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MIT researchers discover new energy source

I think the heading is a bit misleading. It is an article about a new type of rechargeable battery that can store 10 times the electricity and not leak power. It is also environmentally more friendly.
 
Can someone who knows more about this explain it for me? [ETA: I mean someone who knows more about this than I do--not the two of you who already posted. In fact, I'm certain both of you qualify!]

I understand the headline is completely wrong, since the article even says, "After coating these tiny wires with a layer of fuel, Strano said his team generated a so-called thermopower wave and stumbled across a reaction that may eventually be used to power electronics, computers and cell phones."

If they're using something as "fuel", it's certainly not a new energy source. What exactly is the fuel? What's special about this new tech?

Is it, as rjh says, basically a cleaner and/or more efficient battery?
 
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Makes it sound more like fuel cell. Which would be good. No electrical leakage because no electrical storage, only generation on demand?
 
It's basically a finding that could, maybe, in the future be used to create smaller, more effective and environmentally friendly batteries, yes. It's by no means an energy source.
 
Ziggurat said:
Since when is a battery an energy source? Since never. It's an energy storage device, not a source. Just like a canteen is not a source of water.
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But to casebro's point: isn't it more like a fuel cell than a battery?

FWIW, there are many devices that store energy that are not batteries.
 
Ziggurat said:
Just like a canteen is not a source of water.
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So when people ask you where you get your water, you say, "Hydrogens from cooling right after the big band and oxygens from heavy fusion reactions inside long-dead stars."?
 
No, it isn't a fuel cell. Fuel cells are basically furnaces that burn fuel to create energy. This is basically a battery that stores and releases energy.

paiute said:
So when people ask you where you get your water, you say, "Hydrogens from cooling right after the big band and oxygens from heavy fusion reactions inside long-dead stars."?
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Reminds me of an old sketch:

Woman: I really don't see why we should need atomic power.
Man: Not at all. It's a very good solution to solve the energy problem.
Woman: Well, I don't think we need it.
Man: Why's that?
Woman: Well, I've talked to my friends, and none of them use atomic power. We already have electricity, why not just use that?
 
Mirrorglass said:
Woman: I really don't see why we should need atomic power.
Man: Not at all. It's a very good solution to solve the energy problem.
Woman: Well, I don't think we need it.
Man: Why's that?
Woman: Well, I've talked to my friends, and none of them use atomic power. We already have electricity, why not just use that?
Click to expand...

This is right on the money.

The OP headline is misleading; this technology is about energy storage, not energy production. Exciting if true, however.
 
zaphod2016 said:
This is right on the money.

The OP headline is misleading; this technology is about energy storage, not energy production. Exciting if true, however.
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exciting as all hell!
to see how battery capacity has improved, I offer the following anecdote:
about 10 years ago, electric model aircraft used NiCad cells. They were heavy, and a single flight was about 3 minutes.
Along came NimH cells-lighter, nearly the capacity (can't draw as high a current, though, due to higher internal resistance, I'm told), and 1/2 the weight. Flight times were about 10 minutes.
Now we use LiPo (Lithium Polymer) cells. about 20% the weight of nicad,3 or 4 times the price, but you can draw 40 amps off a 2 Amp-Hour cell, flight times 20 minutes or so-but you can't fast charge, and if abused, they tend to "discharge with flame". Cell technology is getting better-and something like this could make an electric car actually economical, maybe.
 
rwguinn said:
exciting as all hell!
to see how battery capacity has improved, I offer the following anecdote:
about 10 years ago, electric model aircraft used NiCad cells. They were heavy, and a single flight was about 3 minutes.
Along came NimH cells-lighter, nearly the capacity (can't draw as high a current, though, due to higher internal resistance, I'm told), and 1/2 the weight. Flight times were about 10 minutes.
Now we use LiPo (Lithium Polymer) cells. about 20% the weight of nicad,3 or 4 times the price, but you can draw 40 amps off a 2 Amp-Hour cell, flight times 20 minutes or so-but you can't fast charge, and if abused, they tend to "discharge with flame". Cell technology is getting better-and something like this could make an electric car actually economical, maybe.
Click to expand...

