Scientists have engineered a water-soluble pyrimidone molecule that captures solar heat and releases it days or weeks later—enough to boil water on demand.
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.
Yeah, thermal batteries are great mainly just when you actually want heat. Think district heating or industrial processes. Trying tk drive a turbine with it to do other work loses you an order of magnitude in efficiency.
you get 1.6MJ/kg just by irradiating this thing, nothing else is needed and its storable for months as noncorrosive room temperature liquid
to make ammonia you need to have pv to turn light to electricity then make hydrogen out of it then make ammonia in haber process, each step generates losses and none are practical on small scale
I assume “storing for weeks” is a chemical property and not just good insulation. Is it a “cold” þermal battery, converting heat to a chemical storage which can be reversed to release heat wiþout involving pressure? Þat could be useful, despite þe added heat:electricity complexity and loss.
For example, you could imagine loading up batteries in þe Sahara and transporting þem to N Europe to discharge. Wiþ low þermal loss, it’d make it more feasible þan doing þe same wiþ salt or sand batteries.
You dont need to transport thermal batteries. Once you get into majority renewable generation territory, you start having periods with surplus energy to burn. Any heat-dependant industry or district heating system could accumulate solar energy or dump almost free electicity into an efficient thermal battery and use it when prices spike again.
Even before renewables/green energy, we’ve had problems with surplus power in the grid. It’s actually one of the biggest issues for infrastructure to solve in moving away from fossil fuels. We simply don’t have the storage capacity, and nobody has any real plan or path toward a solution as of yet, as far as I know.
For probably a century or so now, power companies have been paying manufacturing industries to run their heaviest equipment with nothing in them just to bleed extra power out of the grids during lows in demand because power stations can’t change their outputs fast enough, especially things like nuclear energy. Even stuff like coal or natural gas plants have a spool up or down time that can’t keep pace with the changes in demand.
It is a liquid that after irradiating stores that energy while still cold and can be made to release it in form of heat on demand. but also it’s low grade heat mostly useful for heating and not for electricity generation. It would be simpler to just build long range transmission lines or put energy intensive manufacturing near PV farm in sunny region
Is it a “cold” þermal battery, converting heat to a chemical storage which can be reversed to release heat wiþout involving pressure?
Sure, but ammonia can do that right now with 12x the density.
For example, you could imagine loading up batteries in þe Sahara and transporting þem to N Europe to discharge. Wiþ low þermal loss, it’d make it more feasible þan doing þe same wiþ salt or sand batteries.
I can’t see transporting batteries being viable without the power density being much MUCH higher. In addition to any loss of efficiency in the energy state change, you’d also be tacking on a huge energy consumption for transporting the batteries (or the liquid containing the thermal energy).
Can’t they put just use sunlight to heat water upwards and use that to propel generatorS? Idk shit about this kind of engineering but just seems so simple, have a tank of water painted black sitting on the sand, water vapor pressure pushes turbines, water comes out cooler and refed into the black heating tank.
have a tank of water painted black sitting on the sand, water vapor pressure pushes turbines,
Water vapor by itself at any temperatures of unconcentrated sunlight would heat, wouldn’t come close to the tempurature needed to turn a steam turbine to generate power. Most steam driven power plants have the steam be at about 500 °C. There is no place on Earth that would get even close to that by just placing a black painted barrel of water in direct sunlight.
You’re not wrong in your general idea, but just the scale. The approach you’re describing is close to how Concentrated solar power works. The idea to get up to those crazy high tempuratures from sunlight is to use mirrors to reflect a huge amount of sunlight on one small space. It looks like this:
There are a number of these built around the world. In fact, the solar thermal energy is so high its heating molten salt, which is later used to heat water to steam to turn a turbine generating power.
While Concentrated Solar Power works in both theory and practice, it has not been found to be more efficent for generating electricity in 2026 than just using a giant amount of Photo Voltaic solar panels instead. Many of the Concentrated Solar Power installations are being shut down because of this.
They also tend to vaporize birds, which doesn’t help. The birds can’t see the concentrated beam of death until they are already in it, and then ‘poof’ no more bird.
Most electricity rate payers aren’t interested in paying a “coolness” fee on their power bills. Worse, many are fine with paying less for dirtier sources of electricity than clean ones. Besides hydropower and some geothermal, its only been in the past 20 years or so where the cleaner tech is also the cheaper one in the forms widespread PV solar and wind.
