Can Flow Batteries Finally Beat Lithium?

100% the reason I didn't even click it, thanks!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines#Studies

For the average consumer most EVs are too expensive. The batteries probably aren't going to get much cheaper due to the rarity and expense of lithium. Finding a better battery tech could make the whole idea of mass electric car ownership make sense. I do wish people would stop caring about the range issue so much tho. Just charge the battery every night and you'll almost never need more then 80 miles of range

I hope we drop the idea of mass car ownership tho. Effective mass public transit and micro mobility seems like a much safer and more efficient direction to go

Doubtful this will plan out tho. These articles are basically just corporate press releases. A couple of these battery techs might pan out and work at scale

It's because people have this mindset that they might need to travel 600+kms twice a year, therefore they need a 700km range BEV because Despite 99% of their car usage is sub 200km ( and 90% is sub 100) it is somehow prudent to carry all that extra battery material and weight around unused

I think hydrogen makes sense in a few applications namely trucking and long range cars for the few who need it, though I would say it's probably better to invest heavily in trains and handle most shipping with trains then put the stuff on trucks for the last 50kms and stuff

I just want a half decent second hand EV that will do 120 miles, for a reasonable price.

I can buy an acceptable ICE car for £5k, and it'll do that.
But at that price range, the only BEVs can get are shagged leafs that will do 50 miles on a good day.

The really annoying thing, is that 95% of my journeys are sub 50 miles. But I'm not willing to spend more than half the journey time charging midway through.

The idea of shipping liquid fuel in trucks and dispensing it out of hoses at special fuel stores is just silly.

I don't necessarily disagree with that but I hope you see that this type of infrastructure is exactly what we currently have and have proven to work.

It wouldn't be that stupid to reuse an existing infrastructure that is already built. The issue with our current fuel infrastructure is that it is moving fossil fuel.

The only place I see liquid fuel being used is in commercial transportation, particularly in shipping and rail. Anhydrous ammonia would be perfect for shipping, and a nightmare anywhere else. That shit will fucking kill you in an instant, and those who survive just wish they were dead.

So it should only be used in highly regulated professional settings.

That said, it's still a wonderful fuel option for those settings.

This electrolyte swaps shit? I see it as an attempt to reuse all that gas station infrastructure all over the place.

EV chargers are all over as well these days, but they're still not anything near as ubiquitous and gas stations.

Apparently, no one read the article. The primary application of this was for the military. The article is based on research done by DARPA. For military use, lithium ion batteries have way too short of a lifespan and the charge times are too long. Also, they can catch fire and burn for a long time, probably a real problem in a military context.

Flow batteries can mitigate all these issues and they’re cheaper and lighter. They can be made from inexpensive materials that are more readily available than lithium.

Given these benefits, it seems obvious that consumer applications will take off. The original researchers see an opportunity here and that’s why they formed a company.

Your cited lithium ion “20 min” charge time is for super chargers only, and in many cases is actually more like 40-45 minutes. Also, super charging is bad for the battery. In all other cases, you’ll be using an L1 or L2 charger which will take anywhere from 8 hours to 72 hours to charge a vehicle.

And, eventually, the lithium ion battery will lose its range as the battery degrades, making the whole car as disposable as that 3-4 year old smartphone you had to toss because the battery can’t hold a charge anymore. Flow batteries will keep refuel times to the same as they are today, and the material can be recharged up to 10,000 times, a huge improvement over lithium ion. And, the lifespan of your car won’t be literally glued and bolted to the lifespan of your battery.

Then what about trucking? Lithium is not nearly as energy dense, weighs a lot, and does take a significant longer time to charge than a diesel to refuel. If you don't believe me, look up the eCascadia by Frightliner. They are probably the current best option if you wanted a heavy electric truck, but they only get to around 200 miles with a load (for reference, a standard turbo diesel one would go around 600-800 miles and only take 30 min to refuel).

Currently in trucking, I've found that everyone kinda laughs at the idea of electrification (except on medium duty, that wouldn't be too hard, just overly expensive). Current electric motors are fine, it's just that the energy storage is nowhere near what is needed for actual use.

Yes, for most basic ev consumers current lithium is fine from a usability perspective, but from a cost one this might provide a much more useful alternative (assuming the cost isn't insane).

Putting a charger on every street parking location will become disproportionately expensive.

It has many benefits. Many. At least if article is correct. Doesn't burn. It allows for energy storage which is huge when you take into the account renewable energy generation. It might even allow you to store surplus at home. It's less weight which results in less consumption.
Also what makes you say that hydrogen failed. AFAIK perhaps for cars is not viable right now, but for bigger vehicles it might be very convenient.
Edit: also doesn't require huge improvements of energy infrastructure.

It seems to me that we'll be living in a world with multiple solutions to the "fuel problem". In a city environment, maybe the lithium solution will be the best way to go, but we can't ignore that it isn't scalable for other uses. It's interesting to see how fossil fuels are powerful by the way they solve many problems at once; of course, after we built the insane infrastructure to support it.

We need every thing we got to beat climate change.

Technically, yes. Most of the time. Beyond that, no. It isn't good enough for a great deal of people. Lithium batteries are hard to recycle, hard and expensive as hell to replace, give constantly diminishing returns as range goes down every year it's owned, people in apartments can't charge them without going to charge stations that are more expensive than gasoline, and range anxiety is very much a thing that prevents anyone from exclusively owning electric vehicles.

Transportable fluid that holds more density than lithium (which means vehicles won't be so heavy which saves on a lot of issues) and doesn't require a nationwide restructuring of the electrical grid system seems like a way better idea than adding an extra 1200 pounds of battery that will cost $12,000 to replace when it goes bad.

I only wonder if the liquid can be safely disposed of or recycled/sustained. Regardless, setting up a system to use this would take two decades to really implement and we should have solid state batteries before then that should get rid of quite a few of the several shortcomings of lithium batteries.

Nano desu

What is your source?

High power is a matter of scaling (and size/space constraints). To increase the power output, the membrane size can be increased or multiple power cells can be installed as explained in the article:

If you want to store more energy, just increase the size of the solution storage tanks or the concentration of the solutions. If you want to provide more power, just stack more cells on top of one another or add new stacks.

The article is about advancements that are solving the density problem.

What makes a lithium iron phosphate battery an ecological nightmare?

That'd be cool.

Hydrogen solves that.