This Battery is Made of Sand
Vložit
- čas přidán 13. 03. 2023
- This is a battery made of sand. It’s 23 feet tall, filled with 100 tons of sand, and could be one solution to energy storage. Here's why.
If you liked this and want to support optimistic tech content, subscribe! czcams.com/users/cleoabram?sub...
And you might like this longer video too: • What We Get Wrong Abou...
All fun and games until some guy falls in it and turns to sandman
Lol
THE RUNNING WINNER OF THE 1ST STAGE
Not sandman molten man
That’s not funny, that happened to my uncle Ben
@@MrDsturman did he survive?
Thank you for telling us what it was in Celsius for the rest of the world
Edit: for all the haters in the comment,thanks for the likes 😄
She said it wrong anyways. The video shows 500 degrees celsius, so the information of 1000 F is false and should’ve been 932F
Hey I never cry when someone in a video uses Celsius and Kilometers without an automatic conversion! If it's Important enough to me I'll do the calculations myself and go on ...
@@jx.cx.6514 Well, there is also this idea of catering to the majority, or, you know, using the standard scientific units.
It is actually targeting 500-600C (it is built in Europe after all) and the US media rounded it to 1000F and then she converted it back to Celsius and gave us an overly accurate number... So while I am happy she at least tried to convert it in this case it was done poorly :)
@@maximumkillmtg Understandable and laudable as a content creator, but regardless of "either or", instead of wasting recording time apologizing for using a specific measuring system, just SUPERIMPOSE the other unit of measurements on the video and continue with information .. In my case it's a wonderful mental exercise to think in both standard and metric systems. It allows for my mind to think in and consider several dimensions. It's like being bilingual or a polyglot; because of having mental access to different languages and cultural experiences, I gain a level of understanding greater than a person who chooses to only speak one language.
“Without much loss” is a vague way of saying, “I dont know the efficiency, there’s a good chance its useless”.
Forget the efficiency, converting this energy back to electricity looks like a nightmare. Heat is usually a byproduct of energy conversion. One way or another the sand needs to be used to heat up water to start producing steam that will create electricity. The only way I see that getting is done, is by connecting water pipes inside this "battery". But the problem is that you are going to expose those pipes to heat 24/7 and without a constant stream of water, they can frankly just overheat.
You are a sweetheart. The efficiency is known. It's intentionally left out because of how pathetic this is.
Yes, I can see that you are right. I read more about this sand battery and as expected, the results were abysmal. Frankly though, it would be much more efficient to directly supply back the electricity to the grid. I know that some powerplants intentionally reduce their power output at certain hours to account for this additional source of electricity. @@andrewfaber9014
I just looked it up, it’s 50%-60% efficient. Which I will admit is more than I expected.
But definitely a lot worse over chemical based batteries
It's even worse than that. Sand will disperse its heat eventually. The more heat you give the sand, the faster it will go down. The 50% efficiency claim by itself is inaccurate because they ignore for which time period can it even retain that efficiency. Feeding the excess electricity back to the grid is the best thing to do.@@TheeDarkLlama
we use the same kind of technology where we store it in the ground/mountain rock underneath the house. The heat it stores there is then used to re-heat the house over the year.
It's very cool! A new school in my city has this.
Where?
No reply because it's BS
Geo based heat pumps don't work this way. They use the temperature differential between underground and ground level to facilitate heat pumping. But there is no "getting back" the heat you pump into the ground, as it gets dispersed.
I wish there were details on how the energy leaves the sand.
As a guess, I would say they replace the hot water from the pipes with cold water. As the cold water runs in it, it get heated by the warm sand. Now you got hot water to use it!
The sand in this instance is stored in a insulated steel silo with heat transfer pipes and charged with electricity - with electrical energy transferred to heat storage using a closed loop air-pipe arrangement. Air is heated using electrical resistors and circulated in the heat transfer piping.
Heat is extracted by blowing cool air through the transfer pipes, with the air heating up as it passes through and converts water to process steam or district heating in an air-to-water heat exchanger. That is one way to do it
Hope they're well be a full vid in time which might explain it
Insulated water pipes (insulated while outside the tank not when inside.. duh)..
That's how we do it.
With those constantly high internal temperatures (refer to the Fahrenheit vs. Celsius discussion in the video,) a closed circuit of pipes could be plumbed through the sand chamber, with water entering in one end and super-heated steam coming out of the other. The steam can then spin a turbine to produce the electrons, as you would find with a coal or methane generating facility.
The battery: _is made of a ton of sand_
Anakin Skywalker: _[confused screaming]_
Yes! 😂
Meanwhile, Sheev: UNLIMITED POWER
*100 tons
My first thought 🤣
It’s coarse, and rough, and it gets everywhere. 🧐
The "future" when this was used in the 70s and earlier using dirt, water, and rocks, as heat storage. Use it to store heat from the summer, cooling the homes, and heating them with that heat in the winter.
