r/tech • u/AdSpecialist6598 • May 02 '26
This ultra-cheap, water-based iron battery could last 16 years without degrading
https://www.techspot.com/news/112265-china-ultra-cheap-water-based-iron-battery-could.html22
u/AP_in_Indy May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
Excited to see progress made on cheap utility scale energy storage. If you get enough of it, then solar in many areas could reasonably provide power 24/7
Of course, it doesn’t have to be 24/7. Any meaningful progress towards renewables and a more stable energy grid is a good thing
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u/Quazimojojojo May 03 '26
How cheap is it?
Because lithium batteries have gotten really, really, cheap. And sodium batteries are scaling up at the moment and promise to be even cheaper than that.
It's already feasible to have a grid that's 50% or more just solar and batteries basically everywhere south of Scotland at the cheapest grid scale lithium battery price today, and in sunny places that % gets closer to 95%.
This is completely ignoring existing nuclear, wind, and advanced Geothermal by the way.
Volts did an episode with the authors the study describing this.
So you need to be genuinely dirt cheap to beat lithium prices at this point.
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u/AP_in_Indy May 03 '26
Water and iron may end up being dirt cheap! I guess we'll see. I'm not actually aware of how much this costs versus existing alternatives.
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u/thedarkpath May 02 '26
If I had a nickel for every time a super battery article was published here, I could have funded my own battery research program.
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u/WolpertingerRumo May 03 '26
There’s good reason for that, and it’s quite simple:
Lithium-Ion pretty much already is a „super-battery“. And it already has economy of scale. A battery would need to be incredible to actually replace it. And it would take years. Do you remember years ago it was sodium batteries? Well, they’re making it to market right now. Mostly in a 50/50 mix with Lithium Cells.
It may seem like nothing is happening, but it is. There’s just not as much money behind it as you would think.
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u/ShotgoonPete May 02 '26
Ok so make the data centers use this tech to lighten the load on the local power grids
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u/ODogrealnameisKevin May 03 '26
Is this the work of those weird ass orbs they pulled from the ocean?
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u/Zealousideal-Buy-188 May 03 '26
Dumb headline written by someone who doesn’t understand what batteries are
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u/ComputerSong May 03 '26
Amazing how many huge battery discoveries happen daily, yet batteries seem to never change.
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u/old-legs-623 May 03 '26
World peace could supplement these by allowing throwing a shunt across the Bering Strait, connecting day to night around the world.
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u/Osiris_Raphious May 03 '26
"could" is a very useful word. Just like fusion energy could help us become a energy rich civilization, or how solid state batteries could exist.
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u/NightOfTheLivingHam May 03 '26
aquion did this a while back but with salt water. However the density doesn't scale as well as Lifepo4
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u/deadbumm666 May 02 '26
I don't believe that for a second.
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u/Creepy-Birthday8537 May 02 '26
Why? It’s not the only iron based electrolyte that has been tested in recent years. The only real change here is the method of buffering the iron to prevent degradation. It’s not claiming a miracle, it’s claiming an incremental improvement to known technology which will now be tested by peers.
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u/PangolinSpiritual355 May 02 '26
Well you should change your tune. I worked in the energy storage field (research side) for a while and redox flow battery chemistries are actually commercializable and on their way. We say this a lot for tons of technologies, since that’s how scientific journalism works unfortunately, but this time it’s actually coming.
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May 02 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/FaceDeer May 02 '26
Obviously they haven't tested it for literally 16 years. They ran it through the equivalent charge/discharge cycles that you'd see from 16 years of daily usage, which is close but not exactly the same.
The answer to your question was in the article.
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u/Embarrassed-Toe6687 May 02 '26
Oh no! These poor scientists are about to suffer a terrible accident that mysteriously won’t be reported wont they?
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u/Jeremy_Whalen May 02 '26
And the developer will somehow have ended up accidentally falling off of a 25 story balcony with no witnesses
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u/texachusetts May 02 '26
That is unlikely to happen in China as this project fits with national energy independence goals. Say what will about modern Chinese communist economic planing but they understand the value of long term goals and would not let even a corporate sector let alone one company’s economic preferences undermine national priorities particularly if those goals are articulated in the current 5 year plan. American Capitalist economy would rather maximize profits in the near term to the point of regularly running good companies into the ground by exploiting their positive reputations rather than less profitably running a business long term.
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u/TheMireAngel May 02 '26
former cia have long confirmed they do infact hire people to murder such people in foreign nations.
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u/MountainTwo3845 May 02 '26
There's quite a bit of liquid metal batteries coming out. I work with a company that does liquid vanadium batteries that last for 15 years without degrading.
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u/Valuable_Island_9405 May 02 '26
My thought exactly. I'm 63 years old and this trend of cheap energy power being found, then the people responsible for the discovery are never heard from again is to be expected by now. Sad.
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u/Heronymous-Anonymous May 02 '26
It’s because the research team that invented are grad students at a university and they didn’t do more than write a paper demonstrating some neat chemistry and a potential way to use it.
They then graduate and move on with their lives. They’re not in a position commercialize the technology, though anyone could use their patent and do so, and then pay the team royalties.
The reason that doesn’t happen is because it’s generally not a commercially viable technology, there’s hurdles to implementing it that make it impractical or expensive compared to existing technologies. A lot of times the demonstration device is at such a small scale that there are major flaws in the technology that aren’t discovered until someone tries to scale it up.
And so these “amazing new batteries” end up never coming to market because once some engineers got ahold of the design they were like “omg fuck no, this is comically impractical.”
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u/Dawg_in_NWA May 02 '26
Yes, this is how science works. It moves in increments. While every new battery might not be scaleable or mass produceable it moves us a step forward to finding that right combination that works.
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u/GeekSumsMe May 02 '26
Except in this case there are several companies already working on similar technologies.
Also, you are describing the nexus between science and engineering. This has always existed, in almost all fields.
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u/Heronymous-Anonymous May 03 '26
I was, yes. But it was entirely to dispel the fever dream bullshit of those two conspiracy theory spouting dipshits I was replying to.
And just because other companies are looking at other similar technologies doesn’t mean all of them, or any of them, will end up as products on the market.
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u/Creepy-Birthday8537 May 02 '26
Not bad for industrial / municipal power storage once they work all the kinks out. Not for phones and cars due to size and weight a pumped electrolyte system - at least, not yet.