#battery chemistry

[techdriveplay]

What Is the Average Lifespan of Electric Car Batteries?

Electric cars are gaining popularity worldwide due to their environmental benefits and the push towards sustainable transportation. One common question among potential buyers is, “What is the average lifespan of electric car batteries?” This article will delve into the lifespan of these batteries, supported by relevant statistics, and explore factors that affect their longevity. Key…

[medicaldevicesindustrynews]

Nickel Cadmium Battery Market is Led by APAC

The nickel cadmium battery market was USD 1,541.6 million in 2023, which will touch USD 1,888.6 million, with a 3.0% compound annual growth rate, by 2030. Industry players are continuously trying to include modern technology in these devices, to remain competitive, considering the regular arrival of new technologies. The vented category, on the basis of cell type, accounted for the larger share…

[abatterylab]

Electric vehicles (EVs) have gained significant popularity in recent years due to their role in reducing carbon emissions and promoting sustainability. As the world recognizes the need for cleaner transportation options, advancements in battery technology play a key role in driving EV adoption. In this article, we will trace the evolution of battery technology in electric vehicles from the early days to current advances, and discuss future trends that are promising for the electric vehicle industry.

[mindblowingscience]

Water and electronics don't usually mix, but as it turns out, batteries could benefit from some H2O. By replacing the hazardous chemical electrolytes used in commercial batteries with water, scientists have developed a recyclable 'water battery' – and solved key issues with the emerging technology, which could be a safer and greener alternative.

Continue Reading.

[skylobster]

Cute, but also accurate

[facts-i-just-made-up]

Modern power cells could maintain stability by using ionic bonds to control their electrical charge, but this is illegal as it would result in a salt and battery.

[my-dark-happy-place]

Today I learned that when a battery (e.g. in fairy lights) leaks and it all crusts up in the compartment and the lights don't work anymore, you can easily fix that with a few household items.

First put on single use gloves. Take out the batteries and dispose of them safely. Then with an old toothbrush or like an eyebrow spoolie get rid of the bigger chunks of crusted stuff. After that dip a qtip in einher vinegar or citric acid and clean up the rest with that. Especially the contacts! But be careful that nothing leaks into the actual electric part with the plate and wiring. You will actually see it working, like it bubbles. Then wipe it dry with another qtip or paper towel and let it air dry before putting in new batteries and it should work like new. I did that today on 2 of my favorite fairy lights that stopped working entirely because of the battery leakage and they work perfectly again.

Please be careful and wear gloves (and maybe even glasses) and make sure nothing makes contact with your skin. Clean everything around you carefully afterwards, dispose of everything correctly and thoroughly wash your hands, even though you wore gloves!!

[covenawhite66]

Lithium Sulfur batteries replacing lithium ion batteries. By using sulfur-rich pyrite.

[lesbianlord-gaygod]

i found this one science channel and the guy is so pretty and the shit he does is so insane i love it.

wait ill give u guys a list of stuff he has done

made laser shotgun

made laser bazooka

million volts plasma (he even acknowledges that its illegal T-T)

Hooked up 100 car batteries in parallel which melt anything as soon as the circuit is completed

uranium crayon

cancer cheese.

drove into a tornado for research purposes

holy shit.

whys he so.

(also the fbi showed up to his house and he thought it was cuz he bought soviet and chinese military equipment but it was cuz he bought some cool chemicals in large quantities)

and everytime he uploads im so relieved he isnt dead

[jcmarchi]

Translating MIT research into real-world results

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/translating-mit-research-into-real-world-results/

Translating MIT research into real-world results

Inventive solutions to some of the world’s most critical problems are being discovered in labs, classrooms, and centers across MIT every day. Many of these solutions move from the lab to the commercial world with the help of over 85 Institute resources that comprise MIT’s robust innovation and entrepreneurship (I&E) ecosystem. The Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) draws on MIT’s wealth of I&E knowledge and experience to help researchers commercialize their breakthrough technologies through the J-WAFS Solutions grant program. By collaborating with I&E programs on campus, J-WAFS prepares MIT researchers for the commercial world, where their novel innovations aim to improve productivity, accessibility, and sustainability of water and food systems, creating economic, environmental, and societal benefits along the way.

