
Battery technology: A pile of wood - anu_gupta
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21580441-old-material-may-find-new-use-batteries-pile-wood
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anusinha
I think the title is an oversimplification.

> To test this idea, they used slivers of wood from yellow pines. First, they
> coated these with carbon nanotubes, to improve their conductivity. Then they
> applied a film of tin to each sliver.

There's a lot more that is going on than just the wood.

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aray
The Economist article title is "A pile of wood", and it actually discusses
battery technology, so I think the title isn't bad.

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ultramundane828
I have a possibly slightly tangential question for the community:

Any solar experts willing to weigh in on the author's assessment of the
current state of solar?

Specifically, were a sodium ion battery commercially available (with similar
efficiency to lithium ion batteries) tomorrow, would we be living in the
golden age of solar energy?

This is something I'm extremely interested in as a citizen of planet Earth.

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mrinterweb
I've never understood why hydrogen is not considered as an energy storage
medium. Energy produced by solar panels could be used to create hydrogen, via
electrolysis, that would later be burned to create energy at night. I guess
the risk is that hydrogen is very explosive and maybe it is too difficult to
mitigate that risk.

Update: I did find that people are using hydrogen as an energy store.
[http://schatzlab.org/projects/archive/schatz_solar.html](http://schatzlab.org/projects/archive/schatz_solar.html)

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EdwardMSmith
It's a storage issue. Storing a useful quantity of hydrogen is very difficult.

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curtis
Storage is certainly difficult, but there's also a fairly serious efficiency
loss as well.

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cdevroe
Is it just me or does this article have zero attribution for the author? I see
that it says this was taken from print, but who wrote it?

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theorique
The Economist doesn't have bylines.

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cdevroe
That would explain it. I'm surprised I never ran across that before. Thanks
theorique1

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theorique
You're welcome. They have certain columns with a pseudonymous byline (e.g.
Bagehot, etc), but I don't know whether they are written by an individual or a
team.

