Why Solid Carbon is the Future of Energy Storage

Energy storage is a huge sector, and growing at a rapid pace - largely due to the mass rollout of renewable energy. Lithium-ion batteries have a part to play in all of this, but they come with their own set of problems, including cost and the use of rare earth materials. This is why I am so interested in thermal batteries - using heat to store energy instead of chemical bonds. Antora energy have an incredible new way of doing this with solid carbon blocks and thermo-photovoltaic panels. So, I got in contact with them!

Credits:
Producer: Ryan Hughes
Research: Sian Buckley and Ryan Hughes
Video Editing: @aniokukade and Ryan Hughes
Music: Joris Šimaitis

#energystorage #engineering #breakthrough

[cloggedpizza]

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.

[tedbomba]

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.

[Andrew-rcvh]

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?

[andreasmuller]

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.

[rhkavli]

Let's de-carbonize with pure carbon!

[peetiegonzalez]

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.

[Resist.Tyranny]

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

[markotrieste]

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?

[mikebrant]

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!

[jfish]

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

[jamesdownes]

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.

[chrisbarron]

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

[Xaelum]

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

[dwc]

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.

[leesmith]

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.

[Simplicitywins]

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

[TheEVEInspiration]

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?

[justanamerican]

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.

[braindecay]

You polished your data. 35% efficiency is only the one isolated step. Altogether the system gives you ~5% efficiency, so 95% of the energy you put in gets lost

[wtthehll]

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