The J-WAFS Solutions program launched in 2015 with support from Community Jameel, an international organization that advances science and learning for communities to thrive. Since 2015, J-WAFS Solutions has supported 19 projects with one-year grants of up to $150,000, with some projects receiving renewal grants for a second year of support. Solutions projects all address challenges related to water or food. Modeled after the esteemed grant program of MIT’s Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation, and initially administered by Deshpande Center staff, the J-WAFS Solutions program follows a similar approach by supporting projects that have already completed the basic research and proof-of-concept phases. With technologies that are one to three years away from commercialization, grantees work on identifying their potential markets and learn to focus on how their technology can meet the needs of future customers.

“Ingenuity thrives at MIT, driving inventions that can be translated into real-world applications for widespread adoption, implantation, and use,” says J-WAFS Director Professor John H. Lienhard V. “But successful commercialization of MIT technology requires engineers to focus on many challenges beyond making the technology work. MIT’s I&E network offers a variety of programs that help researchers develop technology readiness, investigate markets, conduct customer discovery, and initiate product design and development,” Lienhard adds. “With this strong I&E framework, many J-WAFS Solutions teams have established startup companies by the completion of the grant. J-WAFS-supported technologies have had powerful, positive effects on human welfare. Together, the J-WAFS Solutions program and MIT’s I&E ecosystem demonstrate how academic research can evolve into business innovations that make a better world,” Lienhard says.

Creating I&E collaborations

In addition to support for furthering research, J-WAFS Solutions grants allow faculty, students, postdocs, and research staff to learn the fundamentals of how to transform their work into commercial products and companies. As part of the grant requirements, researchers must interact with mentors through MIT Venture Mentoring Service (VMS). VMS connects MIT entrepreneurs with teams of carefully selected professionals who provide free and confidential mentorship, guidance, and other services to help advance ideas into for-profit, for-benefit, or nonprofit ventures. Since 2000, VMS has mentored over 4,600 MIT entrepreneurs across all industries, through a dynamic and accomplished group of nearly 200 mentors who volunteer their time so that others may succeed. The mentors provide impartial and unbiased advice to members of the MIT community, including MIT alumni in the Boston area. J-WAFS Solutions teams have been guided by 21 mentors from numerous companies and nonprofits. Mentors often attend project events and progress meetings throughout the grant period.

“Working with VMS has provided me and my organization with a valuable sounding board for a range of topics, big and small,” says Eric Verploegen PhD ’08, former research engineer in MIT’s D-Lab and founder of J-WAFS spinout CoolVeg. Along with professors Leon Glicksman and Daniel Frey, Verploegen received a J-WAFS Solutions grant in 2021 to commercialize cold-storage chambers that use evaporative cooling to help farmers preserve fruits and vegetables in rural off-grid communities. Verploegen started CoolVeg in 2022 to increase access and adoption of open-source, evaporative cooling technologies through collaborations with businesses, research institutions, nongovernmental organizations, and government agencies. “Working as a solo founder at my nonprofit venture, it is always great to have avenues to get feedback on communications approaches, overall strategy, and operational issues that my mentors have experience with,” Verploegen says. Three years after the initial Solutions grant, one of the VMS mentors assigned to the evaporative cooling team still acts as a mentor to Verploegen today.

Another Solutions grant requirement is for teams to participate in the Spark program — a free, three-week course that provides an entry point for researchers to explore the potential value of their innovation. Spark is part of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Innovation Corps (I-Corps), which is an “immersive, entrepreneurial training program that facilitates the transformation of invention to impact.” In 2018, MIT received an award from the NSF, establishing the New England Regional Innovation Corps Node (NE I-Corps) to deliver I-Corps training to participants across New England. Trainings are open to researchers, engineers, scientists, and others who want to engage in a customer discovery process for their technology. Offered regularly throughout the year, the Spark course helps participants identify markets and explore customer needs in order to understand how their technologies can be positioned competitively in their target markets. They learn to assess barriers to adoption, as well as potential regulatory issues or other challenges to commercialization. NE-I-Corps reports that since its start, over 1,200 researchers from MIT have completed the program and have gone on to launch 175 ventures, raising over $3.3 billion in funding from grants and investors, and creating over 1,800 jobs.

Constantinos Katsimpouras, a research scientist in the Department of Chemical Engineering, went through the NE I-Corps Spark program to better understand the customer base for a technology he developed with professors Gregory Stephanopoulos and Anthony Sinskey. The group received a J-WAFS Solutions grant in 2021 for their microbial platform that converts food waste from the dairy industry into valuable products. “As a scientist with no prior experience in entrepreneurship, the program introduced me to important concepts and tools for conducting customer interviews and adopting a new mindset,” notes Katsimpouras. “Most importantly, it encouraged me to get out of the building and engage in interviews with potential customers and stakeholders, providing me with invaluable insights and a deeper understanding of my industry,” he adds. These interviews also helped connect the team with companies willing to provide resources to test and improve their technology — a critical step to the scale-up of any lab invention.

