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The Battery That Will Make Fossil
Fuels & Nuclear Power A Thing Of The Past
Will Lockett
July 10th, 2022
![](images/images_07_14_2022/pic3.jpg)
Photo by
Karsten Würth on
Unsplash
At half the price of lithium-ion,
CO² batteries are set to kickstart a renewable energy revolution.
At half the price of lithium-ion, CO²
batteries are set to kickstart a renewable energy revolution.
It seems mad that in this day and age, we
are still digging up oil and burning it for power. This archaic method
not only destroys the planet, it is also expensive and has even
kickstarted wars. But a recent innovation could make fossil fuels, and
even some next-gen power sources, completely obsolete by making solar
and wind far cheaper and greener. Welcome to the miraculous world of
the CO² battery.
Firstly,
what is a CO² battery?
Well, it is a system that stores energy by
changing the state of carbon dioxide in a closed loop. When the
battery is discharged, it is just a massive dome filled with
atmospheric pressure carbon dioxide. To charge it, the carbon dioxide
is pumped out of the dome and compressed, which heats it up. The heat
is removed and stored in a device known as a
TES (Thermal Energy Storage), which turns the carbon dioxide into
a cold, dense liquid that is then stored in tanks. Now energy is
stored as heat in the TES and as pressure in the liquid carbon dioxide
tanks.
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Discharging the battery is a two-step
process. Firstly, the tanks are opened, which releases the
high-pressure liquid carbon. As the carbon exits the tank, the
pressure drops, which causes it to transition back into a gas and
rapidly expand. This gas is then passed through the TES, where it is
heated and expands even further. This double expansion creates
colossal pressure, which is channelled through a turbine that spins a
generator and makes electricity. The now atmospheric pressure carbon
dioxide is then pumped back into the dome, ready for the battery to be
charged again.
So this is a relatively complex piece of
kit, and due to it needing large tanks, you probably won’t find one of
these powering an EV (Electric Vehicle) any time soon. But what makes
this odd battery so revolutionary? Well, five things: cost, carbon
footprint, scalability, and lifecycle. These factors make it ideal for
a grid battery. Let me explain.
Wind and solar power are excellent, creating
loads of energy with practically no carbon emissions! But the wind
doesn’t always blow, and the sun doesn’t always shine. So we need to
use giant
grid batteries to store the energy during times of surplus and
then discharge it during times of shortage.
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Rendering of a Tesla grid battery —
Tesla
The current battery of choice for this
process is the lithium-ion battery, the same technology that powers
EVs, laptops, and your phone.
But CO² batteries are just straight-up better
at being used in grid batteries.
Their main advantage is cost. Anyone who has
bought an EV will tell you that batteries are expensive! This makes
the MWh-sized packs needed for solar and wind storage a sizeable
expense. But because CO² batteries can be built with easy-to-access
materials,
they can be built for around half the cost, making wind and solar
farms far more affordable.
This leads to CO² batteries having a far
lower environmental impact. Lithium-ion batteries are not the
environmental angels you might think they are. Building them requires
a lot of energy and transportation, so their production creates a
sizeable carbon footprint. Furthermore, the mining needed to
access the raw materials has plenty of
environmental and humanitarian issues. But, on the other hand, CO²
batteries can be built using readily available recycled materials.
This makes their impact on our precious planet far more gentle.
![](images/images_07_14_2022/pic6.jpg)
Lithium-ion battery production is
far from eco-friendly — Photo by
Dominik Vanyi on
Unsplash
This also means they are really easily
scaleable. We are currently
barrelling headfirst into a battery crisis. Material supply chains
can’t handle how quickly demand for batteries has skyrocketed in
recent years. This is why the price of materials such as lithium,
nickel, and manganese has gone through the roof. But CO² batteries
don’t have the same supply chain issues, which means thousands of
the batteries can be built rapidly with ease. So, in theory, the whole
world could embrace this technology incredibly quickly.
Finally, we come to the lifecycle. Anyone
who owns an iPhone will tell you that lithium-ion batteries don’t last
forever. Every time they charge, the internal structure of the cell
degrades, and over time, the capacity of the battery shrinks. Modern
high-end lithium-ion cells
can last for up to 2,000 charges, but the cheaper ones can only manage
a few hundred before their performance is severely degraded. This
means that lithium-ion grid batteries will need to be replaced or
expanded every ten years or so. Not only is this a considerable
expense, but it also it creates more ecological damage via extra
carbon emissions and mining. But again, the CO² battery is far
superior, given it
doesn’t degrade. In theory, these batteries could last hundreds of
years with regular maintenance, meaning they will cost less and have a
reduced ecological impact.
However, CO² batteries aren’t quite the
perfect solution.
Lithium-ion batteries are around 99% efficient. This means if you
charge one with 1 kWh of power, you will get 0.99 kWh back out. This
high efficiency means we need fewer solar panels and wind turbines to
keep a high power output. However,
CO² batteries lag far behind, achieving a maximum of only 80%
efficiency. This means we would need to build larger solar and
wind farms to have the same high output. This will increase costs,
create a larger carbon footprint (from producing more panels and
turbines), and potentially increase habitat loss (for solar power in
particular).
![](images/images_07_14_2022/pic7.jpg)
We would need to make larger solar
forms to negate power lost to the CO² battery — Photo by
Zbynek Burival on
Unsplash
However, the cost savings of the CO² battery
should be more than enough to offset the cost and carbon footprint of
needing larger farms. Habitat loss due to larger solar farms
can also be mitigated with modern, higher-efficiency solar panels and
careful ecological planning.
So, overall, CO² batteries can make wind and
solar power cheaper and reduce their overall environmental impact. But
wind and solar power are already the
lowest carbon forms of energy we have, and they are also
the cheapest forms of energy too. This means CO² batteries will
just turn their ecological and financial credentials up to 11.
Such an incredible offering could kick-start
a renewable revolution. Why would you bother looking into nuclear
power or keep your gas-fired power station running when you could get
far more power and far less ecological impact from a CO²
battery-backed solar or wind farm? Developing nations will see this as
a way to rapidly grow their energy infrastructure for less cost with
the added bonus of being eco-friendly, while developed nations can see
this as a
cheap and sustainable way to transition their energy to carbon-neutral
sources without going bankrupt (which is quite important,
considering today’s economy).
![](images/images_07_14_2022/pic8.jpg)
Why bother with nuclear or gas? —
Photo by
Dan Meyers on
Unsplash
I say these batteries “could
kick-start a renewable revolution.” This sea-change has
already been set in motion, as the first CO² batteries are
already available from
Energy Dome (who invented this concept). Because the CO²
battery concept
was only conceived in February 2020, this demonstrates how
rapidly this technology can be developed, implemented, and
scaled. With no complex manufacturing, no significant safety
concerns (in comparison to the tendency of lithium-ion
batteries to catch on fire) and no sensitive supply chain, it
has gone from concept to reality in the blink of an eye.
It just goes to show that you don’t
need a functional fusion reactor or sci-fi technology to save
our precious world. Just a bit of ingenious lateral thinking
with currently available technology can yield incredible
results remarkably quickly. With each advancement like this,
our future becomes brighter and brighter. We just need to
adopt these fantastic machines and abandon our old, archaic
ways.
Green Play Ammonia™, Yielder® NFuel Energy.
Spokane, Washington. 99212
www.exactrix.com
509 995 1879 cell, Pacific.
exactrix@exactrix.com
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