Author Topic: Ambri  (Read 1677 times)

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Adriaan Kragten

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Ambri
« on: October 19, 2022, 04:28:02 PM »
Today I have viewed an interesting video called: "Ambri: A Battery that Could Change the World". link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRyo0Nr7CrY  This liquid metal battery makes use of molten Calcium and Antimony separated by molten NaCl. It is meant for large scale storage of renewable energy and it has about an infinitive lifetime if it is kept on the required temperature.

dnix71

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Re: Ambri
« Reply #1 on: October 19, 2022, 05:15:33 PM »
Not likely. Antimony is too valuable for hardening metals. Like bullets and lead-acid batteries. Most of it comes from non-US sources.

MattM

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Re: Ambri
« Reply #2 on: October 19, 2022, 09:30:39 PM »
Antimony is $12k per metric ton.  Lithium is $17k per metric ton.

I think they will be fine.

dnix71

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Re: Ambri
« Reply #3 on: October 20, 2022, 09:07:06 AM »
Price isn't what matters. It is a strategic military item. China did and still does export about 1/2 the world's supply. The US exports 2%.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidblackmon/2021/05/06/antimony-the-most-important-mineral-you-never-heard-of/?sh=2c9e50eb2b23

Adriaan Kragten

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Re: Ambri
« Reply #4 on: October 20, 2022, 11:08:06 AM »
In the movie it is explained that the two metals are purified by the charging and discharging process. The hot liquids are stored in a stainless steel container. This steel may be worn after about 20 years but it can be melted to make new stainless steel. The two metals can be used for another battery and this process can be repeated forever. So this is a very circular process and therefore it justifies a rather high beginning price of the metals. If we compare this with modern wind turbine blades made out of a combination of plastics and glass fibre or carbon fibre, the blade is pure chemic waste at the end of the lifetime of the wind turbine.

Bruce S

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Re: Ambri
« Reply #5 on: October 21, 2022, 12:05:57 PM »
Been watching this company since I first saw them pop up.
It's good to see them moving forward, the concept is is fairly easily understandable, not to mention all the components are reusable.

I'll keep watching them.
Bruce S
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SparWeb

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Re: Ambri
« Reply #6 on: October 22, 2022, 05:10:28 PM »
Thank you for bringing this up.  I've never heard of it before, but glad I have, now.
No one believes the theory except the one who developed it. Everyone believes the experiment except the one who ran it.
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MattM

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Re: Ambri
« Reply #7 on: October 23, 2022, 07:40:21 AM »
The issue I worry about is, it sounds too good to be true.

bigrockcandymountain

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Re: Ambri
« Reply #8 on: October 23, 2022, 06:53:03 PM »
It sounds pretty excellent if the marketing is true.  It seems like in the next 10 years, we will see a wide variety of energy storage solutions to adapt the grid to renewables.  I tend to consider batteries a last resort.

Pumped hydro still makes the most sense to me.  Maybe it isn't more popular because it isn't possible to patent so it has no fancy sales pitch. 

I read an article saying that grid tied solar was no good without a $20000 wall of lithium batteries.  They had no data about return on investment of those batteries, but it was probably compelling to someone who doesn't know volts from watts.  I suspect it was written by a company that sells home lithium batteries.

SparWeb

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Re: Ambri
« Reply #9 on: October 23, 2022, 07:27:36 PM »
One thing obviously missing from the Ambri website is a "datasheet".  You know, the one-page summary of the product's characteristics that they are trying to sell to you?  No sign of one.
I suppose it won't be, if they aren't prepared yet to sell a product to "just anyone", but it's also a sign that they haven't prepared to sell any products at all.  Not yet at least.  The photos you see may be still experimental units. 

Another missing thing, a little more subtle, is any claim about testing, except "we have tested it".  What I would look for are tests done by independent bodies that would evaluate the performance with a suite of calibrated equipment, climate controlled building, and so on.  The test would publish data on the lifecycle of these cells, similar to the tests done on lithium cells, demonstrating round-trip efficiency, variables such as temperature and rate of discharge.  Connecting back to the first missing item, if there are experimental units being built, well then for whom?  Surely that kind of test would attract attention.  And be worth touting on their website.  Not a word of what all these containers' worth of cells are going to be used for.