In the case of Professor Cem Tasan’s research group in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, the I-Corps program led them to the J-WAFS Solutions grant, instead of the other way around. Tasan is currently working with postdoc Onur Guvenc on a J-WAFS Solutions project to manufacture formable sheet metal by consolidating steel scrap without melting, thereby reducing water use compared to traditional steel processing. Before applying for the Solutions grant, Guvenc took part in NE I-Corps. Like Katsimpouras, Guvenc benefited from the interaction with industry. “This program required me to step out of the lab and engage with potential customers, allowing me to learn about their immediate challenges and test my initial assumptions about the market,” Guvenc recalls. “My interviews with industry professionals also made me aware of the connection between water consumption and steelmaking processes, which ultimately led to the J-WAFS 2023 Solutions Grant,” says Guvenc.

After completing the Spark program, participants may be eligible to apply for the Fusion program, which provides microgrants of up to $1,500 to conduct further customer discovery. The Fusion program is self-paced, requiring teams to conduct 12 additional customer interviews and craft a final presentation summarizing their key learnings. Professor Patrick Doyle’s J-WAFS Solutions team completed the Spark and Fusion programs at MIT. Most recently, their team was accepted to join the NSF I-Corps National program with a $50,000 award. The intensive program requires teams to complete an additional 100 customer discovery interviews over seven weeks. Located in the Department of Chemical Engineering, the Doyle lab is working on a sustainable microparticle hydrogel system to rapidly remove micropollutants from water. The team’s focus has expanded to higher value purifications in amino acid and biopharmaceutical manufacturing applications. Devashish Gokhale PhD ’24 worked with Doyle on much of the underlying science.

“Our platform technology could potentially be used for selective separations in very diverse market segments, ranging from individual consumers to large industries and government bodies with varied use-cases,” Gokhale explains. He goes on to say, “The I-Corps Spark program added significant value by providing me with an effective framework to approach this problem … I was assigned a mentor who provided critical feedback, teaching me how to formulate effective questions and identify promising opportunities.” Gokhale says that by the end of Spark, the team was able to identify the best target markets for their products. He also says that the program provided valuable seminars on topics like intellectual property, which was helpful in subsequent discussions the team had with MIT’s Technology Licensing Office.

Another member of Doyle’s team, Arjav Shah, a recent PhD from MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering and a current MBA candidate at the MIT Sloan School of Management, is spearheading the team’s commercialization plans. Shah attended Fusion last fall and hopes to lead efforts to incorporate a startup company called hydroGel.  “I admire the hypothesis-driven approach of the I-Corps program,” says Shah. “It has enabled us to identify our customers’ biggest pain points, which will hopefully lead us to finding a product-market fit.” He adds “based on our learnings from the program, we have been able to pivot to impact-driven, higher-value applications in the food processing and biopharmaceutical industries.” Postdoc Luca Mazzaferro will lead the technical team at hydroGel alongside Shah.

In a different project, Qinmin Zheng, a postdoc in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is working with Professor Andrew Whittle and Lecturer Fábio Duarte. Zheng plans to take the Fusion course this fall to advance their J-WAFS Solutions project that aims to commercialize a novel sensor to quantify the relative abundance of major algal species and provide early detection of harmful algal blooms. After completing Spark, Zheng says he’s “excited to participate in the Fusion program, and potentially the National I-Corps program, to further explore market opportunities and minimize risks in our future product development.”

Economic and societal benefits

Commercializing technologies developed at MIT is one of the ways J-WAFS helps ensure that MIT research advances will have real-world impacts in water and food systems. Since its inception, the J-WAFS Solutions program has awarded 28 grants (including renewals), which have supported 19 projects that address a wide range of global water and food challenges. The program has distributed over $4 million to 24 professors, 11 research staff, 15 postdocs, and 30 students across MIT. Nearly half of all J-WAFS Solutions projects have resulted in spinout companies or commercialized products, including eight companies to date plus two open-source technologies.

Nona Technologies is an example of a J-WAFS spinout that is helping the world by developing new approaches to produce freshwater for drinking. Desalination — the process of removing salts from seawater — typically requires a large-scale technology called reverse osmosis. But Nona created a desalination device that can work in remote off-grid locations. By separating salt and bacteria from water using electric current through a process called ion concentration polarization (ICP), their technology also reduces overall energy consumption. The novel method was developed by Jongyoon Han, professor of electrical engineering and biological engineering, and research scientist Junghyo Yoon. Along with Bruce Crawford, a Sloan MBA alum, Han and Yoon created Nona Technologies to bring their lightweight, energy-efficient desalination technology to the market.

