Comment on New self-assembling material could be the key to recyclable batteries
masterspace@lemmy.ca 4 weeks ago
It has been 20 straight years of “this new battery tech COULD revolutionize everything”.
No. It won’t.
Do not talk about battery tech revolutionizing anything unless your innovation is in mass manufacturing it, cost effectively, and reliably, at scale.
Anything else is just another early research project jerking itself off before it goes nowhere.
This is the technology community. If you’re not interested in reading about new and groundbreaking tech, maybe you should block this one, start a consumerism community, all about stuff you can buy.
The rest of us are quite happy reading about potential ideas and research that may or may not become something profitable.
Bruh I’m an electrical engineer. I’m interested in new technology. I’m not interested in journalists regurgitating mindless research paper fluff.
Idea
Lab tech <- the article is here
Prototype
Mass production
So, the usual Battery Tuesday message.
But… battery tech did revolutionize everything in the last 20 years.
Yes, Lithium Ion batteries did. Do you know when their lab experimentation equivalent to his article occurred? The 70s and 80s.
Do you know how many labs have experimented with new battery types that have some benefits in some areas since then? Literally thousands and thousands and thousands. Most go nowhere.
LiFePo4 was first brought up in lab experiments in 1996/1997.
NaIon first came up in the 80s, but were shelved and most research happened in the 2010s.
But as you rightfully noticed: It took Li-Ion Batteries 20 years to become usable and another 20 years to become really good. Why would you expect that other battery technologies would be faster to market? Many other chemistries are on the market but just haven’t (yet) become better than Li-Ion.
Battery development is a huge amount of trial and error, and Li-Ion was also a series of throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks. On the way to develop Li-Ion hundreds if not thousands of chemistries had to be tried, tested and discarded. That specific technology went through multiple companies and research facilities who each discarded the idea when they got stuck and coundn’t find a way around the problems, and then the next company picked it up to continue working on it.
I don’t expect them to come to market faster than that, I expect people to not believe and post headlines about a battery technology revolutionizing things when it’s early stage research and most likely will not.
If you spent your time reading about every novel research battery since ether dawn of Li Ion and today, all you’ll have succeeded in is wasting a lot of time.
You should look beyond your NiCad pile, old man!
My current batteries are Goodenough.
That’s what they all say.
But the grant money! The colleges receive and dictate where it goes. Just think of the universities for once. /s
quoll@lemmy.sdf.org 4 weeks ago
progress in battery tech has been pretty amazing over the last 20 years.
take you pick for sources duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=cost+of+batteries++chart…
compared to hydrogen and nuclear…
masterspace@lemmy.ca 4 weeks ago
Yes, progress in the manufacturing and refining of Lithium Ion batteries.
This is not that. This is a research lab trying a new idea that will go nowhere and then issuing a press release that talks about the positives and ignores the showstopping negatives.
irishPotato@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
My brother in Christ, have you heard about our lord and saviour the Scientific Method and the proliferation of cross-domain ideas? How do you imagine the li-ion batteries came about as the go-to energy storage solution? Incremental improvements of ideas would be my guess, ideas have to start somewhere and of course they’re going to be hyperbolic since researchers are both excited and have to draw attention to their ideas.
I sympathise with your point but the alternative is little to no research into different battery technologies because close to nothing will ever emerge as a competitive day-one drop-in replacement, but some ideas may prove exciting to others who understand the value and they might push the ball further towards realistic alternatives.
masterspace@lemmy.ca 4 weeks ago
I don’t fault researchers for publishing novel research that might not go anywhere. I explicitly understand the scientific value in doing so.
I do not think it’s valuable to breathlessly regurgitate those claims to the broader pop-sci public though. A) It’s boring to read the same overhyped battery press release every single week. And B) it shakes people’s faith in science, in the same way that people’s faith in medicine has been shaken by bad reporting on every study that says X could give you cancer or make you live longer.