People reinventing the wheel
Some economic aspects here: the losses of the storage are getting higher with longer storage periods and with a higher storage temperature. Especially if you consider to power a generator with that heat, because then you need to run a steam cycle with the heat and for that you could generally assume an efficiency below 40%. That means 60% of the solar and wind power you put in will be lost forever, unless you recover the excess heat.
Hi Anthony, how exactly does it works? 1st how it's possible to heat up the sand? 2nd how I can use the heated sand to use the heat in the winter? 3rd how I can convert the heat back to electric energy like the lady has shown it in her video? Many thanks.
She said it is a battery which means the sand works as an electrolyte in molten form similar to the dilute H2SO4 in your car battery
Ah, sand bombs. My favorite
"Hey sorry my phone was dead, I forgot to charge my 100 tons of sand"
LMAOXHAHAH😂
We are so trained to operate on an individual level- yet we are social beings.
@@noone4474 not really.
Lol I know your kidding, and that is hilarious it really is, but for anyone that reads this later and really wants to know what’s up, energy density per unit volume is the amount of energy capable of being stored in a storage medium by volume, so for lithium ion batteries that’s typically 100-250 WH/L that’s watt hours per liter, so per unit of volume less energy can be stored in the sand than a lithium ion battery, however an iPhone 14 battery holds just over 12 and 1/2 watt hrs of energy, this sand battery can hold around 8mw (mega watts) of energy, that’s roughly 8 million watt hrs worth of energy, that’s enough energy to charge 633,000 iPhone 14’s from 0-100.
@@arkman117 came here to say this. she really could have tried a little harder to explain it, because theres definitely swathes of people that think their phone is more powerful than 100 tonne of hot sand
You forgot to say how they convert the heat back to electrical energy. It would be nice to know the overall efficiency after all conversions, as well.
They don't it's only heat storage for the winter. I mean in principle you could use it to super heat steam and turn it into electricity etc but I don't think the efficiencies would indeed work out. What they do is that they heat up water that is then distributed via district heating. So it's also limited to places that have district heating (in Norway this is popular).
@@InTimeTravellerdude thanks i was super curious
I agree with this. I think simply saying one side for clicks is not honest science communication.
@@mihaiat3ka186 - definition of battery - a container consisting of one or more cells, in which chemical energy is converted into electricity and used as a source of power
@@bcataiji what is chemical about sand being heated by electric coils ? THERMAL BATTERY, it stores calories not volts
I had a similar idea before I knew about it. it's good to see it being used successfully somewhere by someone
america be like:- sand need democracy 😂😂
under rated comment😂
Because only America has invaded other countries for resources, right?
@@coyaxx2770 not really. it's cliché and dumb as sand
@@Kube_Dog no it's funny.. And America deserves all the jokes made about it!
@@faz_s America deserves jokes, for sure. But it's not funny. I mean, if someone is really stupid and simple, like short bus level, okay, I guess.
Grandpa had a 1,000 gl. Tank that he had flu pipes and water lines in , the tank was full of sand. He would burn wood or Cole in a berner made in the side of the tank. This would heat the sand during the day, so he didn't have to leave a fire unattended at night. He got most of the parts from pulling out an old boiler. From a house that he was remodeling, the owner wanted a gas furnace put in. And he only had to go out a few times a day to stoke the fire. And it was always nice and toasty in the mornings when we were having breakfast, after which he would start stoking the fire again. Once again old technology being used in a new way.
I’m sorry for being this person but.
Coal* burner*
Cool story, my grandpa just left the fire burning all night
Well, that's not all he had to do. You must know he would occasionally have to remove the ashes. When my dad operated a wood stove in our home back in the seventies and eighties, that was really one of the biggest jobs. Those ashes would have hot coals in them as well so it was quite a dangerous job.
😊
@@somethingsomething404and flue pipes
I don't understand what the hot sand was heating and how. Also, is the gas furnace a separate house? Thanks!!!
In Spain, in the Tabernas Desert, there's a MASSIVE solar farm which uses a similar method however, replace sand with salt, it's more expensive, however, it stores the heat muuuuuuch better than just sand, look it up, it's awesome :3
That same company came to Arizona and we built a sister plant to that one.
If you dump the solar assembly and replace it with a nuclear reactor you can use the salt to cool it in a heat exchanger 🤓
I was thinking that 540 degrees seemed a little cool. I think I was remembering salt. That explains it.
@@1One2Three5Eight13 the thermal salt batteries that we use at our plant are heated to 900 degrees Fahrenheit. The salt goes molten around 500 or so I’m told.
i also learned from your comment that there is a desert in europe thank you
Very impressive, now she has to explain how to fit a 100 ton, 23 ft battery in my two bedroom house.
