Tech Reporters: WOW! Sugar batteries have energy densities “an order of magnitude higher than” lithium-ion batteries!! #future #i<3science #reprintingthepressrelease
Louie: Yeah, and sugar batteries have voltages an order of magnitude lower than real batteries. It’s a linear trade-off. I can engineer batteries all day that have super-performance along one axis. Why are we talking about this?? #lol #fakeovation
Guess I need to stop reading sci-fluff garbage rags like “Nature“.
4 Responses to “Sugar batteries could be greener, cheaper, and store more energy than lithium-ions… or they could be super pretend vaporware”
January 31
Indiana BonesNanotube batteries. That’s where the future lies.
January 31
Mali Benvenuttihey- if it works for you, why not batteries? #louiethehumanhummingbird
January 31
Matt VanaIsn’t energy density measured in something like volt*amp*hours/cm^3 and thus independent of voltage?
January 31
Louie HelmTheoretical energy density is independent of theoretical voltage. So one has to wonder why they made such a tiny demonstration device. All the values they’re actually measuring are so low and difficult to measure at the scale they’re dealing with. Only the implied values, like energy density, look impressive. It’s like when people make perpetual motion machines and they’re only generating a very tiny amount of power. Why is that?
I expect it’s the same issue here. That this research is a rounding error from having devices built so small that their implied values are amazing, but once anyone tries to scale them up, they will see that the values were totally wrong. This is a really common theme among every pop-sci breakthrough of the form “New [academic prototype] X has 3775% the performance of [commercially available, real world thing] Y”.