12
votes
IBM’s lithium-ion battery uses seawater materials instead of heavy metals, charges in just five minutes
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- Authors
- Andrea D. Steffen
- Published
- Jan 4 2020
- Word count
- 420 words
"Seawater materials" is kinda vague. We all know it consists of water and table salt, which can be split into hydrogen, oxygen, chloride, and sodium. But you can't make a battery from that, right? So what else does it contain?
I found an article about "mining" minerals from seawater, which explains a bit how, and what minerals can be extracted, including a list of the 40 most common minerals. (More readable list here.)
A few select quotes:
So that gives us a few more to choose from: Hydrogen, oxygen, chloride, sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium, sulphur, uranium (which I doubt these batteries contain), and the all-important lithium.
There's what appears to be a misquote in the Intelligent Living article:
What IBM's press release actually says is:
So my conclusion is that the batteries use three different (probably high-tech) materials, each composed of some combination of these 10 minerals that can be extracted commercially from seawater.
After reading this, I am now convinced these are lithium-sulphur batteries.
This seems like great news, but I'm typically skeptical of such claims. Anyone with a better understanding of physics or battery tech want to jump in here and tell me what I'm missing? How is this too good to be true or should I be rejoicing?
I’m hesitant too. I think the biggest catch is in the use of in initial tests. Not to say that they aren’t true, but until they’re out on market I’m not sold. Also if the tech is patented and closed-gated then It also sucks. I’m still cautiously optimistic though!!!
Offtopic Tildes proposal: Should we start tagging these sort of announcements by the Technology Readiness Level they apply to? Having a
[trl.5]
tag applied to submissions that meet that criteria could be a cool way of either tempering or bolstering enthusiasm in the announcement, I'm sure we're all well-drained by the general hype train around battery improvement announcements.I'm not opposed but I think I'm possibly the worst person to ask about this. I don't filter at all or look at tags when scrolling on tildes and wouldn't notice anything like that. I also would feel uncomfortable trying to guess the TRL of things I'm not an expert in. That being said, if it is a feature that would be useful to others, then let's do it.
More direct source: IBM blog