Sulfur selenium solid-state battery from NASA breaks energy storage boundaries | Hacker News Reader

Sulfur selenium solid-state battery from NASA breaks energy storage boundaries

cleantechnica.com

40 pointsnopinsight58 comments

"The SABERS concept proposes a battery that meets the key performance criteria through development of a solid-state architecture battery utilizing high-capacity sulfur-selenium cathode and lithium metal anode."

This isn't even a result. It's a proposal for funding. There is no "Solid State Battery from NASA". There is, at most, a prototype cathode.

There are real solid state batteries. Maxell has tiny ones for sale.[1] Many companies are making solid state battery noises, but few, if any, are shipping a product. Toyota's announcement of Real Soon Now has the Financial Times writing "The trillion-dollar question is whether solid-state batteries — a technology that promises greater range and safety than lithium-ion ones, and which Toyota has indicated it is near to mass producing — can be that miracle."[2]

Solid-state batteries are the next overhyped big thing. They may eventually work, but they don't work yet.

Typical solid state battery company hype site: [3] Note pictures of green and eco scenes and renders of battery modules. Note absence of product data sheets. If you dig enough, you find "Note that we have not completed the development of our multilayer commercial battery cell..."

[1] https://biz.maxell.com/en/rechargeable_batteries/allsolidsta...

[2] https://www.ft.com/content/ffc78e5d-eb8d-442c-bc5e-d2f029951...

[3] https://www.quantumscape.com/

> Solid-state batteries are the next overhyped big thing. They may eventually work, but they don't work yet.

There are commercially available samples. So they do work, but production is not here yet.

Factorial announced that publicly: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231005300023/en/Fac...

Other companies have been providing cells to independent labs and prospect clients since the last year. So far under the NDAs.

OK, somebody issued a press release a few weeks ago announcing they sent the first sample to a customer for evaluation. On a scale of 10, where 1 is "it looks like it might be theoretically possible" and 10 is "in stock at WalMart", this technology is maybe a 4 or 5.

Yes. I think Samsung is probably ahead in this as they intend to start trial production run by the end of this year. So they are well passed the prototype or sample to customer stage. With 1st Generation only getting a 50% increase in energy density, rather than all the hyped up 2x or 3x energy improvement.

It will probably take at least 2-3 years to iron out all the production issues before it is even being mass manufactured. So we are talking about at least 2027 or 2028 to have them in any Consumer device.

Realistically, knowing all the engineering and supply chain difficulties involved I think 2030+ is probably when we could see any SS Battery.

Samsung or Toyota, probably.

The big win with solid state batteries is faster charging time. When charge time comes down to 10 minutes, a charging station looks and works like a gas station. Right now, charging stations look like parking lots. They need more area and something to occupy the waiting customers. But a 10-minute charging station need be no larger than a gas station with a convenience store.

This totally changes the land and infrastructure requirements for electric vehicles. We're going to see gas stations ripping out gas pumps and putting in charging lanes.

The first samples were available last year. I do have access to some NDA information, but I found a public press-release: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20221220005278/en/

If you are a large company, you can get pre-production samples from multiple manufacturers under the NDA. It's now a race to build a large-scale production line. We'll definitely see some first mass-produced solid-state batteries next year.

They won't appear in Walmart for several more years, not in the least because all the manufacturing capacity is double-booked for the foreseeable future.

Previous HN discussions have been relatively quiet on this battery:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33603281

>> To that end, SABERS has experimented with innovative new materials yet to be used in batteries, which have produced significant progress in power discharge. During the past year, the team successfully increased their battery’s discharge rate by a factor of 10 – and then by another factor of 5 – inching researchers closer to their goal of powering a large vehicle.

Looks like they're not quite there yet?

CATL were claiming they'd get a battery with a similar 500 Wh/kg into production this year:

https://www.catl.com/en/news/6015.html

Which makes this news rather less exciting unless this battery has other advantages.

