This shit could be so big. And if China gets the jump on US on new energy storage tech, the economic race over the next decade might not even be close.
i’m about 30 now and I’ve been reading about “breakthroughs” like this since I was about 15. They never seem to go anywhere in the west because
A) you have to reorient supply chains, which doesn’t happen because capitalism refuses to plan for the future
B) manufacturers have to develop new methods to mass manufacture these new inventions, which doesn’t happen because capitalism refuses to plan for the future
C) Capitalists would rather continue with their most profitable mode of production than invest in a new one. I’m sure you can guess why.
It’s the same reason we don’t have graphene stuff yet. I remember reading about graphene in 2007-2009 and even though it was invented in the early 00s they never developed a way to mass manufacture it. I even read a couple of papers that had some promising methods but institutional investors wouldn’t touch it.
I’m no expert, but many of the breakthrough claims touted by media tend to be very much media opinion.
There are a couple factors that make adoption of this tech fairly plausable: Sodium supply chains already exist in industrial capacities, so while demand would increase for sodium, companies already exist that canscale to supply manufacturers.
This tech is about as close to a perfect direct replacement as you could get for manufacturing. Certain processes in the manufacturing chain are different, especially for the electrodes, but almost all the battery manufacturing would be identical.
Graphene should not have been hyped the way it was. As you said, most of the issue with graphene is in the fanufacturing process. All the components that I have looked at for this tech appear fairly easy to scale to industrial applications.
Just wait until capitalism invents trash pit mining to recover precious metals that could have been recycled but capitalism encouraged them to just throw away. So based!
He really skimmed over the whole “we’re going to run out of lithium by 2040” thing holy shit
He’s covered it before, I believe. I don’t think it’s glossing over it so much as an expectation that his audience is well aware by now how fucked our current dependence on lithium and rare-earth minerals is.
I can’t recall exact figures, but I believe that lithium wasn’t even the main bottleneck – cobalt was. It’s why anyone who was aware of global mineral resources knew years ago that this whole electric vehicle / renewable energy paradigm was pretty much wishful thinking without a new battery tech emerging sometime soon. Everyone kinda just crossed their fingers and hoped it would work out.
:very-smart:
Per a source who has actual chemistry experience, unlike me, apparently Prussian White burns to Cyanide + Phosphorous. That seems like an issue for mobile use.
