The Breakroom > The Water Cooler
Ban of sales of IC engined cars to support electric cars by 2040
stovebolt:
Food for thought
https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/25/toyotas-new-solid-state-battery-could-make-its-way-to-cars-by-2020/
AdeV:
--- Quote from: Ironhorse57 on July 28, 2017, 02:27:07 PM ---A small issue which doesn't seem to have mentioned anywhere - the current 'best' battery is Lithium based but supplies of said element are finite and I understand already limited. Are we relying on some bright spark inventing totally new battery technology and/or coming up with an alternative renewable type of battery material?
--- End quote ---
Interesting article on that here: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/is-there-enough-lithium-to-maintain-the-growth-of-the-lithium-ion-battery-m
TL;DR: Known reserves at current rates of extraction give us 365 years of production; the article suggests that if there's an explosion in the use of lithium in EVs, those reserves drop to 50 years, and if they go all out from now, it's only 17 years worth...
There are alternates - the article mentions a few possibles, but any of the group 1 metals (Sodium, Potassium and Rubidium) should serve as alternatives. Caesium not so much, due to the slight problem of it being radioactive... So far, sodium ion batteries have a lower energy density than Lithium ion (presumably due to the larger atomic size?), potassium batteries are still very young technology. Both are much more common than lithium, though, so if high energy density can be achieved, long term these will become the favoured chemicals - at least, until someone invents an even better mousetrap...
mattinker:
There are far too many imponderables to be able to say much about what's going to happen in the future, even the near future. I came across this today.
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/zeolite-catalysts-convert-carbon-dioxide-to-fuel/3007572.article?utm_content=july-zeo-reg-row&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=advert&utm_campaign=mkt-dir-cm-010-17
Regards, Matthew
AdeV:
Fascinating stuff... the yields are pretty poor at the moment, but human ingenuity knows no bounds, someone will find ways to improve it. Seems like a project tailor-made for Africa too: Loads of solar cells to provide the electricity, pump the water in, pump the gasoline out... At least, until fusion power is viable hat is.
seadog:
'Edman Tsang of the University of Oxford, UK, comments that both developments have come at a good time. ‘When everybody’s very interested in how to deal with carbon emissions, I think it’s pretty useful to have a direct conversion of CO2 to gasoline,’ he says.'
Great, we use CO2 from the atmosphere to create a fuel and thereby solve the problem of emissions? Am I missing something obvious here, or is there a fundamental flaw in what he's saying? What happens when the fuel is used,or is the intention just to put it in tanks and never use it?
Yes, it produces CO2. Hmmm :Doh:
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