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Hack Chat Transcript, Part 3

A event log for Battery Engineering Hack Chat

The power in your pocket

dan-maloneyDan Maloney 12/14/2022 at 21:560 Comments

kjansky112:36 PM
C14 would be a great power source with its huge lifetime and low energy betas.

Dave Sopchak12:36 PM
yeah well be glad for Bosch-Haber Thomas!

ILove Scotch12:36 PM
@Dave Sopchak in the hackaday article it says "lithium-air battery" your working on. I didn't know you can reverse the process in the cell.. my only experience is with the open air ones.

Thomas Shaddack12:36 PM
Fritz Haber FTW, the man who feeds billions!

Dave Sopchak12:36 PM
when he wasn't killing thousands!

kjansky112:37 PM
Haber is very energy inefficient.

Thomas Shaddack12:37 PM
I saw some variants where microwaves were used instead of high pressure high temperature.

Dave Sopchak12:37 PM
maybe they should use a C14 betavoltaic to drive Bosch Haber

Dan Maloney12:37 PM
I'm working on an article about improved catalysts to increase the efficiency of Haber-Bosch, FYI

kjansky112:38 PM
That's one h--- of many C14 megacuries.

Dave Sopchak12:38 PM
@ILove Scotch yeah in a nonaqueous Li air battery, you make lithium peroxide on discharge. That's the easy part. Oxidizing the lithium peroxide back to oxygen without trashing the battery has eluded everybody...except me ;)

Thomas Shaddack12:39 PM
Better idea. Thorium reactor and microwave synth rig. Nitrogen from air, hydrogen from water, ambient pressure microwave-assisted reaction, scalable factory that can act as local power plant when the wind gets counterrevolutional ideas and stops blowing and birdwhackers stop providing.

Dave Sopchak12:39 PM
that nitrogen nitrogen triple bond is *not* easy to break, so it goes

Thomas Shaddack12:40 PM
microwave chemistry whacks the bonds directly without having to vibrate the whole atom including the nucleus that's there in only for a ride while taking the most mass.

Dave Sopchak12:40 PM
Born-Oppenheimer approximation?

kjansky112:40 PM
Catalytic nitrogen fixing bacteria with enhanced efficiency genetic would make Haber obsolete.

Thomas Shaddack12:40 PM
similar for photochemistry.

kjansky112:41 PM
Brute force Haber is inelegant!

Dave Sopchak12:42 PM
you know, if Bosch Haber didn't work, I'd say scrap it

Thomas Shaddack12:42 PM
Inelegant but nice to have. High volume density, and controllable.

Dave Sopchak12:42 PM
let's talk electrolytic steel refining

kjansky112:42 PM
It works just about as well as diesel engines work but for how long can be use it?

Thomas Shaddack12:42 PM
is it similar to copper refining, or to aluminium production? aqueous low-temp or hightemp molten salt?

Dave Sopchak12:42 PM
also @Thomas Shaddack cool with the kapton pyrolysis

Dave Sopchak12:43 PM
high temp, the trick is to use electrochem rather than coke to be the reductant.

Tom Johnson12:43 PM
Not sure if this is off-topic or not. Regarding storage ... on the control side, are things moving towards standardization? Meaning inverters becoming tightly integrated with BMS systems?

Dave Sopchak12:43 PM
but

Thomas Shaddack12:43 PM
said kapton pyrolysis could be also useful for eg. making flexible capacitive touch sensors. alternative to conductive inks.

Dave Sopchak12:43 PM
even with aluminum, the carbon anodes get chewed up to CO2...

Dave Sopchak12:44 PM
@Tom Johnson not off topic but I have no idea. Anyone else?

Thomas Shaddack12:44 PM
ah, so no electrorefining, more like electrowinning. i understand refining as purifying a substance that's already produced in previous step.

ILove Scotch12:44 PM
@tom "Meaning inverters becoming tightly integrated with BMS systems?" Nope.

