That sounds really interesting, but the article doesn’t do anything to explain how it’s kept molten. How much energy do you need to put in to the battery environment to keep it functioning? If it loses power, how long can it keep itself going until it turns into a solid block of metal?
Ambri’s been building towards this for a while, so there’s a lot of material elsewhere on how the contents stay warm - put simply, it’s well-insulated, and as the battery gets bigger, the square-cube law makes it more and more efficient in that regard as the volume of heat stored increases much faster than the surface area the heat can escape through. A cold start would be expensive in terms of energy, but Ambri’s website states that a daily charge-discharge cycle provides enough waste heat to keep the critical components molten.
Just Have A Think did a piece on these batteries a couple of years ago, if you’re interested to learn more.
Thanks!
The molten-liquid #battery by @Ambri_Inc could go for 20 years while retaining 95 percent of its capacity, according to its inventor, MIT’s Donald Sadoway.
Two miracle batteries in one weekend? Nice.
Ah I had a suspicion this article would be about Ambri! I applied to work there once while I was in undergrad (didn’t get the job). Very cool tech, glad to hear that their work is coming to fruition. Good grid-level energy storage will be an important enabling technology for wider adoption of renewables.