> "“Fire” and “airplane” are two words that should never be used in the same sentence"

Don't ICEs and Jets all require fire and explosive fuel to fly?

Combustible, yes. Not explosive unless Poorly Engineered.

> This presentation will demonstrate a feasible path for solid-state cells that possess a specific energy of greater than 400 Wh/kg to enable electric aircraft

Wow!! Gasoline is 12 kWh/kg. Only 4x better!

https://chemistry.beloit.edu/edetc/SlideShow/slides/energy/d...

I am sorry but either math or English comprehension fails me. 12 000 Wh/kg vs 400 Wh/kg is 30 times better.

Regarding gasoline: the question is how much of that energy is actually converted into motion instead of heat. With electric mirrors it's more than 90%, with gasoline it's more like 30-40%.

I am sure you meant motours/motors, not mirrors.

Yes. Gboard is getting ever more useless.

And it never fails to capitalize brand names and suggest them over normal words...

If I talk about the malus genus it always tries to turn it into Apple. Just like that.

And what is with the numerical replacement of a word? Just before pressing send, if you're lucky, you catch something like, an engine may be defined by it's 6 in cubic inches. (Instead of displacement.)

I’m about to turn off autocorrect. It’s < handling of apostrophes makes me sound like an idiot, and it’s (that’s two) auto replacement of words makes me sound like I’ve had a stroke. A couple times I have checked a response I’m (three strikes) the morning and it is so garbled I can’t remember what I was trying to say.

It used to work better, right? I’m not imagining it?

Yes, I believe it did used to be better, I feel like I'm fighting the damn thing now.

10-13x better then

Basically if you figure a EB battery weighs 1000 lbs and 10 gallons of gas plus the tank weighs 75lbs.

Gets a lot better when you include the weight of a gasoline engine plus transmission vs an inverter and electric motor. The difference there is a few hundred lbs.

Take away is even what seems like small improvements in power density saves a lot of weight. Increase the density by 10% and you shave 90lbs off the battery and reduce the cars weight by 4%. Your gain is more than the reduction of the weight of the battery because cascading reductions in the weight of the cars structural elements.

The torque required for an electric vehicle to climb a slope quickly drains the battery (if the electric motor can climb it, and if the refrigeration can manage the temperature rise along the climbing time [hill, road, etc; constant torque]).

Combustion engines have a high torque, and these variables should be included in the equation. IMHO, it should be mandatory to include in the electric vehicle specification the range with a 14-20% of slope/gradient[1], including the speed.

[1] although it does exist some ways with 30% of slope, some wicked garages included.

Indeed. Clearly I shouldn’t do math in the morning! It seemed like an impossibly good number.

...isn't that 30x? Also, I saw it listed as 500Wh/kg from the article, where was the 400 figure coming from? At 500Wh/kg, it's about 24x the energy density.

Also the NASA paper was published a year ago, and the article linked in OP was published a few months ago. Is there some development that is causing this to surface again now?

I saw the 400 number in the abstract of the paper. And yes, terrible math on my part!

Suddenly a new element on the table piqued my interest. Selenium [0]. Seems relatively abundant, already used in glass and semiconductor making, but a tad toxic like arsenic etc.

Any chemists weigh-in on Se ?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selenium

Selenium is a fascinating element. Very necessary for healthy life, UpTo to a level, then it may be toxic. Different areas of the planet have more present in the soil. So on some places, it is added as a supplement to feed(especially animals - horses cows), but if that feed is given to an animal that doesn't need the supplement, it may kill it. (See polo pony kerfuffle.) There are various states of selenium which makes analysis, and chemistry complex. Se^-2,0,+2,+4, and even +6. Similar(but not) to sulphur and in strange ways to iron. Certain oxidation states are more reactive(obviously) and therefore are more toxic. But when dealing with environmental issues, finding which state of selenium is present, is extremely difficult, and requires very complex laboratory procedures. Total selenium does not answer most questions. Chemistry can be fun!