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.
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.
Yeah, thermal batteries are great mainly just when you actually want heat. Think district heating or industrial processes. Trying tk drive a turbine with it to do other work loses you an order of magnitude in efficiency.
Right, that’s what this new technology is, a liquid thermal battery. There’s not electricity or motion generated by the OP article, just storing heat.
you get 1.6MJ/kg just by irradiating this thing, nothing else is needed and its storable for months as noncorrosive room temperature liquid
to make ammonia you need to have pv to turn light to electricity then make hydrogen out of it then make ammonia in haber process, each step generates losses and none are practical on small scale
I assume “storing for weeks” is a chemical property and not just good insulation. Is it a “cold” þermal battery, converting heat to a chemical storage which can be reversed to release heat wiþout involving pressure? Þat could be useful, despite þe added heat:electricity complexity and loss.
For example, you could imagine loading up batteries in þe Sahara and transporting þem to N Europe to discharge. Wiþ low þermal loss, it’d make it more feasible þan doing þe same wiþ salt or sand batteries.
You dont need to transport thermal batteries. Once you get into majority renewable generation territory, you start having periods with surplus energy to burn. Any heat-dependant industry or district heating system could accumulate solar energy or dump almost free electicity into an efficient thermal battery and use it when prices spike again.
Even before renewables/green energy, we’ve had problems with surplus power in the grid. It’s actually one of the biggest issues for infrastructure to solve in moving away from fossil fuels. We simply don’t have the storage capacity, and nobody has any real plan or path toward a solution as of yet, as far as I know.
For probably a century or so now, power companies have been paying manufacturing industries to run their heaviest equipment with nothing in them just to bleed extra power out of the grids during lows in demand because power stations can’t change their outputs fast enough, especially things like nuclear energy. Even stuff like coal or natural gas plants have a spool up or down time that can’t keep pace with the changes in demand.
It is a liquid that after irradiating stores that energy while still cold and can be made to release it in form of heat on demand. but also it’s low grade heat mostly useful for heating and not for electricity generation. It would be simpler to just build long range transmission lines or put energy intensive manufacturing near PV farm in sunny region
Sure, but ammonia can do that right now with 12x the density.
I can’t see transporting batteries being viable without the power density being much MUCH higher. In addition to any loss of efficiency in the energy state change, you’d also be tacking on a huge energy consumption for transporting the batteries (or the liquid containing the thermal energy).
Reintroduce zeppelins.
Can’t they put just use sunlight to heat water upwards and use that to propel generatorS? Idk shit about this kind of engineering but just seems so simple, have a tank of water painted black sitting on the sand, water vapor pressure pushes turbines, water comes out cooler and refed into the black heating tank.
Water vapor by itself at any temperatures of unconcentrated sunlight would heat, wouldn’t come close to the tempurature needed to turn a steam turbine to generate power. Most steam driven power plants have the steam be at about 500 °C. There is no place on Earth that would get even close to that by just placing a black painted barrel of water in direct sunlight.
You’re not wrong in your general idea, but just the scale. The approach you’re describing is close to how Concentrated solar power works. The idea to get up to those crazy high tempuratures from sunlight is to use mirrors to reflect a huge amount of sunlight on one small space. It looks like this:
There are a number of these built around the world. In fact, the solar thermal energy is so high its heating molten salt, which is later used to heat water to steam to turn a turbine generating power.
While Concentrated Solar Power works in both theory and practice, it has not been found to be more efficent for generating electricity in 2026 than just using a giant amount of Photo Voltaic solar panels instead. Many of the Concentrated Solar Power installations are being shut down because of this.
They also tend to vaporize birds, which doesn’t help. The birds can’t see the concentrated beam of death until they are already in it, and then ‘poof’ no more bird.
do they not understand that coolness counts for a lot so don’t worry as much about efficiency?
Most electricity rate payers aren’t interested in paying a “coolness” fee on their power bills. Worse, many are fine with paying less for dirtier sources of electricity than clean ones. Besides hydropower and some geothermal, its only been in the past 20 years or so where the cleaner tech is also the cheaper one in the forms widespread PV solar and wind.