It’s…. It’s meant to go on the grid not in your house. You missed the ‘getting the energy out’ problem while you were busy tearing down your straw man.
@@myriadtechrepair1191 why would you put a heat storage on your energy grid?
and why do you believe stuff thats obviously fake from a random internet user to then criticise the sceptic for a valid point?
are you really that stupid?
underground, obviously.
@@myriadtechrepair1191in their defense, Cleo doesn't really go into the "getting the energy out" part of the equation, and afaik these aren't really used for grid storage and instead are mostly only useful in regions with communal heat piping (more common in VERY cold regions -- which tracks with the name on the thermal battery "POLAR NIGHT ENERGY") since the stored heat can be released usefully as heat rather than needing to turn a turbine somewhere to produce electricity (at which point the losses become pretty substantial)
Wonder how well they will work in the winter.
“Who cares when you have space?!”😆😂
I feel like America’s gonna invade countries with lots of sand -oh wait
Why? the government would never do that.
THEY NEED DEMOCRATY ! 😂😂
@@asherb938 I dunno if you're sarcastic but the US government has done more atrocities than you can imagine, they'd definitely do that
@@asherb938Lmao, the "oh wait" is the realization that they've already invaded the Middle East.
@@wawa7236😂 facts..
If it can use desert sand, great! We have that in abundance with little use for it.
If it relies on beach/sea/ocean sand, then it's not good, because that's actually a relatively scarce resource.
Any reasonably fine aggregate is usable. This system is primarily for heat storage only.
Highly doubt that this principle relies on the material's abrassion, like concrete. So any sand would do
River sand also bad. Thanks for your comment 😊
sand mafias world wide plundering beaches and such.
what is the tourism industry thinking about that?
Its not sand it's Phase change material with high latent heat
brb gonna use a sand timer for my phones now
Some lightsaber wielding guy would be very mad when he found out about this battery
HAHAHA
That's a good one.
But, you don't really wield light, do you?
The only downfall is that the neighborhood cats keep pooping in it
😂
Hot poop help the sand retain heat..
Bwahahaaaaaaa😂
Each time it's a different cat because they learned their lesson
@@logan8939that's Funny 😂
Sand is a problem because there's an air gap inside. Poor conductor. Plus, the tubing will get cooled down so that the ambient heat can't reach there anymore. That's why molten salt was a consideration but it requires much more heat.
Sand is a the cheapest option but far from the best.
I think water would be the best choice because of it's availability and thermal properties
@@bennyboyy7or how about taking lessons from hydroelectric dams?
@@bennyboyy7I think the inefficiency of thermal transfer of the sand is partially a design choice, because then it can more easily hold in this heat instead of transferring it to the water all at once or to the outer walls,
Aghhhhhhhhhhhhh too complex..
The future of not having enough sand lol
I appreciated the awareness of Fahrenheit to Celsius conversion. You earned a like and comment 👌
" I don't like sand"-Anakin Skywalker
I took notice of this comment and know what it means but I had no emotional response 🫤 🤷♀️
... especially when some nob heats it to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit...
Anakin doesn't care about the future of our children, he has uh...
He has proven that
Phase 1: Heat up sand
Phase 2: ???
Phase 3: Get energy back
All my lights at home and my car run on hot sand. It makes total sense.
I assume sand hot air will boil water to make steam and move the turbine or something. She left the most important detail. I think Germany or somewhere in Europe they heat the sand during summer and use it during winter to heat homes since the pipes are connected underground for all homes
So for the people that dont understand this doesn't hold electricity, it holds heat. Which can be turned to heat your home and to electricity. So technically this isn't a battery, just hot sand.
Edit: this technology is not new, is one of the oldest technologies to hold heat in the world, but mainly used in hot climate because the sand was heated with the power of the sun during the day and kept you warm at night.
Phase 3: profit!
@@GuidedMinistriesno, you use it to boil water which spins a turbine which then generates electricity.
so ur telling me we invented all these genuis and increasingly complicated battery designs just to end up with the conclusion that literally just heating up sand is the most efficient way to store energy lmao
Forgot to note it takes up a shit ton of space and is not efficient to transfer back into electricity.
its quite efficient
@@onemeterboy5211 No, it isn't. It has one sixth the energy density of lithium ion batteries, requires complex infrastructure to operate, and is very expensive to maintain. The laws of thermodynamics guarantee that you will never be able to produce a sand battery that's even remotely as efficient and cheap as even the worst quality lithium ion cell, even if you had a trillion years and unlimited money to build one. These things are only useful in a very small number of niche applications, they will never be a wide scale solution.
