New Material Can Store Vast Amounts of Energy 253
ElectricSteve writes "Using super-high pressures similar to those found deep in the Earth or on a giant planet, researchers from Washington State University (WSU) have created a compact, never-before-seen material capable of storing vast amounts of energy. Described by one of the researchers as 'the most condensed form of energy storage outside of nuclear energy,' the material holds potential for creating a new class of energetic materials or fuels, an energy storage device, super-oxidizing materials for destroying chemical and biological agents, and high temperature superconductors."
Re:Batteries (Score:5, Informative)
It's not clear to me if they've even got a way of releasing the energy (is the compressed form stable?). If they have, then you're going to have to generate electricity from the mechanical expansion of a solid. The most obvious way we achieve that currently is a coiled spring, which probably won't work in this case.
As the article says, this is basic science.
Re:Don't read too much into this... (Score:4, Informative)
Trust a dumbass journalist to rewrite that to mean that suddenly our electric cars will be powered by Xenon Fluoride compressed by diamond anvils, even though the original research paper doesn't mention anything of the sort!
It wasn't the journalist who wrote the bit about "potential for creating a new class of energetic materials or fuels, an energy storage device, super-oxidizing materials for destroying chemical and biological agents, and high temperature superconductors," it was the university PR office. http://www.wsunews.wsu.edu/pages/Publications.asp?Action=Release&PublicationID=20580 [wsu.edu] The researcher reviews and approves the press release before the university sends it out.
So you can trust the dumbass scientist to hype his research in the hope of getting more funding.
Re:Batteries (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, I'm too lazy to log in. PhD in materials science, etc.
It's called a metastable state. It is stable because local perturbations to the structure raise the energy. If you heated diamonds up enough, they would turn to graphite because they are not the most stable state of carbon at room temperature and pressure. So, diamonds are "metastable" because they aren't truly "stable" but they also won't change on timescales that we work with due to kinetic limitations. Theoretically the diamonds will eventually become graphite, but the probability is extremely low because the thermal energy isn't high enough to let it move.
Also, where else but the internet do random people with PhDs in materials science happen by these sorts of questions? I am very happy that I can answer your question, because thermodynamics is some of the coolest math I have ever seen.
Useless for practical applications... (Score:5, Informative)
The substance is not stable when the pressure is released - it immediately decomposes. Carrying around the whole set-up where the typical payload (i.e. the compressed substance) is maybe 0.1% of the total weight of the apparatus is of course impractical. Also, this kind of high-pressure research is not exactly new. There are many published similar experiments where compounds undergo interesting crystal structure changes at ultra-high pressures. Nevertheless, bond strenghts limit what extra energy you can store in crystal structure variants. Xe-F bonds are definitely not among the strongest.
Currently, the only remotely realistic method for radical improvements in stored energy per weight are metastable isotopes, but even that is a far shot.
Re:Batteries (Score:3, Informative)
I dunno. Try coming to the "Cowboy Breakfast"s in Los Alamos. I guarantee that if you strike up a conversation with a random stranger, he or she will have worked on some wacky stuff -- and might even be allowed to talk about it!
Re:That is always the trickey part (Score:3, Informative)
Re:That is always the trickey part (Score:5, Informative)
Yes they did. C4 burns.
It won't go off without a detonator. They also use C4 on some mortar bombs as propellant (the U.S. made ones). On the tubes I am familiar with (60mm and 81mm) the bombs (whether U.S. or made elsewhere) all have something akin to a shotgun charge (sans the shot) and a primer to set it off located at the very bottom of the bomb in the round tube structure that the bomb's fins are attached to. (This is all well known to anyone who has ever fired a mortar in any country they are found... so I'm not helping anyone's enemies.) On the U.S. made bombs, small pieces of C4 are (or at least were when I was a mortarman) clipped to the fins of the bombs (there are several)( All mortars work essentially the same way, the only real difference being what the manufacturer uses as the charges on the fins).
Depending on how far you need the bomb to go (range), you either leave all the C4 charges (or whatever your bomb comes with) attached or remove a number of them as determined by a person responsible for taking the remote fire controller's (a person like a forward observation officer (FOO... who may be an NCO too)) fire mission data (coordinates of target etc) and converting it into bearings, elevations, and charge number for the mortarmen. If you really need a little extra distance it has been known to pour a little naphtha down the tube in emergency situations... not exactly recommended procedure.
