Scientists “bottle the sun” with a liquid battery that stores solar energy

euroderf

This sounds like an explosive breakthrough.

rigonkulous

It sure would be nice to see some way to harness all this energy falling around us. I'd far prefer to just catch a few rays to charge my toys than plug into some far distant machine. I remember thinking, in my youth, that the technology that enabled CASIO calculation would one day be applied as well to a bigger Turing machine, but I'm yet to see a solar-powered computer. I sure wish it'd happen, though. All these magic solar energy storage/conversion systems need to start showing up on SOM/SOC's, imho ..

vessenes

Not clear from the very fluffy press release how one gets this pyrimidone to start releasing enough energy to boil water while it maintains 60% better energy density than lithium ion batteries. I’d personally want to understand that before making any big plans, but this sounds cool.

DoctorOetker

also see: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aec6413

AndrewDucker

Stores it for return as heat. Which is useful, but not nearly as useful as returning it as electricity would be. Still, if it could be stored stably in the summer and converted to heat in the winter then possibly helpful. I wonder how the efficiencies compare to producing hydrogen or other burnable gases.

CrzyLngPwd

Trees also store the sun, and can release it back as heat. Blackberries store the sun too, and later release it as wine or jam :)

DoctorOetker

the charging is supposed to happen in plain sunlight in "UV collectors", or is renewable energy envisioned to power UV lamps / LEDs?

Danox

Good news in trying times good work researchers at UC Santa Barbara education and hard work still pay off there is hope I was starting to wonder…

adrian_b

Neither the press release nor the research paper abstract provide the only number that matters: the energy efficiency. The energy stored per mass has little importance for a stationary system. What matters is the energy loss when the solar energy is stored into this chemical compound, instead of being converted directly by photovoltaic cells. There are 2 losses, before storage only a part of the incoming solar energy is eventually stored into chemical bonds, the rest being either converted into heat or not absorbed. The second loss is when the energy is recovered. As it seems that the temperature that can be attained when extracting the stored energy is very low, the efficiency of conversion into other forms of energy will also be very low. In the absence of more precise information, this does not seem competitive with synthesizing hydrocarbons for long term energy storage, either in energy efficiency or in energy density, but only in the initial cost of the equipment, which is true only for now, as the living beings prove that synthesizing hydrocarbons from hydrogen generated with solar energy could be done at a very low cost. Because of the inherent very low efficiency of using this to generate electrical energy, the abstract of the research paper suggests as possible uses only "on-demand heat delivery for water heating, cooking, and surface defrosting". This may be useful, but far more useful is to use another method of energy storage that can be used for anything, not only for such limited applications. For myself, such a solution could provide only warm water for washing. For cooking, I would want my microwave oven, and I would also want my computers to work, so it would not make sense to invest in such a thing, instead of in a battery that could cover all my energy needs. Only if the energy efficiency from the incoming solar energy into the heat used to make hot water were significantly greater than when passing through photovoltaic cells and a battery, such a system could be useful to provide heating and warm water to a building, allowing for smaller batteries to cover the other energy consumption.