@@sfdntk I wouldn't say that it's niche, but it would be very limited. Heating things up is a massive part of normal energy consumption. Like I think heating for home, water, and cooking make up roughly 70% of most electric bills.
Would still be tough to make viable though, the size and weight really limit its practicality.
@@Kmosely42 It would be infinitey more economical (but just as impractical) to capture that heat and use it to charge a lithium ion battery, the energy density of sand simply cannot compete. This has almost no applications in the real world, which is what I would define as niche.
@@sfdntk Energy density has nothing to do with efficiency. Don't use words you don't understand, boy...
Fact is, Thermal energy storage is efficient and has been in use for that reason for a couple of decades in various countries. Most of the time salt or water is used to store the heat, plus the "tanks" are usually a lot larger than what's been shown in the short.
"Sorry I'm American" is the most non-American thing I've ever heard 😂
She's a millennial.
?
"Sorry i'm an American" is a very common thing to hear in youtube science channels. It probably helps monetization. 😢😢😢
@@2017NationalChamps why the cry emoji? She's right
I like it. One day we might hear numbers in World units like meters, kilos and Celcius.
Away with the other systems!
Thanks, my HOA hates it
Hahahaha! Y they no like grain silos? :D
Hard pass let the coons keep mining.
You should tell your HOA to sit and spin. Or move out of an HOA. We refuse to buy in an HOA. Senior citizens with nothing better to do all day is lurk and complain.
deserted regions with sand bout to get some freedom soon
It might hold heat but getting heat back to electricity is one of many kinds biggest challenges (to do efficiently)
My dumbass thought the sand would turn to glass if you do that.
There was old tech called a storage heater - basically a big lump of concrete with a heating coil in it, in an aesthetically pleasing box. It would be heated by low cost off peak electricity at night and during the day keep the house warm. Similar principle.
More efficient actually, since it doesn't have to convert back into electricity. Pretty cool
we had one of these while i was growing up, my dad would turn it on at night and turn it off daytime, it did lower our energy bill during the winter. I used to sleep on it, it was nice.
Still have one. Also most northern states do.
Or kind of like a masonry heater (or more simply, a brick fireplace) inside the home.
Obviously, in that case, the goal is heat, not turning heat back into electricity.
Their are still schools that use it.
Sounds like geothermal energy but with more steps
i cant wait for sand powered cars
Concrete industry just entered the chat.
It seems to be a steel structure tho
@@SoguweConcrete is used to store heat energy during the day and radiate it at night. Similar to the idea in the video, but it's being actively used inside buildings.
@@piotr8821living in concrete home my entire life, it doesn't work like that
Gets cold in winter night because it radiates heat quickly requires room heater
And hot during the day in summer as it absorbs heat and remains hot even during night as it cannot radiate quickly because temperature difference is less
So videos describes a pretty good solution at least for cold countries
@@Soguweconcrete needs sand and the concrete industry has made sand scarce
@@jungobango4815sort of. The sand for concrete needs a specify shape for optimal concrete physical properties. The sand in deserts does not have an optimal shape for concrete and could be utilized here with no/little impact on the world concrete sand supply.
You skipped the step where the heat becomes electricity.
They don't. It's just got heating water. Lol. This video is clickbait at its finest.
You would not even have that. As soon as you take the rods out of the sand they will start to cool down. You would have a very short amount of time to use the heat, and only once, to heat water.
Ever heard of geothermal heat or district heating? You just install a pipe where water flows between the house and the battery. The water does not have to be more than a few degrees warmer than the air in the house in order for the house to get warm. The REAL problem is how we store wind and solar energy for times when it night or still weather. Also heating that battery is practically free whenever it's windy, because finland has a lot of wind turbines
@@Sams.Videosyou have no idea what you are talking about
@@marias5230 Tell me genius, how does it work then?
Ok boys now we wait for BasicallyHomeless to make a sand powered PC
Yes I definitely have space to store 100 tons of sand in my 2 bedroom apartment
There is actually a shortage of sand in the world due to concrete construction.
My thoughts exactly.
Not as shortage as lithium
I believe concrete requires a specific type of sand found on beaches. Not sure if this battery could run on other types. There’s no shortage of sand in the world’s deserts.
sand shortage is like water shortage
its only in short supply in where you are
other places have it in abundance but shipping cost more fuel than the cargo
also the sand shortage is Beach Sand
Desert sand is a plenty
Just use the desert sand which can be heated very similarly to the beach sand used in construction
Watching this, I was thinking: that's very similar to the sand battery I heard about in Finland.
Then I realize, you are talking about that exact battery.
Vatajankoski does indeed sound very Finnish!
@@asdfghyter it's hard to finish.
@@tjsbbi finish what? finish when having sex with a sand battery? yes, that’s indeed true, it’s such a hiekkaa pillussa (note: extremely sexist term, but i doubt the battery will be offended)
Thanks mate. Now I know what to search because I need more data on it. 👍
It is NOT a battery! It is energy storage.
