Sodium and water is… kind of spectacular:
But sodium ions and water are something we deal with on a daily basis, when we salt food. The characteristics of elemental sodium, as a metal, are basically irrelevant to discussing its safety as ions or bonded in molecules.
I’m hopeful it will be good for aviation. It’s pretty hard to compete with kerosene’s 46.2 MJ/kg. The best batteries today are around 300 Wh/kg in commercial use, and some labs have hit 700+ Wh/kg. But with a MJ being equal to 278 Wh, we’re still talking 20-50x the energy density by weight. And that’s before even talking about how chemical fuels that are burned off leave less weight behind for the remaining vehicle, whereas a discharged battery weighs pretty much the same as a fully charged battery.
Also, if we do move to storing energy in chemical bonds, pulling carbon out of the air, that basically turns into a carbon sequestration technique with whatever excess solar/wind energy we end up with, especially if we intentionally overbuild the capacity for non-peak production, and leave a method for using that energy during peak periods.
I don’t think anyone claims that these synthetic fuels use less energy to produce than other storage mechanisms. This is just a way to store energy in a way that is very dense, measured by both mass and volume.
Just think about it in terms of the number of people and number of days per year where they need to raise the indoor temperature by a certain amount, compared to the number of people and days needing to lower the temperature.
If you’re looking at a place where it’s 95°F during the day and 85°F at night, and you like to set the temperature to 75°F, you’re only cooling it 10-20°F by time of day.
But if you’re looking at a place where it’s 35°F during the day and 15°F at night, and you want to heat things up to 65°F, you’ve gotta change the temperature by 30-50°F throughout the day.
Even when you’re comparing absurdly hot weather to absurdly cold weather, you’re still comparing something like 110°F to 0°F. You’re still looking at a 70°F swing versus a 35°F swing towards comfort.
Throw in the fact that combustion of fuels (fossil fuels like heating oil or natural gas, or other fuels like wood in a fireplace) is usually only about 1/3 or 1/4 as energy efficient than the equivalent temperature change by heat pump, and you can see how much more energy intensive the typical indoor heating setup is compared to the typical indoor cooling setup.
Some of it is obscured by the fact that fossil fuels are much cheaper per unit energy than electricity from the grid, so that heating bills aren’t as expensive in the same ratio, but in terms of actual energy used, it’s a big difference.
Yes, but this published finding is interesting because it reduces the steps.
Anyone can extract the elemental lithium from lithium cells, but it takes a lot of energy and harsh solvents and creates a lot of waste byproducts.
But extracting lithium iron phosphate (LFP) salts is much less energy intensive, if those salts can be reused. This paper shows that LFP can be extracted and then reused as an ingredient in creating LMFP, a cathode material with higher performance characteristics.
This is akin to using a technique to filter water instead of cracking it into hydrogen and oxygen and reconstituting the elements back as water.
Even in the U.S., we use a lot more energy heating homes than cooling homes. Around 43% of our total in-home energy usage is on heating, and about 8% is on cooling.
Heat waves don’t cause nearly as big of a strain on our grid as winter storms, because AC doesn’t consume as much energy as even our efficient heat pumps in the winter.
That’s because a heat pump that can lower the temperature by 10°-15°C is really all you need in the hottest part of the summer, whereas in the winter raising the temperature 25°C isn’t uncommon.
I was flabbergasted the first time I realized just how far north Europe is, compared to North America.
Paris is at 48° 51’ N, significantly further north than Toronto (43° N), Montreal (45° N). London is at 51°N 30’, which is further north than Vancouver (49° N), and just slightly further north than Calgary (51°N).
Even southern European cities like Ibiza (39° N) are at comparable latitudes to northern American cities like Philadelphia (40°N) or even New York (41°N).
If Europe starts seeing climate comparable to similar latitudes in North America, that would represent a huge change from the recorded history.
That’s not true. There is plenty of profit to be made with selling stuff that helps reduce energy use, selling energy that uses less fossil fuel (or produces less CO2), undercutting competition with more efficient methods, etc.
The tech world talks a big game about disruption and making billions or even trillions from it. You don’t think there are people who want to make trillions disrupting fossil energy companies?
that 20000-30000 premium over ICEs
What currency are you using for this comparison? Definitely not USD.
A Tesla Model 3 runs for about $40k. A Camry runs for about $35k. Or if we want to go down market a Nissan Leaf is about $30k and probably comparable to a $25k Sentra.
Similar trim levels of vehicles offered as both EV and gasoline powered show minimal difference. Compare the Ford F-150 Lariat in both the gasoline ($75k) and the EV versions ($79k). Or the new Lexus ES, where the EV ($49k) is actually cheaper than the hybrid ($51k).
And if you go into the used market, EVs are starting to hit that market in real numbers, too. Plenty of options for under $20,000, and a handful of options for under $10,000.
Cars are expensive. EVs generally are close to that already expensive price.
The article talks about mass producing the enzymes themselves, not the life forms that produce the enzymes. It’s a key distinction.
Plus these organisms already live on this earth. They can’t outcompete other life on the surface, in less harsh conditions.
It sounds like you have no idea the magnitudes involved, or the timelines. You’re talking about something that took place over a period of 400 million years and whose effects (the presence of oxygen in our atmosphere and our oceans) remain. There’s no chance that geoengineering would change the oxygen levels to anything we can’t handle, and if it starts to head down that direction we can easily handle it (just stop the processes that would sequester carbon).
It’s like being worried that your air conditioning is going to freeze your pipes in the house, in the middle of summer.
If we can get atmospheric CO2 back down to where it was 100 years ago that would be an amazing problem to have.
Read the article. They’re hoping to mass manufacture the enzymes involved, which have the following advantages over carbon capture through plant life:
The trouble with cow farts is the methane, a much more potent greenhouse gas that eventually turns back into CO2 in the atmosphere anyway. Concentrated methane sources tend to either be captured for use as fuel, or flared with a burning flame to reduce the greenhouse effect (at which point carbon sequestering might work). Less concentrated sources, like livestock farts, can’t really be dealr with in the same way.
That…sounds like they’re not actually sleeping those hours.
The lightest EVs are still kinda heavy. The Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Bolt are nearly 4000 lbs, significantly more than a Honda Civic (high 2000’s or low 3000’s) comparable to a BMW M3, a much larger vehicle.
Plus some of the faster tire wear comes from the fact that EVs have such high torque from a stop. It’s great for the driver experience, but tough on the tires.
For the hallway picture, each blue line corresponds with what should be a parallel line, along edges of square tiles or the corner of the floor and the two walls.
For the dinosaur doll, each white dot connects a feature on the dinosaur to that feature’s reflection.
For the shadows, each white dot connects a corner of the object to the corner of the shadow.
I think each of these lines is meticulously chosen.
With mirrors, the maximum power is whatever sunlight hits the area of the mirror. Which for these satellites is 324 square meters. With solar irradiance at 1361 W/m^2 , that’s only 440 kW of energy, probably spread over a very large area, and not all of the spectrum useful for whatever you might want to use it for.
It’s an unbelievably stupid idea, but that also swings the other way in that it would be highly ineffective for any nefarious purpose, and will probably run out of money before it scales up to where each annoying satellite really does damage to visibility in the nigh sky or anything like that.