A new liquid battery stores solar heat for weeks
2026-04-23 14:50 UTC
Replies (9)
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@partial_accumen@lemmy.world 2026-04-23 18:30
I’m all for new technology and approaches, and it looks like this is just at the beginning for this approach so I would assume it could grow in efficiency in the future. However, as it stands today its pretty far away from a good replacement for existing solutions or approaches. The new material, called a pyrimidone, can store more than 1.6 megajoules per kilogram. That is almost double the energy density of a conventional lithium-ion battery, which is about 0.9 MJ/kg. 1.6 MJ/kg…that’s…not very dense for a thermal solution for this new material. This is especially true with the likely increase complexity of adding a plumbing system and heat exchanger to extract the energy. With the lithium battery its a pair of wires going in and the same wires coming out to move the stored energy. Further, the lithium battery energy is electrical which certainly can be converted to thermal energy at 100% efficiency with a simple coil of wire (resistor), but it can also be used electrically for all the fun things we use electrical energy for. The new technology solution looks to only be a thermal storage medium. For reference 1 kg of gasoline has 45 MJ/kg. Keep in mind I’m not saying gasoline is a replacement, I just wanted to offer a scale for reference. Another approach suggested for storing sun energy in chemical form is ammonia which has about 19 MJ/kg. Yet another approach for storing solar thermal energy is sand batteries. A sand battery has a density of .4 to .8 MJ/kg ( 500 °C to 1000 °C respectively). Sand batteries would come with the same burden of a plumbing system and heat exchanger though but without any exotic materials. None of this is to discourage the basic reseach these folks are doing. They could be onto the “next big thing”, but I just wanted to put it in perspective as to where it is today.
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@SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 2026-04-23 18:03
Drake landing did this 20 years ago with water, salt, sand.
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@fullsquare@awful.systems 2026-04-23 16:56
aaand it boils water again
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@zr0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2026-04-23 19:41
Billions of dollars invested to develop a new liquid Meanwhile in Finland: https://polarnightenergy.com/news/worlds-largest-sand-battery-now-in-operation/ (Sand is one of the best ways to store heat and you get probably 4727482 tons of it for the price of 1ml of that novel liquid) Edit: I am exaggerating slightly, in case some smooth brain did not get the hint already.
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@nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2026-04-23 17:06
Seems like an old concept with new materials. Ive heard of gardeners leaving barrels of water in their greenhouse to help keep the localized temp above freezing overnight. Clearly those don't have nearly enough potential to boil water but yeah.
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@melfie@lemmy.zip 2026-04-23 16:11
Quite an interesting development and here’s hoping this makes it to production.
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@Hotzmon@fedinsfw.app 2026-04-23 20:44
Comparing heat energy and electrical energy (heated water vs lithium-ion battery) tells you quite a lot of science in this news article. They are not the same, even tho both are joules or watt-hours. Joule also makes things sound huge, because you get to add the mega on the prefix.
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@m0darn@lemmy.ca 2026-04-23 17:09
Abstract from Science: >Storing sunlight in a compact and rechargeable form remains a central challenge for solar energy utilization. Molecular solar thermal (MOST) energy storage systems, which harness photon energy and release it as heat on demand, provide a direct approach, but have long failed to meet practical benchmarks. Inspired by the architecture of DNA, we report a pyrimidone-based MOST system that stores energy in the strained Dewar photoisomer upon excitation at 300 nm. Designed with sustainability in mind, the system operates solvent-free and remains compatible with aqueous environments while overcoming one of the field’s greatest hurdles: the controlled extraction and transfer of stored heat. When catalyzed by acid, the Dewar isomer releases enough heat to boil water (~0.5 mL). These advances help point the way toward decentralized solar heat storage and off-grid energy solutions.
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@XLE@piefed.social 2026-04-23 17:40
Another nail in the coffin of "An Analysis of Water-Based Assumptions and Recalibration of Expectations for Evolutionary Models"