The only problem is that whatever it is heating needs to travel so you would have to insulate wherever it is going but what a cool idea. Image every home having something like this.
But how do you efficiently convert that heat energy back into electrical energy?
Besides super heated steam and turbines... Direct heat to electrical, Peltier modules but then not at those temperatures and they aren't super efficient either...
The problem isn't heating the sand, it's getting the heat back into electricity
I can blow your mind if I tell you how a power plant works
@@specialneedsmolester1957 lol making steam through constant heating through some kind of fuel isn't the same thing and using the sand. As soon as the surrounding sand to the heating element starts cooling off (which will happen pretty quickly) it's gonna slow to a halt and it will take a long ass time to heat it back up because sand is an insulator
They don't. They live in a fantasy world where you can use heat to power a town or a building magically.
@@conradcullingye its not used for powering things, it’s used to heat buildings not for electricity
Why would converting heat to electricity be a problem. Why do people just blurt out nonsense without knowing what they're talking about.
Energy is energy. You can convert it mostly into any form you want. The problem to solve is efficiency and cost. Converting solar energy to thermal energy for storage has been around for ages, mostly using molten salts. Sand could be a viable alternative.
This is what we need in Africa. Convert the Sahara into a battery for the continent 😎
It would be utterly useless in Africa. You don't need to heat your homes there.
@@randybobandy9828 she also mentioned it could be used for power. Not just for heating a home. Not sure how that works, but that's what was said.
@@TheKingacevedo it can't be used for power. There is no way to convert such a low temp sand into usable mechanical energy that can convert to electricity. We have solar systems that already do it but it's uses thousands of mirrors that all focuses the sunlight onto a single point that actually melts salt and that is used to create steam pressure that can turn a generator to power electricity. This is not that though. those systems reach 1600°C
@@randybobandy9828 I'm just going off the video buddy, calm down....
@@randybobandy9828 there is a thing called geothermal heat which uses heat from the earth which can apply to a lot of heat in sound
I find it pretty cool when we talk about long time storage but the reverse conversion into electricity isn't very much efficient... So maybe it isn't that amazing
More importantly it's far safer.
Even if they reached the energy density of lithium by actually superheating it I'd argue that dealing with 100 tons of molten glass would be far easier than just 10 tons of lithium cells going up in flames
Exactly! 💜
Watching a sand battery turn into a glass blob would be fun, actually. Not sure, if I can say the same about chemical-based batteries.😂
Well, I hope we use desert sand. We already have a sand crisis.
There is a shortage on the good qualities. For this you can use the very fine stuff which is a waste product when producing sand for the construction industry. Also other waste streams like finely crushed concrete should be suitable.
Is this why I feel so "energized " when I go to the beach?
I feel that, my body involuntarily jumps around to spend the excess energy I got from the beach
This was actually done on a big scale somewhere in Texas, the sand melted and the container couldn't hold it and the molten sand started leaking....the project was cancelled before covid itself......China tried replicating it in 2019 or 2020 but havent heard about it since then
@@ashupatil9098 source?
Jokes aside, exposure to sunlight allegedly improves our metabolism because it aids mitochondrial function in a complicated manner that's a bit difficult to explain here. At least according to recent evidence.
So I'd say it's not the sand, but the sun instead lol
An interesting thing about the beach is that the breaking waves cause negative ions to be released in the air, which have been shown to elevate mood and reduce stress.
I know it sounds like pseudo-science but look it up
This would be useful for people in cold climates to supplement their heating instead of relying solely on oil or gas. Good stuff.
That’s pretty neat. Couple of questions:
1: How long does it take to heat up to 1000c using waste heat from solar? (I looked it up, and the actual idea is to heat up to 1000c, not 1000f)
2: how much heat loss are we talking from just sitting around? Not that much isn’t an answer if you’re planning on using this tech to heat people’s homes, especially if it gets cold in the winter.
3: how efficient is it? Extended from 2, if we’re talking about using it to heat homes in the winter, how do you plan on transporting that heat to each location? If you’re doing radiant heat, and just moving hot water, the plumbing used to transport it will waste even more heat, and simply dump it into the ground through the pipes. If you plan on using the heat to heat steam to power a turbine, you’re wasting just as much energy by using electric heating, and that’s before you even think about how many watts you could even generate off of these things by hooking them up to a steam turbine generator.
After looking into it, even a few sources that have a clear bias towards “sustainable energy” solutions are skeptical about how useful this actually is. The best thing I’ve seen said about it from a source that actually seems to put some critical thinking into the matter is that it could be a way of harvesting a little extra energy out of solar, but it isn’t going to do what everyone claims it can, and it is by no means efficient.