Dave Sopchak12:45 PM
@Thomas Shaddack Ah! I need to up my terminology game there ;)

Dave Sopchak12:45 PM
I say we turn this whole inverter issue on its head (ducks)

Thomas Shaddack12:45 PM
close enough to be understood with just a single question. :D

Tom Johnson12:46 PM
There are the Mesa standards modbus ... which seem to be supplanted by SunSpec. I was curious as to how fast integration was being taken up.

kjansky112:46 PM
Space vacuum mass spectroscopic refining is the way to go with unlimited solar energy.

Dave Sopchak12:46 PM
SO MUCH ELECTROWINNING. YOU'RE GOING TO BE SICK OF ELECTROWINNING

Tom Johnson12:46 PM
@Dave Sopchak What do you mean about turning the inverter issue on its head?

Dave Sopchak12:46 PM
@kjansky1 what are you working on?

Dave Sopchak12:47 PM
as long as modbus isn't like flobus. Man I hated having to deal with the latter

kjansky112:47 PM
A more sustainable power generation system.

Dave Sopchak12:47 PM
sweet!

Dave Sopchak12:47 PM
care to tell us more?

Thomas Shaddack12:48 PM
thought for inverters. I saw somewhere a 4-switch topology of a power converter. a coil. a mosfet from each its end to the ground. a mosfet from each coil end to left and right side. by pulsing the mosfets in proper order we have a buck or boost converter, and it works from left to right and from right to left as needed. a generic "glue" between batteries and power buses. (and if left and right side is connected together, and the coil gets a secondary, it's a h-bridge driver.)

Dave Sopchak12:48 PM
also fun fact they use lithium peroxide in the space station. Eats CO2 and when it does it spits out oxygen, win win. Even better than lithium hydroxide

Dave Sopchak12:48 PM
@Tom Johnson yet another attempt of mine at a bad joke

Thomas Shaddack12:50 PM

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f5/4-switch_Buck-Boost_converter.svg/2560px-4-switch_Buck-Boost_converter.svg.png

Tom Johnson12:50 PM
Here is a link to the MESA-ESS standard if anyone is interested. http://mesastandards.org/wp-content/uploads/MESA-ESS-Specification-December-2018-Version-1.pdf

ILove Scotch12:50 PM
@Thomas Shaddack thats just an Bi-directional buck boost convter.

Dave Sopchak12:50 PM
I am impressed with buck/boost/inverters, it's comical how efficient, cheap and ubiquitous they've become. Bring on the GaN!

Thomas Shaddack12:50 PM
yup, another name for it (wasn't familiar with that one.)

Dave Sopchak12:51 PM
Tom- thanks. I will look at that later

Thomas Shaddack12:51 PM
GaN for high freq compact, SiC for high voltage high power.

Dave Sopchak12:51 PM
if anything, this chat has me opening up a dozen windows to read later ;)

kjansky112:51 PM
Oh yes Ga devices because the element is so abundant.

Thomas Shaddack12:51 PM
SiC diodes are interesting. Schottky with very high voltage. No recovery time other than junction capacitance.

Dave Sopchak12:52 PM
I've even heard of people using boron doped diamond for fast switching FETs

ILove Scotch12:52 PM
GaN! bah, SiC is where it's at :P

Tom Johnson12:52 PM
Since I see GaN advertised in all sorts of USB chargers, I assume costs should be dropping at some point.

Dave Sopchak12:52 PM
hey SiC so many uses. I even use it to grind my telescope mirrors

Dave Sopchak12:52 PM
higher index of refraction than diamond!

Thomas Shaddack12:52 PM
Don't fight. GaN and SiC both have their domains! :P Doped diamond would be LOVELY due to its extreme thermal conductivity.

Dave Sopchak12:53 PM
You know, I think I heard that about diamond...

ILove Scotch12:53 PM
agreed Thomas, SiC in all HV stuffs, LV is GaN

Dave Sopchak12:53 PM
Oh, yes, I have a 1 inch square 1mm thick piece of synthetic diamond right here...

Dave Sopchak12:53 PM
yeah those higher bandgap/thermal conductivity stuff for the higher temps

Thomas Shaddack12:53 PM
I saw somewhere that diamond coatings could be made by electrochemistry, by high voltage electrolysis of dimethyl formamide. Or acetonitrile.