A couple of biochemical points about selenium:

* Selenocysteine <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selenocysteine> is the 21st amino acid - essentially cysteine with selenium instead of sulfur.

* Selenoenzymes are used in humans for peroxide metabolism and in the thyroid

Selenium is actually not very abundant. It's the 69th most abundant element in the Earth's continental crust, at an average concentration of about 50 ppb. It's less abundant than silver and only 10x more abundant than platinum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth...

> less abundant than silver

Hmmm. So are these proposed batteries viable? Are they mostly Sulphur and a bit of Selenium (and presumably some other stuff)?

Here's the USGS 2023 Mineral Commodities Summary for Selenium.

https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2023/mcs2023-selenium.p...

World production for 2022: 3,200 tonnes World reserves: 81,000 tonnes

There's not a whole lot available. It occurs at 0.5 to 12 ppm in coal, so large amounts of coal ash might be a future resource. It's not economic to extract that now, vs. current secondary extraction from copper anode slimes.

I will add that the concentration of Se in carbonaceous chondrites is around 20 ppm. Eventually we might mine asteroids for it.

(Not a chemist)

Yeah selenium is fun, it's used in photocopiers - the drum which the image is copied over is made of it. The drum is charged, then the light projected onto it caused the selenium to conduct, allowing the charge on those areas to leak away. Then toner particles are allowed to stick to the charged areas, and printed on to paper.

Well, that's how they used to work. They are all multi function now so use a CCD scanner and printer combination.

Another Better Battery Bulletin!

FTA: "Most of us have little idea what NASA — the National Aeronautics and Space Administration — has been doing since the Apollo moon missions ended. We know it is responsible for Tang and space blankets, but what has it done for us lately?"

This is such a dumb and off-putting opening sentence that I can't imagine this was written by an adult person and passed by a real editor. The rest of the article is equally infuriating. It quite literally looks like output of ChatGPT for an article where the input prompt was to summarize a NASA press release but in a way that will be presented to gradeschool children. And poorly. Which isn't appropriate for... anybody, actually.

The real technical overview that isn't written like a middle-schooler-GPT-generated report is located here, specifically the PDF:

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20230013163

The goal is to infuriate.

Wikipedia says NASA was not responsible for Tang.

Oh, we had Tang in France in the 80's but it was often eaten (by children like myself) before it made it to the glass.

Anyone care to explain what they mean by:

> As any EV advocate knows, vehicles powered by batteries and electricity are far more efficient than conventional cars powered by last century internal combustion technology.

Because they are comparing energy storage with energy creation. And as far as I know fuel holds more energy per cubic centimeter than batteries.

I think they are referring to energy efficiency. If I remember correctly gas cars lose about 80% of their energy propelling you forward but EVs only lose about 10-20%.

My numbers might not be exact but that’s the general range.

Best case EV charging is about 80% efficient from the grid, power transmission losses are 7-14% depending on your local grid, EV power usage, from the batteries, is also somewhere around 80%

Efficient Gasoline engines come in at 25-30% efficient, Diesel somewhere around 35%. Hybrids can boost that some, because they can scavenge energy that'd otherwise be lost, but only somewhere between 5 and 15% in real world scenarios.

Article I just read says they score EVs higher because of regenerative breaking. 87-91% go to the wheels. In any case, very efficient.

https://www.motortrend.com/uploads/2022/08/Screen-Shot-2022-...

On a tangent, I've been spending the past month looking to see any form of charging I can do from a solar panel to the car without conversion losses and coming up blank. The battery is DC, the panel is DC; but you can't do direct DC charging at home, so you end up with DC -> AC -> DC.

It would be nice to get that last 20% efficiency back but I haven't found it.

You'd have to be able to convince the car that you're able to provide DC charging. Far from an impossibility, but a very roll your own kindof system, and you'll likely need some beefy DC/DC converters to do so.

You could also, similarly, subvert the car entirely and just disconnect it from the car, charge it from the panels/DC converter, and reconnect it when finished.