Magnesium anodes are the latest and don't explode as redily, but are a little backwards in terms of energy density. This could be a considerable advancement in technology.

I'm really getting sick of all these titilating nanotechnology headlines though. I want it now dammit! :D
 
paiute said:
So when people ask you where you get your water, you say, "Hydrogens from cooling right after the big band and oxygens from heavy fusion reactions inside long-dead stars."?
Click to expand...

No. There's a difference between a river and a canteen. I don't need to put water into a river to get water out, the water gets into the river without any effort on my part. Therefore, it is a source of water for me. But I do need to put water in a canteen before I can get any out. Therefore, it is not a source of water for me, but only a method of storage. I would have thought this to be obvious.

Batteries are not a source of energy. Fuel cells are not a source of energy. Gas tanks are not a source of energy. They are all just storage mechanisms.
 
Mirrorglass said:
No, it isn't a fuel cell. Fuel cells are basically furnaces that burn fuel to create energy. This is basically a battery that stores and releases energy.
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Are you sure of that? [ETA: both your definition of a fuel cell and that this new thing is a battery?]

It sounds like this thing, like a fuel cell, stores energy as some sort of fuel, then burns that fuel to "create" energy (actually to transform the energy in the fuel to something more usable, like heat or electricity).

Again, the only description of how the thing works from this news article is the sentence I quoted earlier (my emphasis added), "After coating these tiny wires with a layer of fuel, Strano said his team generated a so-called thermopower wave and stumbled across a reaction that may eventually be used to power electronics, computers and cell phones."

Again, the definition of "battery" is not "any device that stores energy"--otherwise things like flywheels and this thing would be considered "batteries"--and they're not.
 
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This article mentions that these "batteries" are single use, not rechargeable. It seems they are more a way to package a given supply of fuel + an "engine" to burn it very efficiently within a really small package.
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
Are you sure of that? [ETA: both your definition of a fuel cell and that this new thing is a battery?]

It sounds like this thing, like a fuel cell, stores energy as some sort of fuel, then burns that fuel to "create" energy (actually to transform the energy in the fuel to something more usable, like heat or electricity).

Again, the only description of how the thing works from this news article is the sentence I quoted earlier (my emphasis added), "After coating these tiny wires with a layer of fuel, Strano said his team generated a so-called thermopower wave and stumbled across a reaction that may eventually be used to power electronics, computers and cell phones."

Again, the definition of "battery" is not "any device that stores energy"--otherwise things like flywheels and this thing would be considered "batteries"--and they're not.
Click to expand...

I refer to flywheels as batteries all the time, as long as it's storing and reproducing electricity. It's conceptually exactly the same thing: a self-contained device that can produces electricity for devices which you don't want to connect to a power line. The fact that it's a slightly different form of energy storage is irrelevant to most uses of the term. iPods won't stop working if it's technically a miniature air-fuel cell that provides the power.

Batteries historically have been electrochemical voltaic piles, and really a battery is more than one stacked together. But just like no one cares about that distinction (hence the popular potato battery, which only requires a single potato), no one cares if it's a fuel cell battery, or a flywheel battery, or a capacitor battery, or an atomic battery, or whatever.
 
paiute said:
So when people ask you where you get your water, you say, "Hydrogens from cooling right after the big band and oxygens from heavy fusion reactions inside long-dead stars."?
Click to expand...

That's actually a pretty cool way to answer that question. I probably WILL say that the next time someone (unlikely though it may be) asks me 'so, where do you get your water'.

A
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
Are you sure of that? [ETA: both your definition of a fuel cell and that this new thing is a battery?]

It sounds like this thing, like a fuel cell, stores energy as some sort of fuel, then burns that fuel to "create" energy (actually to transform the energy in the fuel to something more usable, like heat or electricity).

