MIT boffins claim liquid sodium battery could one day power aircraft while sucking up CO2 MIT boffins have built a prototype fuel cell using liquid sodium and air that could one day power aircraft, and may help capture carbon through its byproducts. Skeptical? You can be forgiven. Even MIT materials science professor Yet-Ming Chiang, one of the lead researchers, admits it sounds a bit out there. We expect people …
Haven't you heard? Ecology was replaced by small pieces of paper-like sheets with numbers printed on them. Apparently, the more you have the better the economic success of you and your product. Any caustic and acidic output is always neutralized when combined and that is called business as usual because, regardless where the recombination occurs, it is a good case of recycling the universe's products as long as it is far, far away from you and your stack of small pieces of paper-like sheets with numbers printed on them.
Yes, raining lye from the sky doesn't sound so hot....and speaking of hot, liquid sodium burns like a whole sackful of mf's...could be pretty bad...however it might be great for integrated or stand-alone solar panel power - certainly a lot less toxic than the old standby, lead-acid batteries...
Sodium metal doesn't exist in nature - at least, not on the Earth. It will have to be produced by something like electrolysis, at great energy cost.
And if it's going to be liquid metal sodium, it will have to be heated substantially, at even more energy cost.
Then, of course, it's highly inflammable, so there will be safety aspects to consider.
This idea is thus going to do little to combat global warming. A much better idea than sodium powered drones might be no drones. Then we wouldn't need such crazy technology.
Excess solar and wind energy? Not even in your grandkid's lifetime. Solar panels have a 20ish year lifespan and the tech has been in use for 20ish years, therefore future manufacturing will be devoted more and more to replacement than new installs. And, AI is driving energy demand far faster than solar or wind can keep up with, only nuclear reactors can be built quickly enough to keep up with that demand.
The ones made 20 years ago, which coincidentally will need replacing now that it's been 20 years. If you get more than 20 years, that's a bonus.
Warranties are now to 25 years, so that is how long you can expect them to last barring any problems.
Wow you're a special kind of stupid, aren't you?
The manufacturing capacity of solar is increasing by leaps and bounds, there will be more panels made this year than were installed in total in the whole world five years ago, and that is continuing to expand - and with better/cheaper technologies that have made the panels themselves almost "free" in terms of overall project cost with labor more and more dominating it (at least in countries with expensive labor like the US)
If you really believe AI will be a lasting thing rather than enter another "trough of disillusionment" then you must also believe that AI will toss a lot of people out of work - why pay so much for it if it isn't going to increase productivity at some point? So there will be plenty of labor to install (or reinstall, though the 20 year lifespan projections are pessimistic and there are plenty of panels past their design life still producing at 80-90% of their original specs) if AI lives up to its hype.
No, just a realist. A 100 percent increase sounds really good until you see that is from 1 to 2. Even with all the production ever, solar is still only 4 percent of global production.
AI, on the other hand, accounts for 8 percent of global demand and is growing. I suppose I could toss in that crypto mining power usage is expected to be overtaken by AI by the end of the year, which is another energy hog.
It also doesn't matter what AI is, what matters is how hard those with a vested interest in AI is pushing it. They even stuck it in Notepad, so you tell me how soon it's going away. If it goes away - they'll probably repackage it in a few years, call it Predictive Analytics or some other horseshit buzzword. And after that they'll call it something else hoping to squeeze that money out.
Sorry if the truth upsets you, but consider - data centers are trying to get their own dedicated nuclear reactors just to run individual data centers. Do you seriously think there's going to be a big enough leap in solar or wind to cover the gap? If so, I'm not the stupid one here. I certainly won't complain if it ever does happen though.
Not even close to true. Where are you getting your made up numbers from?
According to the IMF, data centers (ALL data centers not just AI) are currently about 500 TWh/yr. That's estimated to become a little under 2000 TWh/yr by 2030:
https://www.imf.org/-/media/Images/IMF/Blog/Articles/Blog-Charts/2025/May/energy-data-centers-chart-of-the-week.ashx
According to the BP statistical review of world energy in 2022 the world produced 1641 TWh of solar power (and a further 2325 TWh of wind) which was about 25% higher than 2021. So we're gonna be way over 2000 TWh in 2025 (probably already were in 2023) which is MORE than the amount of power ALL datacenters in the world (not just AI) are projected to consume in 2030:
https://www.energyinst.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/1542714/684_EI_Stat_Review_V16_DIGITAL.pdf
Yes datacenters are trying to get their own nuclear power, but primarily because they don't necessarily have the transmission lines in place to deliver it to them. The way utilities tend to charge means that all ratepayers pay for beefing up transmission lines, and ratepayers who live near existing datacenters have seen their rates go up as a result and are rightly pissed off about it. If it was a big factory employing 10,000 people maybe they wouldn't care, but few jobs are created by a datacenter once its built. So to avoid the roadblocks that people are starting to throw in their way companies building datacenters have been forced to provide for their own needs power-wise.
