater, or a heat block, or something akin to those to make use of the energy that'd otherwise be wasted. Just putting the water lines or whatever underneath the panels would be good, but with mirrors you could concentrate that heat.

I'm very sceptical of this battery. It leaves a lot of efficiency on the table, by using resistive heating instead of heat pumps. Also it uses graphite, which is a highly valuable material required for building lithium ion batteries.

This is brilliant. Far better for the environment and it last far longer than much more expensive Li-ion storage systems. These could also be manufactured domestically so you further reduce emissions and pollution associated with current technology. It would increase our energy security by lowering reliance on China. As a bonus, this would decrease the cost Li-ion batteries for EV's and other applications because it would remove the large and growing competition for resources caused by the push for grid storage. Cheers!

Hi, sounds like a really neat technology. Great video the only thing I would query is where you got a lifespan of 4-6 years for Lithium Ion storage? Most consumer batteries come with a 10 year warranty to be at 80% capacity same as EV's. There is no way they are going to give a 10 year warranty on something that will only last 4 years. I suspect the two technologies would complement each other rather than replacing either.

Sounds great but the thorium fuel cycle is the real solution, not least because it's the best for generating industrial process heat. Far more efficient than solar, than wind, and sustainable unlike legacy nuclear. Batteries have their place, but thorium-cycle power is for process heat as well as critically needed isotopes and plain old baseload electricity.

Impressive technology, but you’ll need a lot of trailers to have a meaningful impact for most industrial processes. A standard 40 foot trailer is 67m2. Even if we assume 50m3 graphite at 2 ton/m3 density and a 2 MJ/tonC specific heat with a 500C working temperature range, you get a maximum of 100GJ or 28 MWh of heat storage. This may be 5 times the ~5MWh capacity of the best containerized LFP battery storage systems, but with

I think this would work. I had a similar idea. Also, they have been using the idea of molten salt as it is also very prominent and can be extracted easier as it is a liquid and can be passed through a heat exchanger, although the system might be a little more costly it would be more efficient , With reflection, shiny surfaces and highly insulative materials about 1 foot of insulation would be totally enough also the larger the volume the less service area, shape also matters. A sphere has the lowest surface area per unit volume. A square cube is also decent. A container is not really that good but if you put two of them side-by-side or four of them, side-by-side t and two on top of them, you would only have to insulate the exterior walls. I’m guessing highly reflective, interior walls, high temperature insulatating bricks in the inner then Rockwool insulation then maybe regular fiberglass for total of about 16 inches should be very insulative. Of course you could go further as it is such a high delta T

What I do know is that carbon has a really high melting point compared to other elements. Maybe could be used to make clinker used for cement manufacturing. From memory aluminium smeltering uses carbon as electrodes, so perhaps potential there? Less chance of fire than li ion. Already had 2 battery fires here in OZ in grid storage setups.

Great stuff Rob. Why not explore converting plastic into 3d printing filaments?

When I was a glassblower, I accidentally ruined my graphite mold by placing it in a kiln. It became porous after glowing red for a while. The heat was at 1050C

You put together great vids. Thanks. That 2000 C temperature is the really big ticket item cause it makes steel and concrete customers. It really can displace a chunk of fossil fuel usage which to now no-one has had an answer. Thanks for the news.

This sounds like the perfect battery system for Australia, in suburbs due to amount of roof top solar then these thermal batteries can release energy when needed.

How is that different to coil burning plant? How often do they need to replace the carbon cubes?

I thought this would be a video where the company is a startup with no real world products in use. Cool video, especially the thermal/solar cells

40% conversion rate sounds good until you realise that pumped storage of water operates at 70-80% efficiency. You need a hill with at least some water, and it isn't modular... hint: editorial perspective > the next greatest thing to "fix" stuff

I think the bigger picture is to have different energy storage technologies all combined working together to have fault tolerance and improve reliability in the grid. Sure lithium batteries could be useful and fine, but what if in the future when ICE cars are fully outlawed, the demand for lithium batteries will increase significantly, reducing supply for the grid. But if you already have existing infrastructure using and production lines making solid carbon batteries, you won't have any issues (and vice versa.) Alternatives are perfect.

Add copper nanoparticles for increased heat emission, copper nanoparticles really like graphite so it would be easy to impregnate it during production.

