Interesting Engineering
Polar Night Energy (PNE), a Finnish company, is leading the way in demonstrating that large power storage solutions need not be made using lithium. Instead, the company has turned to a widely available resource: sand. In 2022, the company revealed the world’s first sand battery.
As the world scales up renewable sources of energy in a bid to reduce its carbon emissions, storage of generated energy has been a new problem. Energy generation from the Sun and the wind is not a continuous process and the difference in power levels generated during peak and non-peak hours can be significant. Green utility companies are turning to large-scale battery storage solutions made using lithium and its derivatives to tide over these differences. Genius
I hope they’re not planning on using the same quality of sand that we need for fracking. Good quality sand is harder to come by than you might think.
Sam Bankman Fried can represent the IPO when he gets out of prison….BRILLIANT!!!….
Zzzzzz…hey, why don’t you tell us to put on another sweater? “Store energy for many months”, who are they kidding? “Non-peak hours…”?! How about net energy consumers as you struggle to clear the ice and snow?
Isn’t that what they used on Gilligan’s Island?
the link says that getting the energy out is harder than people think, and not very efficient. Also they use construction sand, and as Joe said above, good quality sand is hard to come by
I invented sand.
So that’s how creepy Joe Biden get his energy-from eating sand!
How about potato batteries?
Efficiency? Energy out divided by (ALL) energy in.
Fuh, fuh,
Fraud
P.S. How ’bout the Easy Bake Oven battery? Safe up energy in the form of cookies.
I pound sand … out behind the gym.
I don’t like sand. It’s coarse, and rough, and irritating, and it gets everywhere.
There’s a process that involves either molten sand or molten aluminum to store energy as heat. It uses electricity to heat the sand/aluminum to a molten state, then releases it back as electricity as the material cools down. There is a conversion loss, but from my understanding, it’s the most practical application so far to store energy.
The constant search for a better power source is admirable but let’s not panic and turn our backs on what is tried and true, affordable and reliable.
A greater power source will happen in due time, until then we should embrace what is available and disregard the unproven threat of ‘climate change’.
As usual, it’ll take more energy to construct than it saves.
Now THAT’S thinking outside the (sand)box.
Even if this process turns out to be a dud, at least it’s a step off dead ass center, and gets people thinking about new processes. Eventually ONE will work, and work well for what is needed.
The thing is, you can’t think about whatever it is that you’re working on as “The Perfect Holy Grail”. Nope. Lots of flaws. May not work at all. but there may be ONE part that someone else may use later to advance the science further to achieve the Shipstone energy source.
As long as they don’t kill the sandworms.
Reminds of the time the cowboy came across the blonde buried up to her neck in sand.
Cowboy: ” Whuts in it for me if I help you out of there,?”
Blonde: “Sand”
refuse – it sure it. That’s why that damn radio never quit.
Ostriches will find this shocking
I worked in a quarry for 44 years. One comment noted that sand is hard to come by and that is correct. Its not a renewable product, however there is manufactured sand made from crushed stone. The only thing I see as an issue is quarries take in water. Just my two cents worth.
If sand can hold a charge then what might be the purpose of the pyramids?
Think Nickola Tesla
Said same as construction sand which means it is becoming scarce.
Why not just drill holes in the ground and extract the earth’s internal heat?
Iceland has been doing it for generations. It’s called “geothermal”.
Many people are already doing this with geothermal heat pumps that use piping that is only about 8 ft under the ground to dramatically reduce the energy required to heat (and cool) a home. It’s not the same as creating ALL the energy from geothermal, but it is a good start.
Also – after Iceland’s steam is run through the electric power plant and condenses into water they pipe the hot water through the streets of Reykjavik to supply heat and hot water to the homes and businesses. They keep the pipes just under the street surface which keeps the snow and ice off the streets. I’ve been there in winter – the streets are mildly warm like an electric blanket.
hope they get the cat turds out
So in the near future, sand will become more valuable. And Saudi Arabia wins again.
Believe it or not there are different grades of sand. Fracking sand for example is very hard material and angular in shape. When it’s pumped down hole at high pressure and causes fractures in the formation the sand packs into the fractures, and due to the shape of the sand granules it doesn’t seal off the fractures. It allows gas and or oil to flow through the sand. Standard beach sand would pack the fractures and seal off the the flow, so nothing gained. The value of fracking sand is moving up significantly in price.