Commercial production of sodium metal is usually achieved by electrolysis of molten sodium chloride but was previously produced by carbothermal reduction of sodium carbonate at 1100°C. The only problem with that is that it produces carbon monoxide & sometimes carbon dioxide as byproducts so I'm guessing they won't go back to that.
Sodium melts at 98°C so that's a drone battery I don't want to change with my bare hands, not to mention the mess it'll make if I crash the drone.
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What can go right. I think the idea is your drone can fly as far as you need, then it's a molten sodium incendiary.
A hell of a lot of new engine and battery tech is targeted at military drone, because what any new, unreliable, and/or dangerous tech needs, is a single use customer who wants to kill the recipient.
You could say the same about aviation fuel, and reveal yourself as fundamentally someone who thinks only on Boolean logic.
Things are not safe, or dangerous in absolute terms. Only a plonker thinks that., They are relatively safe/unsafe.
People drown in water, It's therefore unsafe?
Aviation fuel especially kerosene is in the sweet spot between fantastically energy dense and bloody dangerous, and safe as houses and totally useless.
This fuel cell would look to be somewhat more towards the fantastically energy dense and bloody dangerous end of things. Like hydrogen is,
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Now, maybe, we've improved things since the 1950s/1960s, but, did any of the liquid sodium cooled fission reactors not have problems?
Inconel and austenitic stainless steel can only put up with so much. The welds, less so.
"By carefully managing humidity..." um, yeah, 'cause we all know what happens when liquid sodium comes in contact with water. One would expect nothing less than for the humidity to be "carefully managed".
Sounds like another case of Ivory Tower vs Reality. I think we know who (or what) usually wins.
Finally, instead of protecting something utilizing liquid sodium, by, say, putting it on the ground (in a non-earthquake area) and enclosing it within a Horton Sphere (D1G prototype reference), let's put it on an aircraft which can, ah, crash.
I may be over-reacting. How much liquid sodium are we talking about, here? What's the working pressure, temperature curve? Will these things be allowed to fly over lakes or oceans? Cargo only, or, passengers?
Isn't sodium reactive, like really reactive. With, for example, water? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmcfsEEogxs
And, don't crashing aircraft tend to have points of structural failure distributed within them? Possibly next to water-based meatbags like ourselves?
Don't get me wrong, very cool research. But is this the best domain for their deployment?
It is definitely an idea worth pursuing, but I have a bone to pick with their weight-based comparisons. Weight has to include any and all retention, warm-up, cool-down, or other ancilliary hardware required for the fuel to be safely transported by the vehicle in question, whether it be Lithium, Sodium, Hydrogen, or Hydrocarbon based. Hydrogen isn't all that light when you also include it's cartridge and all the metals in those cartridges, nor the prewarming circuits required in cold weather climates. Sure Hydrogen itself is the lightest of the elements, but it's transport is weighty.
One problem with hydrogen is keeping it in whatever container you have it. Only helium is a better escape artist because it doesn't react with anything.
Hydrogen escapes lead to other the other problem with it that was so dramatically demonstrated by the Hindenburg and other airships in the early 20th century
And it is.
Say hello to the Beta Aluminide Fuel Cell.
The heat problem is not that serious. Multilayer vacuum insulation was developed for Sodium-sulphur batteries* that run around 500c in the 80's and 90's
*The original beta aluminide cell.
To be fair to the chemtrail aficionados, all exhaust out of the back of a jet engine has chemicals in it and leaves a trail when said jet engine is part of a flying object, so technically, they are correct to believe in chemtrails. The problem is what they believe is in the chemtrails :-)
All the best conspiracy theories have a nugget of truth in them :-)
My chemistry may be a bit out-of-date, but:
NaOH + CO₂ = NaHCO₃ and/or 2NaOH + CO₂ = Na₂CO₃ + H₂O
When the bicarbonate and/or carbonate hits the acid sea, it will convert to sodium bisulphate or sulphate or chloride (depending on the acid, sulphuric or hydrochloric) and carbonic acid (H₂CO₃) which readily dissociates into water and carbon dioxide.
How does this reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide?
https://greenbuzz.gatech.edu/news/finally-robust-fuel-cell-runs-methane-practical-temperatures
"Either exorbitantly expensive fuel or insanely hot temperatures have made fuel cells a boutique proposition, but now there's one that runs on cheap methane and at much lower temperatures. This is a practical, affordable fuel cell and a "sensation in our world," the engineers say."
Given the obvious problems already pointed out by others with using liquid sodium, this is a non starter as a power source for aviation.
A much more likely solution for aviation is electro fuel - produce synthetic kerosene from water and atmospheric CO2 via electrolysis in a carbon neutral production cycle, continue using jet engines just as we do now.
E-fuel is more expensive than digging up out of the ground, but that can will be mitigated with economies of scale and the siting production at locations where renewable energy is cheap and plentiful.
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