“My feeling early on was that once you have technology, commercialization will take care of itself,” admits Crawford. The team completed both the Spark and Fusion programs and quickly realized that much more work would be required. “Even in our first 24 interviews, we learned that the two first markets we envisioned would not be viable in the near term, and we also got our first hints at the beachhead we ultimately selected,” says Crawford. Nona Technologies has since won MIT’s $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, received media attention from outlets like Newsweek and Fortune, and hired a team that continues to further the technology for deployment in resource-limited areas where clean drinking water may be scarce. 

Food-borne diseases sicken millions of people worldwide each year, but J-WAFS researchers are addressing this issue by integrating molecular engineering, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence to revolutionize food pathogen testing. Professors Tim Swager and Alexander Klibanov, of the Department of Chemistry, were awarded one of the first J-WAFS Solutions grants for their sensor that targets food safety pathogens. The sensor uses specialized droplets that behave like a dynamic lens, changing in the presence of target bacteria in order to detect dangerous bacterial contamination in food. In 2018, Swager launched Xibus Systems Inc. to bring the sensor to market and advance food safety for greater public health, sustainability, and economic security.

“Our involvement with the J-WAFS Solutions Program has been vital,” says Swager. “It has provided us with a bridge between the academic world and the business world and allowed us to perform more detailed work to create a usable application,” he adds. In 2022, Xibus developed a product called XiSafe, which enables the detection of contaminants like salmonella and listeria faster and with higher sensitivity than other food testing products. The innovation could save food processors billions of dollars worldwide and prevent thousands of food-borne fatalities annually.

J-WAFS Solutions companies have raised nearly $66 million in venture capital and other funding. Just this past June, J-WAFS spinout SiTration announced that it raised an $11.8 million seed round. Jeffrey Grossman, a professor in MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering, was another early J-WAFS Solutions grantee for his work on low-cost energy-efficient filters for desalination. The project enabled the development of nanoporous membranes and resulted in two spinout companies, Via Separations and SiTration. SiTration was co-founded by Brendan Smith PhD ’18, who was a part of the original J-WAFS team. Smith is CEO of the company and has overseen the advancement of the membrane technology, which has gone on to reduce cost and resource consumption in industrial wastewater treatment, advanced manufacturing, and resource extraction of materials such as lithium, cobalt, and nickel from recycled electric vehicle batteries. The company also recently announced that it is working with the mining company Rio Tinto to handle harmful wastewater generated at mines.

But it’s not just J-WAFS spinout companies that are producing real-world results. Products like the ECC Vial — a portable, low-cost method for E. coli detection in water — have been brought to the market and helped thousands of people. The test kit was developed by MIT D-Lab Lecturer Susan Murcott and Professor Jeffrey Ravel of the MIT History Section. The duo received a J-WAFS Solutions grant in 2018 to promote safely managed drinking water and improved public health in Nepal, where it is difficult to identify which wells are contaminated by E. coli. By the end of their grant period, the team had manufactured approximately 3,200 units, of which 2,350 were distributed — enough to help 12,000 people in Nepal. The researchers also trained local Nepalese on best manufacturing practices.

“It’s very important, in my life experience, to follow your dream and to serve others,” says Murcott. Economic success is important to the health of any venture, whether it’s a company or a product, but equally important is the social impact — a philosophy that J-WAFS research strives to uphold. “Do something because it’s worth doing and because it changes people’s lives and saves lives,” Murcott adds.

As J-WAFS prepares to celebrate its 10th anniversary this year, we look forward to continued collaboration with MIT’s many I&E programs to advance knowledge and develop solutions that will have tangible effects on the world’s water and food systems.

Learn more about the J-WAFS Solutions program and about innovation and entrepreneurship at MIT.

[simplytiredtransboy]

I fucking hate being HoH like it's so fucked that we have to pay for the ability to hear?? Like you don't have money? Then you don't get to hear!