I'm pretty sure that superchargers are DC.

Unfortunately they don't sell supercharger components at home (and I won't be installing a battery to get that 150kw capacity at home).

On a side note, I don't want to necessarily fast charge the car; I just want to use the electricity from my solar panel in the most efficient possible way; that would be heating water, powering stuff in the house and charging my car; the last of which probably would take the most electricity.

> Best case EV charging is about 80% efficient from the grid, power transmission losses are 7-14% depending on your local grid, EV power usage, from the batteries, is also somewhere around 80%

Pure BS. Tesla is at 95% from outlet to battery on 240V, and it can be even more (depending on the need to run cooling/heating).

Grid transmission losses average at around 5% nationally, but it heavily depends on the location.

If you charge a tesla off a combined cycle oil fired power plant, both good examples of efficiency, after transmission/charging losses, you end up somewhere in the neighborhood of 28-30mpg of bunker oil.

I haven't bothered working out what the equivalent diesel or gasoline consumption is, just that both have a little higher energy density, and 30mpg is a good enough ballpark number to compare things by.

More or less, if you're concerned with CO2 output, a hybrid car is a better solution until we can build enough carbon free base load (currently nuclear, eventually fusion).

You are going to have to show you math here, because that is the lowest number I have ever seen. Not to mention, you just made up a power generation mix that doesn't exist, what nation uses mostly combined-cycle bunker oil plants? Will your next calculation feature power plant that runs off of old tires?

Cyprus does.

As I said, it's just a point of comparison that I could get good numbers on. Power plant operators are very tight lipped about fuel/kwh generated, but, people selling very large, industrial gensets happily offer those numbers, and they're seemingly honest about it from what I could tell.

Generally, combined cycle plants are ~50% efficient in terms of fuel to power, energy density of bunker C is 40Mj/kg, transmission losses are variable, but figure them at 10% so it's ballpark and easy, EV chargers are about 80% efficient, car extracts 80% of the energy it draws from the battery in normal use (remember the motor isn't all that's being powered).

So there's alot of loss along the way. Some of that is solvable, some of that is improvable, but ultimately the solution is clean, cheap power so the losses don't matter.

Until we've got that, hybrid drivetrains are a good solution, provided they're implemented well.

I know you're being an asshole with the whole tires comment, but, it would be a fun bit of math to do.

To my knowledge EV chargers are close to 90% efficient from wall to tire. So about 5% loss going to the battery and 5% loss going from battery to drive the tires. This should get a little bit better as higher voltage harnesses appear in EV's.

Bermuda. And a few other island states/nations. But they're the edge cases and most are seeing continued growth of solar, so hopefully not for long...

(The case of Bermuda is fascinating and annoying to me. You would think that they were really well positioned to take advantage of solar, but the banks there are very conservative about financing things like residential, solar and so it's been very slow to take off, despite energy prices that are some of the highest in the world)

Hawaii is the only state that produces a significant fraction of its electricity from oil. Something like 40% of continental US electricity is already low-carbon(nuclear, wind, solar) and the bulk of the rest is natural gas, which produces significantly less emissions per unit of energy than diesel. From a CO2 perspective, it is almost certainly better to drive a full electric vehicle, and that will only become more true as we continue to transition production.

Everything I've read has stated that even if you ran your EV off of a grid powered entirely by coal you still come out with less carbon output than ICE (after about 6 years of use). Do you have citations?

Edit for a quick citation for my claim:

https://graphics.reuters.com/ELECTRIC-VEHICLES/EMISSIONS/rlg...

What does your grid look like? Here’s mine: https://electricityproduction.uk/in/scotland/

That statement compares the one set of vehicles to another. It is using “batteries and electricity” to identify one set and “internal combustion” to identify another but it seems to be talking about the whole vehicle.

In that context, EVs are massively more efficient in terms of energy used to travel than ICEVs are. Energy storage capacity and density are a different question.

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