At TED 2012 Conference this past March Material Scientist
and Engineer Donald Sadoway, a professor at MIT, gave a talk on the missing
link to renewable energy. He argues the best way to solve current energy
problems is to work together promoting innovation. As a way to provide an
inexpensive and efficient alternative power source Sadoway and his team of
students successfully created a liquid metal battery using some of earth’s
abundant resources such as metals-liquid aluminum, and molten salt. His team is
able to get metal from virgin ore at about 50 cents a pound. I found his
philosophy on rethinking think big, think cheap and invent to the price point
of the product’s market a inspiring. I heard it before, but his spin had
a unique flavor to it, making it seem new. One of Sadoway’s lines was, “If you
want to make something dirt cheap, make it out of dirt.”
The basics of a battery = light metal on top of molten salt
on top of a dense metal. The metals were chosen by density and earth abundance.
He chose Magnesium for the top layer and antimony on the bottom layer. The
metals blend to form an alloy. The process of the metals blending into and out
of an alloy produces the current to power the battery.
Benefits of the liquid metal, silent, emissions free,
designed to run at high temperatures , reduces cost by producing fewer but
larger batteries. Watch to see how he ties everything together and also check
out other TED Talks on the site!
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/donald_sadoway_the_missing_link_to_renewable_energy.html
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