Again, the only description of how the thing works from this news article is the sentence I quoted earlier (my emphasis added), "After coating these tiny wires with a layer of fuel, Strano said his team generated a so-called thermopower wave and stumbled across a reaction that may eventually be used to power electronics, computers and cell phones."

Again, the definition of "battery" is not "any device that stores energy"--otherwise things like flywheels and this thing would be considered "batteries"--and they're not.
Click to expand...

Yeah, now that I look at it, it wasn't really as simple as I said. If we consider a battery to be something we pour energy into, then pour it out, then pour some more in again and so forth, then these actually aren't batteries. In fact, if I'm right this time, they essentially are fuel cells, or rather fuel cells are the most exciting thing this tech could be used for. I still think my definition of a fuel cell holds.

What confused me was that this thing is used both to store the fuel and to turn it into energy more efficiently. So it would look like a battery, while actually being essentially a small furnace.

On another note, it looks to me like the technology could have a lot of other uses besides fuel cells, though they aren't mentioned in the article.
 
Mirrorglass said:
I still think my definition of a fuel cell holds.
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Leaving aside the impossibility of "creating" energy, how does your definition distinguish a fuel cell from a battery?

Best I can tell, both are devices that store and release energy. Both store energy in some kind of chemical form and convert it to some other form. I think the main difference is the type of chemical reaction that causes the conversion.

ETA: And as I read more, I would say a fuel cell is a specific kind of battery. So I take back my objection to calling this thing some type of battery. . .I think. I still don't know much about it--what is the fuel, and what exactly is a "thermopower wave"? Is it heat or electricity or something else?
 
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Dilb said:
I refer to flywheels as batteries all the time, as long as it's storing and reproducing electricity.
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That's not the way the word "battery" is conventionally used.

I recognize a battery is a way to store and convert energy (specifically electrical energy), but that doesn't mean that anything that stores and coverts energy is a battery.
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
That's not the way the word "battery" is conventionally used.

I recognize a battery is a way to store and convert energy (specifically electrical energy), but that doesn't mean that anything that stores and coverts energy is a battery.
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Sure it does. Just like people don't care that it's not necessarily an actual battery of voltaic piles, if people could go buy pre-spun Duracell flywheel-AAs, they'd call them batteries. The fact that all the batteries people experience on a day-to-day basis are chemical doesn't mean they need to be that way.

Fuel cells are even closer to common batteries, as they're still chemical reactions, the only difference is fuel cells aren't necessarily sealed. If it were possible, batteries wouldn't be completely sealed either, hence the (unsuccessful) history of air-metal batteries. Or you can reverse it, and have a sealed-up fuel cell that differs from an everyday battery only in that it uses carbon compounds rather than a metal.

If NASA is ok with called RTG's "nuclear batteries", I'm pretty confident people won't be bothered by fuel cell batteries either.
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
Leaving aside the impossibility of "creating" energy, how does your definition distinguish a fuel cell from a battery?

Best I can tell, both are devices that store and release energy. Both store energy in some kind of chemical form and convert it to some other form. I think the main difference is the type of chemical reaction that causes the conversion.

ETA: And as I read more, I would say a fuel cell is a specific kind of battery. So I take back my objection to calling this thing some type of battery. . .I think. I still don't know much about it--what is the fuel, and what exactly is a "thermopower wave"? Is it heat or electricity or something else?
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Well, when I said "creates energy" I meant in the way a power plant "creates energy" by burning wood and turning that to electricity.. though I now realize that's just converting chemical energy into electricity, just the way a battery does. I was just giving "burning" reactions special treatment. :p

When I speak of batteries, I think of something that can be recharged by channeling current through it. This, and fuel cells, don't apply, since you need to insert fuel into them to charge them. Apparently this isn't the actual definition, though.
 
Ziggurat said:
Batteries are not a source of energy. Fuel cells are not a source of energy. Gas tanks are not a source of energy. They are all just storage mechanisms.
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So we are calling internal combustion engines long term solar batteries then? Relabel all fossil fuels as solar energy.

Fuel cells can be a way of using energy, if it is say using alcohol or methane then it is about were the methane comes from.
 
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