Third thing that's missing, though it is much less likely to be on the public website, is contact with the US military because this thing is clearly targeted at needs such as theirs.  Which suggests an answer to what's missing at question 2 above!
No one believes the theory except the one who developed it. Everyone believes the experiment except the one who ran it.
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DamonHD

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Re: Ambri
« Reply #10 on: October 24, 2022, 03:54:20 AM »
One problem with testing by third parties is that if your product is sufficiently different to existing ones there simply won't be a suite of tests defined and you have to tell the test house what to test/validate anyway.  I went through this a couple of times, and the standards bodies just believed me in the end when shown our test data.  (Ha!  Briefly I was was an internationally accredited test house and standards body for this the first time around, I think!)

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mab

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Re: Ambri
« Reply #11 on: October 24, 2022, 12:46:45 PM »
I was hoping there would be some reference  to figures for round trip efficiency, maximum rates for charge /discharge, and standing losses.

We need storage to provide grid stability- in the UK we end up maintaining 6-10% gas powered generation even when there's wind and solar surplus as the grid needs the rotating steam turbines to provide reserve capacity/ frequency stability. A suitable short term storage system could replace that. For this we need high charge/discharge rates

Then of course we need longer term storage to keep energy for lulls in RE. For this we need  capacity and low/moderate self discharge.

He kind of implied that if the battery was regularly charging/discharging then it wouldn't need additional heating to keep it hot - suggesting round trip efficiency isn't that great. That's not necessarily a deal breaker as surplus solar /wind has negligible cost, and punped hydro is only 60% RTE, but i guess we just have to wait and see if it comes to anything...

Adriaan Kragten

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Re: Ambri
« Reply #12 on: October 26, 2022, 05:30:57 AM »
On YouTube there are several other video's about the Ambri battery in which you can find more information than given in the video of my original link. They are starting up serial production but are still in the testing phase and it seems to me that they are not yet that far that anyone can buy a battery. I think that this is the reason why you can't find a detailled specification or an object report with test results. In one of the other videos it is mentioned that the efficiency is about 80 %. If you compare this with the efficiency of hydrogen storage, which is about 30 %, it seems a much more prommesing option.

joestue

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Re: Ambri
« Reply #13 on: October 26, 2022, 06:08:58 PM »
There was a calcium antimony battery I read about a few years ago..or maybe it was something else, but it only made half a volt per cell.

The problem is the high resistance of the liquid salt (low melting point eutectic mix of nitrate salts.

High resistance to the point of only 50kilowatts per cubic meter of battery at the 50% efficiency point. This isn't very good....


I wonder if anyone has tried a sodium lead battery. Sees to me it should work at 1 volt per cell.


Molten nacl needs 800C but you can drop that to 600 if you mix in potassium chloride.
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Adriaan Kragten

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Re: Ambri
« Reply #14 on: November 05, 2022, 10:00:02 AM »
I have just viewed a new video about the Ambri battery in which the recent developments are described. The title is: Liquid Metal Batteries are going Global! link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqqnDPVwHJE

dnix71

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Re: Ambri
« Reply #15 on: November 05, 2022, 04:28:05 PM »
 Adriaan Kragten The year is almost over and they still haven't delivered their first real battery. Bill Gates put big money behind them, but that doesn't mean it's a commercially viable technology.

kitestrings

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Re: Ambri
« Reply #16 on: November 07, 2022, 02:16:51 PM »
Thanks for sharing this Adriaan.  I found it most interesting.

clockmanFRA

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Re: Ambri
« Reply #17 on: November 09, 2022, 01:31:54 AM »
Yes, most interesting.

The science itself looks good, however, the battery container itself will be an engineering nightmare.   
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Bruce S

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Re: Ambri
« Reply #18 on: November 09, 2022, 08:32:28 AM »
ClockmanFRA;
My guess is they may very well use Ceramics as both an insulator and container building material.
Rightfully so they don't give a whole lot of information, no matter what U-tuber you watch. Even the VC's (venture capitalists) aren't giving out a lot of information.
As a VC (No I am not investor in this one (unfortunately)) I understand since there are NDA's (Non-Disclosure Agreements) in place to protect the proprietor of these. 

Cheers
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