Need more details into this
I've seen a couple other people say this, I'm hoping there will be a full vid on time. But until then the comment right above yours has two people explaining
The one by Jonathan_g
You literally have Google on the device you're currently using. Stop being lazy
@@aaronmazur8056 You can watch an advertisment, infomercial, read your tetrapack's nutritional information and say sure you know everything there is about the product. But then some wise consumer asshole actually spends their time researching about the product, finding different local healthy alternatives, read the history of the brand, and dox the ceo while they're at it. I think I'd rather be a lazy human looking for the experts in the comment section to read about something that won't directly affect me for the rest of my life.
So since the time of industrial revolution we have generated energy by burning things. This is how it works, they send water through the sand and it gets converted to steam at 100°C. This steam then goes into a turbine and the turbine generates electricity
"Sorry I'm an American."
These Canadian immigrants are getting better at hiding their French accents.
FYI The majority of Canadians don’t speak a word of French. There is only one province out of 10 which speak primarily french like I do. Regards
FYI, Canada is in the Americas. America is not a country anywhere on this planet.
As a French Canadian, i can absolutely tell you this female is not a french speaking person.
She is not a French speaker, she said in a recent video she only speaks English.
FYI, as noted by all the replies above a lot of canadians sadly cannot understand a joke 😢 its truly sad.
OH HEY DER CANUCKS DER HE WAS JUST RIBBIN ON YA DER SO YA DONT NEED TO CORRECT WHAT HE IS TALKIN ABOOT DER EH HE WASNT LOOKIN TA GET JERSEY'D IN THE COMMENTS THERE EH BUDS
hopefully that will help clear things up.
These cost over 200,000 bucks and can provide enough to power one small single family home for a few day in fairly cold weather to just a day in severely cold weather.
I feel supercharged now
I was an engineer at a major aerospace corp, and our pilot plant used sand... soaked with car oil.
What about saltwater and sand? Would that work?
@@keledele it would not. Water evaporate at 100*c and this thing is 500*c
You would need more water, more insulation and that does not scale well
How well did it work
...a bird brain...
I keep coming back to Newton's law of cooling. Wouldn't it be better to heat (or cool) a bigger sphere of cheaply insulated water?
The high temp of the super hot sand will need some pretty expensive insulation because it'll want to shed heat rapidly. But the closer the temp is to ambient, the slower the heat transfer (aka loss.)
There's a sweet spot here somewhere which all works out to lowest overall price. Interesting problem.
I love unique battery designs. My favourite are analogue batteries like ones that use water displacement (pump water up when energy is abundant; let water out to spin turbines when energy is scarce).
flywheels are also cool ones ;)
Gravitational potential has a very low energy density. You need millions of tons of water or any other mass lifted dozens of meters up in the air in order for it to hold any meaningful amount of energy for city-scale usage.
A cube of 20x20x20 meters holding 8,000 metric tons of water (over 3 olympic pools) at an average height of 50 meters (about 14 storey building) has a gravitational potential of just over 1 megawatt hours. Even if the storage and extraction processes were completely efficient (which they aren't), that amount of energy is just enough for a single day's worth of electricity needs of 30-40 homes.
That construction doesn't sound big enough? Then let's make a gigastructure where the water container is 100x100x100 meters (1,000,000 metric tons) and the average water height is 100 meters. Now the gravitational potential is 270 megawatt hours, which are enough for a single day's worth of electricity needs of about 10,000 homes or a small-medium city.
@@TLguitar water dams all over the world are quite indicative that gravitational storage works and does it quite well.
@@dansmirnov236 Do you know how much water is stored at height in dams? They are often hundreds of meters across, hold water at several hundreds of meters height, and are filled by rain-sustained rivers that end up creating reservoirs which are thousands of times larger than the 100m³ water container I exemplified.
All this means they can only be built into specific locations that answer several different requirements, and to which a "from scratch" gravity battery is not analogous.
You trynna tell me using sand is any more sustainable?
This is something you would see in Arrakis
I'm so glad you used the SI unit for temperature. Well done Chloe
Every energy resource is “cheap” and “Abundant” until more than three people need it to get to work every day.
I also love to drive my sand powered car to work
Not just 'cheap' and 'abundant' but free and unlimited. I have an electric car that I drive everyday. I charge it using stored solar energy. It is free, easy, efficient and works very well. At least two of my neighbors do the same. Sour grapes make good whine.
@@FatherMathewI charge my electric car for free using stored solar energy. I have not bought gasoline for years. Zero to sixty in 4 seconds is great, too.
@@Babinkleyfirstly solar energy is not unlimited, even disregarding day-night cycle and cloudiness, there is prety limited amount of energy, transferring from sunlight to square meter od earth surface which also depends on latitude and some other factors, secondly are we including into cost of electricity cost of solar panels, energy storages and batteries and cost of their maintenance?