Dave Sopchak12:54 PM
really

Dave Sopchak12:54 PM
I will have to look that up

Dave Sopchak12:55 PM
yep

Dave Sopchak12:55 PM

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0925963500005483

SCIENCEDIRECT

Diamond synthesis by electrolysis of acetates

A new method of electrochemical synthesis of different forms of carbon, including nanocrystalline diamond, is described. The electrolyte consists of a solution of ammonium acetate in acetic acid. The electrolysis is carried out by applying a shifted-square alternating voltage in the 10-100 Hz frequency range.

Read this on Sciencedirect

Thomas Shaddack12:55 PM
example: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169433212014304

Dave Sopchak12:56 PM
diamond-like carbon, hmm. I have some familiarity with that

Dave Sopchak12:57 PM
boy who knew that diamond could be such a party killer ;)

Dave Sopchak12:57 PM
no blood diamond!

kjansky112:57 PM
Carbon nanotube semiconductors are the future.

Dave Sopchak12:57 PM
so anyway when I was in grad school I worked on the electrochemistry of boron doped diamond and diamond like carbon

Thomas Shaddack12:57 PM
...thought... could blood be used as the organics-containing liquid in the coating synthesis?

Thomas Shaddack12:57 PM
...that would be seriously metal.

Thomas Shaddack12:58 PM
...and blood diamond, too.

Dave Sopchak12:58 PM
holy cow

Dave Sopchak12:58 PM
respect

Dan Maloney12:59 PM
Well, they're making synthetic diamonds out of human cremains, so that's sort of a blood diamond

Dave Sopchak12:59 PM
only if some iron remains

Dave Sopchak12:59 PM
although

Dave Sopchak12:59 PM
carbon and iron have an interesting relationship

Dave Sopchak1:00 PM
was that "cremains" intentional? That's a great word

kjansky11:00 PM
Too much Fe in mammalian blood need to use Hemocyanin and you can generate the copper conductors at the same time.

Thomas Shaddack1:00 PM
yup. carbon dissolves in iron. hence it is not a good idea to use diamond abrasives for ferrous alloys, boron nitride is way better there.

Dave Sopchak1:00 PM
who's the ferrous one of all?

Dan Maloney1:01 PM
Yes, Pretty sure it's the correct term -- at least that's what the funeral director who came to scare the hell out of us in high school religion class told us.

kjansky11:01 PM
We should copper that.

Thomas Shaddack1:01 PM
...and molten iron is used as a solvent for carbon for one of the diamond synthesis methods.

Dave Sopchak1:01 PM
come and get me, copper! I'm not afraid of your friends gold and silver, either!

Dan Maloney1:01 PM
He brought a box of them to show us -- looked like crushed gray Pringles

kjansky11:01 PM
Wow iron + carbon and you get steel balls.

Dave Sopchak1:02 PM
the cremains, or the diamond they made from them?

Tom Johnson1:02 PM
Any cold-efficient battery technologies gone mainstream? I have backup applications for equipment sitting in unheated buildings.

Thomas Shaddack1:02 PM
anything carbon-based can be used to make diamonds. the rest is just marketing.

Dan Maloney1:02 PM
Just the cremains lol

Thomas Shaddack1:02 PM
heard good things about lithium titanate batteries but not sure.

Dave Sopchak1:02 PM
@Tom Johnson there's a startup in san diego that uses small fluorocarbons for solvent that work very well at low temp

Dave Sopchak1:03 PM
I think they have a high limit to temp though

Tom Johnson1:03 PM
Good leads. Thanks.

Dave Sopchak1:03 PM
if you want I can get you more detail. I was asked to review some of their stuff

Thomas Shaddack1:03 PM
may be relevant. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/270163726_Evaluation_of_the_low_temperature_performance_of_lithium_manganese_oxidelithium_titanate_lithium-ion_batteries_for_startstop_applications

Dave Sopchak1:04 PM
@Thomas Shaddack anything carbon-based can *and should* be used to make diamonds.

Dave Sopchak1:04 PM
fify

kjansky11:04 PM
Fluorocarbon forever chemicals are today's PCB oils.

Tom Johnson1:04 PM
@Dave Sopchak sure. Email is tj800x@gmail.com.

Dave Sopchak1:05 PM
OK. I'll send it after this

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