[your-god-empress-lavender]

Calcium sulphur batteries (uwu)

Okay, so, i've become interested in z-pinch studies for aerospace purposes (i'm really excited about the prospects, everything works on paper, but i naturally want to actually witness p+N14 fusion for above 0.01% of available protons before i go trying to get the materials to build a real liquid fueled SSTO fusion rocket, especially since there are thousands of folks way smarter than me who have presumably thought of this before and we don't have it yet, so yeah). Anyways, if i want the extremely large electricity input without making my electricity bill higher than a whole month's rent and getting my roommates mad at me, i'll need to collect solar or wind in a battery bank. Since lithium batteries are just about all immoral and expensive (yes i am writing this on a device powered by lithium batteries, it would be lovely if capitalists would take a hint and switch to things that just objectively perform better and are cheaper, but whatever), i figured this would be a nice excuse to experiment around with some new battery designs. Since all of them will require sulphur, i won't be able to really get into it before mid may due to some concerns about the smell and risks of getting sulphur powder everywhere (it's very yellow and hard to clean out), but i felt i might as well share my preliminary ideas. First off, in order to make the organic sulphur polymer, i'm looking to explore mostly citrate based polymers, perhaps with phenylalanine mixed in in order to both give more bulk as well as providing nitrogens for sulphenamides to form. Since i'll need urea later, i was also considering partially polymerizing urea with citric acid and adding that into the molten sulphur mix, but i'm less confident in the stability of that and a bit concerned about the potential noxious fumes produced. Regardless, that's the short of the sulphur cathode, details will definitely change after i refind that paper which went over a great way of preventing insoluble polysulphide production. I'm also gonna experiment with anode material and even the ions i use. I know i said "calcium sulphur batteries" in the title, but due to how common aluminium is and how much easier magnesium is to work with (and the fact that their specific energies are higher), i'll also be considering those two. Even beyond that, there are so many potential anode materials, including even amorphous carbon and carbon nitrides which i'd love to test since there's just so much to improve on and i'd rather do a lot of experiments with cheap to make materials and potentially land on a great solution than accept something subpar because it took less effort. Anyways, of the materials i plan on using, there's magnesium sulphate, aluminium sulphate, calcium chloride, potentially other calcium salts (is the salt with taurine soluble in water? IDK, can't find an answer so i'll test it), charcoal, vegetable oil, urea, and phenylalanine. Those may seem like an unrelated hodgepodge of compounds, but they've been chosen because they're what i have/will soon have and they're also all extremely cheap. If the urea works out well in the battery, i may have to make this project a meme and attempt to make a z-pinch device with as much urine as possible (use it to make ammonia for the plasma, to make the batteries, and i'm sure there's some way to use urine in a capacitor (maybe just distilling off the water to use as a dielectric? idk, it's been a while since i tried making a capacitor)).

Anyway, i really didn't expect this long trainwreck of a post to end with discussions of urine, but what can you do? This is all probably nonsensical, even by my standards, but basically i want batteries and i think i can make them cheaper per megajoule of stored energy than the ones i could buy, even accounting for the inevitable failed experiments.

[sqvaredpaper]

11/01/2024

Lab day tomorrowwwww

Hello! Good evening!

I am sat painstakingly making my way through a lab book write up, my brain is too full for this so I'm going to have a nice bath with a fancy bath bomb to relax a bit!

(ignore the handwriting)

ANYWAY tomorrow is a 6½ hour lab day which I will not enjoy, as I have to actually remember what happens in it afterward for a results discussion next week :(((((

other than that, I've had a good day! My group for this one project made a survey, if you take it I would be most appreciative! It's a research survey about how much awareness there is around the disposal of lithium ion batteries!

send it to people too? Pls? :)

[teachersource]

Alessandro Volta was born on February 18, 1745. An Italian physicist and chemist who was a pioneer of electricity and power who is credited as the inventor of the electric battery and the discoverer of methane. Volta proved that electricity could be generated chemically and debunked the prevalent theory that electricity was generated solely by living beings.

[mindblowingscience]

The “white gold” of clean energy, lithium is a key ingredient in batteries large and small, from those powering phones and laptops to grid-scale energy storage systems. Though relatively abundant, the silvery-white metal could soon be in short supply due to a complex sourcing landscape affected by the electric vehicle (EV) boom, net-zero goals, and geopolitical factors. Valued at over $65 billion in 2023, the lithium-ion battery (LIB) global market is expected to grow by over 23% in the next eight years, likely heightening existing challenges in lithium supply.

Continue Reading.

[viksalos]

considering adopting some kind of carl sagan life arc. be raised reform jewish, be a constant advocate of balancing skepticism with wonder, ultimately make no definitive claims about god. publish a bunch of papers. fling some kinda record into space. smoke a shitload of weed