@@FatherMathew eventually, electric cars will mostly get charged when energy is abundant, for whatever reason: Sun is up, wind is up and so on. The car already has a battery so it doesn''t necessarily need other storage.
“I hate sand. It’s rough and coarse and gets everywhere”
Do you live near a beach?
@@pfranks75No he just want it to be soft and....Smooth
Anakin would hate these! 😂
Just imagine how Anakin would complain of sand heated to over a thousand degrees Fahrenheit.
I swear to god if this can only use beach and river sand and not excess desert sand… 😡
Nickle hydrogen batteries seem like the better option to be honest
Take it with a grain of "salt" or should i say "sand".
The efficiency isn't nearly as close in reality towards their claims.
It costs $200,000 USD, not for the sand or the storage tank but for the insane Solar array you need to keep it warm.
It is more cost effective to use that energy created by solar panels to directly use that energy for heating, lights, fridge... And it probably costs $3000 in equipment per home to do so.
The point is storing the energy Einstein
You misunderstand the point of this entirely. The solar array isn’t there to “keep it warm”. The sand battery is for storing excess energy when we have it, to be released when we don’t. It’s always going to be more efficient to use the power directly but that is the primary problem of renewables, we can’t always do that.
But yes, always good to be skeptical.
Thank you for telling us how much energy they can hold and how great the efficiency would be! Oh wait…
Energy density doesn't really matter when they're static and literally dirt cheap.
@@massimookissed1023 Oh it matters my friend. One "tank" of sand holds a lot less energy than you would think.
Imagine the amount of energy it will take to heat that thing up every time.
My favorite kind of non exotic material battery are the vacuum chamber flywheels. Huge heavy multi-tiered fly wheels spun up by electric motors ideally those motors powered by a renewable energy source, then the flywheels spin almost endlessly in the vacuum until their kinetic energy is called upon to act as a rotating mass for energy generation.
This is how my house stores energy. House is 20 years old and stores the energy in the ground below it using a system of pipes in the piles below the home.
The pipes are not "storing" energy in the ground. They just use the ground as a heat sink. Not the same as a battery.
@@coolaidmedic5553 actually the temperature differential equals energy. In summer it pumps up cool liquid, and pumps the warmed up liquid to be stored for use during the winter. Right now the system pumps up 35 degrees Celcius liquid into the home to warm it.
Of course it uses the pipes, liquid and earth to exchange the energy.
@@seattledutch You clearly just misunderstand geothermal heating & cooling. Yes I believe that in summer it pumps up cool liquid, and pumps the warmed up liquid to be stored for use during the winter. But that is based on the difference in temperature deep underground. You are not "storing" the energy there. For example, if one year that house did not run AC, the heating would still work just as well the next winter. No energy was stored. It was just extracted or transmitted to the ground.
@@coolaidmedic5553 Sure
I knew a guy who built his own system like this to heat his home. The problem with sand heating and cooling is that it expands and contracts. When it contracts it settles deeper. Then it expands as it heats up and hydraulically destroys the container. I wonder how they got around that. Maybe with something that holds it in smaller units....but it's not just a big can of sand. That just doesn't work.
You can counter this by tapering the container, causing the sand to expand up the sides rather than push against the side. Or, like water towers, gradient reinforcement, the bands at the bottom, two around the mid and one around the top. I'd like to see this system used with Glycol in a closed loop to turn a generator, heat pump style.
@@xen1313 was thinking the same thing make the bottom more cone shaped so lateral expansion will be redirected upwards. probably not a perfect solution but It should mitigate the issue.
This lady believes in unicorns
Gravity batteries are more useful since the potential energy can be converted to electricity.
Make sure you only use non-concret grade sand, because there is a shortage of that type.
"with the right insulation"... exactly. Also, with the right efficiency, with the right cost, with the right energy production source, with the right...
You can achieve a battery, a way to reduce your energy efficiency by 50%.
You're better off just making the power as its needed
And by 'sustainable' compared to lithium is the use of child exploitation, and modern slavery.
@@SaturatedCat cheers for the correction if that is the case, as I was quoting a scholar who mentioned this about lithium in particular.
I feel like using something harnessing gravitational potential energy would be so much better
Well, in Switzerland we have water retention dams for that. Is there too much energy we pump water up the mountains and then later if needed we let it flow down trough hydrowelectricpowerplants to generate new electricity. (Yes most words are googled as i lack the technical vocab)
Let’s see it stay that hot when it’s -35 degrees here
Here in the netherlands we are inventing a battery made out of salt.
I recommend to search it up pretty interesting
Imagine every house having one of these and a tornado goes through the neighborhood.
Bury underground
@@Solice-lx8mkit's probably encased in concrete as is.