Once the fire missions for a location are complete, you are generally left with a good number of these C4 charges (about an inch square, and maybe an eighth of an inch thick, wrapped in cellophane). When I say a good number, a mortar group (four mortars) can rack up a big pile a foot high or more, depending on how long they are at a location. Periodically, or when leaving, someone will take the charges and put them in a narrow, long, low pile, with a much much smaller trail of them leading off. They will ignite the smaller end of the trail and they will burn like a fuse to the pile. Then the pile burns like a son of a bitch with a lot of heat. I have seen this many times. It doesn't explode. If we had been so inclined, we could have indeed taken some of the charges and cooked with them. However didn't do this since we had stoves and it was expedient to make sure that there wasn't a whole bunch of uncontrolled C4 laying around in someone's kit (what grunts are fond of playing with isn't something you necessarily want lying around... even in a grunts hands :) ). So we always burned all the unused pieces.
As a note, even the bombs are pretty damned stable (doesn't mean I would be comfortable seeing someone drop one... but if you're closer than say 30 or 40 metres, don't bother to run if you do see this (drop to the ground maybe)... you won't make it far enough away to matter if it does go... so might as well watch the show until its errrr over). The fuses are designed not to be completely armed until they have undergone the rapid acceleration of being fired and have actually cleared the tubes. This is why some movies who have people throwing mortar bombs off of buildings at enemies have the characters bang the bottom of the bomb on the ground before throwing them over the edge... but I'm not sure if that would really be hard enough... and THAT would make ME nervous... unlike burning small pieces of C4. If you see a movie where someone might try to use a mortar bomb, even a small one (e.g. 60mm) like a grenade at ground level... it is just a movie.... I'm not sure you could throw one far enough to stay out of its kill radius even if you got it to work. Guys running through exploding shells in movies pisses me off... the scene in Band Of Brothers when they are in the forest during the Battle of the Bulge... where trees are being shredded and people are vapourized... that is closer to the truth. Also... I'm not sure I would feel all that comfortable burning a 1kg chunk of C4 (that is the size we used to blow dud grenades, bombs, and artillery shells with).
Artillery
Re:That is always the trickey part (Score:3, Informative)
>the scene in Band Of Brothers when they are in the forest during
>the Battle of the Bulge... where trees are being shredded and people
>are vapourized... that is closer to the truth
While I am not disputing what you are saying, I believe shelling can also be hugely ineffective. In Fred Bridgland's book A War for Africa [amazon.com] he tells of how South African G5 (155 mm) shells were unable to injure or kill enemy soldiers if landing more than 3m from the target. Bridgland attributes this to the thick sand in which the shells landed.
Re:Don't read too much into this... (Score:3, Informative)
This results in roughly 80 farads.
Which says nothing about the power stored without the voltage across the planes!
W = C V^2 / 2
The energy stored goes as the square of the voltage. It drops precipitously as the voltage approaches 0, as it does in this case.
Even if you somehow managed to get 100mV of potential difference*, that's still only 800 mJ of stored energy, or about 2kJ/kg specific energy. Compare that to just burning the graphite at 32.8 MJ/kg (not counting the weight of the oxygen), which is about 16,000x greater!
See: Specific energy computation [wolframalpha.com]
You'll find that the energy stored in the internal stress of concrete is similarly low. Chemical energy density is surprisingly high, only nuclear power sources beat it.
Try it, look up the typical stress in a block of pre-tensioned concrete, and work out the J/kg and J/$!
*) Not likely! At that charge, the electric field strength between the layers is 700MV/m, which next to nothing can resist. See: Field Strength computation [wolframalpha.com]. Air breaks down far below that, so the stack would short out towards the sides where it is exposed, at the very least.
PS: All of these computations may be off by a few orders of magnitude, it's nearly 1:30 in the morning here...
Re:That is always the trickey part (Score:3, Informative)
I think you should revise the "C4 won't go off without a detonator" bit.
Former military here, and I gotta say that if you burn some and try to put it out by stomping on it, you'll be missing a foot.