Now what would be the cost of a 100 kWH version for home use? I have lots of solar power for weeks at a time...but my main cost is storage for the cloudy weeks.

Why not use heat pumps instead of resistive heating?

I'm just thinking about how nice would be to have a couple of blocks of these in your floor. Heated up real good and warm the house all winter.

Smart. For processes the need heat energy an efficiency of around 90% seems very attractive.

I use resisitively heated silica sand to store excess daytime solar energy and then release the heat into my house by diverting the furnace plenum through pipes embedded in the sand... I never even considered graphite as an alternative.

That sounds like a very interesting case for home energy storage. "Wasting" 60% to heat doesn't matter if the same heat can be then used to heat your house, especially with low temperature heating methods like floor heating. But "energy is free" is a lie. The extra solar panels needed to compensate for low end-to-end efficiency in grid storage are definitely not free, as the alternative is spending that money on more efficient cells. So unless carbon ones get to such high cost difference that they would be 10x cheaper than lithium it would be pointless

In a searching of investment. “Decarbonize” is a good marketing point. Otherwise any metal brick can replace an expensive graphite. Like cast iron

Interesting to think early nuclear tech used giant piles of graphite bricks - it was a nice material to work with - soft enough to be machined but with good physical properties, and a lot of interesting things are coming out of that research. A yield of 40% on light to electricity is awesome! Graphite thermal storage sounds like a winner....cheers.

I think the other companies who are making thermal batteries with industrial waste have a better business model. Their efficiency may be lower but using someone else's byproduct usually makes it cheaper and more sustainable.

The storage and heat emission is absolutely groundbreaking. Possibly combining the solid carbon heatsource with the Ambri liquid metal batteries could be a thing. From memory they are about 70 odd percent efficient at converting from heat to electricity.

Its possible I missed this in the video, but couldn't these be used to convert existing conventional thermal power plants (burning coal or natural gas) in cheap batteries for peak loads? Install these big carbon blocks where the furnaces exist now and charge them up on surplus power then discharge when theres demand. And those sites are already connected to the grid in just such a way to help load balance the grid.

Okay, I'm convinced. Where do we buy this?

Two things I didn't see in the video: 1) What is the source of the carbon? 2) How is the intense IR radiation kept in the battery containment without heating everything?

There must be clever ways of avoiding energy losses. If the environment where the heating occurs heats up too (so not only the carbon)- then that heat could be used, perhaps for pre-heating. If the glowing medium is a plate with infrared cells on both sides, the escaping not converted infrared heats up the space around it and could be used again too. But it seems hard to find a perfect and yet cheap and practical insulating method. The heat lost to the environment will be lost....I have actually no idea how good insulation can be this days.

i feel like a certain Tim Cast Host might explode from excitement watching this

This could be a real game changer for thermal solar plants! So far, they've depended on molten salt, with its corrosive downside, for heat storage…

なるほどね、今までレンガの蓄熱は知っていたが炭素の塊は初耳。 日本でも春と秋の晴天時は太陽光発電のエネルギーが余り始めているからその余剰電力を蓄熱して冬の暖房に使えれば理想なんですけどね。 秋から冬まで熱エネルギーを蓄えなくても良い、冬の晴れた日の日射による熱を夜の暖房に回せるだけでも結構CO2は削減出来ると思うがそこまでは難しいでしょうね。

What is the resistive element made out of? Tungsten? How is it mounted? Interesting idea. I wonder what the LCOE for this actually works out at (or more significantly, would with a bit of volume)

I'd like to see that kind of thermal battery (miniature, of course), to warm the cabin and especially the battery of an EV in winter and unlock the far north where EVs currently are mostly impractical.

Could this be used to store energy for neighborhoods? In The Netherlands we have for instance exces heat from factories being used to heat the homes of neighboring houses. If this could be used for that aswell then you can utilise the high efficincy of heat capacity over the lowe elctricity one.

its sounds like a great idea . where do they get the carbon from ? do they dig it up or make it ?

Aerogels have a heat resistance of up to 3000 and are excellent insulators. I wonder if they could be used to make these more efficient?

16:00 I wonder if they would be useful in the cement making industry. There they are "burning" waste tires to generate heat for their process. As with most "fired" processes, the heat generation and the heat loads must be in sync. That's probably not the case in the cement industry unless they run all processes 24/7.