Everyone thinks sand is plentiful, but there's actually a sand crisis.
Well not generically, but there's a definite shortage that's becoming critical for structurally useful aggregates. Smooth sand is everywhere.
Yes. I was looking for this comment
@@cassandra3410 if it wasn’t here I was gonna put it myself
The crisis is the sand that makes glass not just sand in general
@@darthtator3549 Also the sand to make concrete.
ok… But how do you turn that heat into electric power?
I can vuimd this. I love it. If you line it with aircrete, the heat will be available forever.
Anakin: *Somewhat satisfied*
Used for district heating. BBC did an excellent video on it last year.
There's a similar, smaller scale technology for heating homes - not sure about the English Term but we call it "Bauteilaktivierung" - basically you heat the mass of the house on sunny days using solar collectors and the heated mass will slowly radiate the heat during cloudy days, HUGELY dropping energy costs. Pretty nice!
might be a decent idea to store this kind of battery underground to reduce passive heat loss.
seems like an cool idea though.
I feel like this is an electric-earth type pokemon
Ah yes a sand battery. That's exactly what my Tesla needed.
This is cool, but I've never laughed harder then when I heard "excess wind and solar power."
While i can absolutely see the benefits of using this system, all i can think about is how warm this could make cities. Theyd probably act like giant radiators for the surrounding area along with the coils. I could be wrong
Sand doesn't grow naughty little tendrils and turn its container into a spicy pillow, so there's that.
It also doesn't catch fire and refuse to extinguish when you dump water on it.
At 1000 degrees it can do whatever it wants…
@@soul8bounce What do you even mean by that?
@@stevencurtis7157what do you even mean by naughty tendrils and spicy pillows lmaoo
@@duckman12498 Dendrites forming in the electrolyte of lithium ion batteries and causing a short, and overcharging or other faults causing lithium ion batteries to produce hydrogen gas and puff up.
You are missing something. How is the heat converted back to electric power? Heating stuff is easy.
Not only will it not work but people keep forgetting about winter
A yes cant wait for them to say how unsustainable giving everyone a sandbattery is.
Would be interested to hear about the new iron-air batteries that being used for utility-scale electrical storage.
Iron air batteries, although extremely cheap, have a low efficiency due to hydrogen evolution and overvoltage. You lose more than half the energy you put in and their only practical use is storing excess power that would otherwise be wasted
Isn't sand projected to be a scarce ressource in the near future?
Building sand is, sand from the Sahara or other sources where the sand is more "round" is very much abundant
What type of sand is required for battery purposes tho?
@@gijswinkelhuijzen7874 yeah i asked in the comments for what type of sand is best for the energy storage. might just be that building sand is the best for heat retention
Sand is just one of many material being used in thermal energy storage (TES) devices. There’s one that uses just basic rocks sourced in the areas surrounding the place of construction to lower transport costs, another uses compressed carbon blocks impregnated with aluminium shavings, when the bricks are heated the Aluminium undergoes phase change turning into a liquid and the carbon contains it keeping it safe and also storing the excess heat.
@@Munchausenification building sand is useful for building because it’s rough edges help it bind well. I don’t think that’s a requirement for heat storage, which should just need mass.
It also doesn't explode in a nearly inextinguishable fire if all hell breaks loose.
Were getting loose with that definition of battery
another thing we wouldn't need if we went nuclear energy
No carbon emissions and it's actually renewable.
That’s nuclear fusion. Basically sea water for fuel without the radioactive waste.
They recently broke the positive power threshold for a millisecond. They’re working.
Right now we’re doing the fission thing.
1. Nuclear doesnt have carbon emissions, 2. Nuclear is renewable, in the same sense the sun is@@kbran9061
Just like nuclear
Fission power is fantastic. But not for long. One issue that deserves more attention in how incredibly little there is of the fuel. It is a very limited resource, and once it's used up it is used up until we find more, and it is incredibly useful for many past and future space missions where other solutions to generate power reliably, over long periods of time, nothing comes close to nuclear power.
In other words: with how little we have of it, we might wanna be careful how we use it
And environmentally friendly. Wow, no corrosive and toxic chemicals. Before watching my assumption was a method to capture static electricity in sand, but this is cooler. Simplistic, little to no moving parts, easy to mass produce.
It doesn’t hold electricity… it’s only use is providing heat to homes and pools
But how do you get the energy out?
@@Inflammate water or an air coil. You could use a steam turbine to produce electricity but the battery itself does not hold it
@@GHOSTFACEKILLAv2 Now thats hardly energy efficient
@@Inflammate exactly. Lithium ion batteries are 99% efficient and you can find lithium almost anywhere
With heat as a byproduct of energy transfer, i can only imagine how little energy it actually stores.
...It's abundant ... when you know about the sand mafia...