They should be in talks with Form as a potential manufacturer... But then, I've learnt to never hold my breath waiting for Australia to move from a primary resource provider to manufacturing economy...

They should call it the "Cell of Air Lithiumfree Battery", or COAL battery, then you guys would have millions of them.

as a brazillian I have the same opinion

@@Muppetkeeper Bravo!

Ya, something already proven to be better, the lithium IRON phosphate 😁

sure, I'm building a 1MW solar farm in my ranch, lets see if I can get a 100KW battery in 2023, I dunno...

Unfortunately Iron Batteries are only 60% efficient.

@@wooferhound7571 still good value for money, it seems.

@@wooferhound7571 If that is so this is very good. Zinc air is 30% and aluminium air even less 18%.

@WooferHound if it does no harm it doesn't matter how efficient it is.

Yes! And to think that recycling these would use existing steel recycling streams. I didn't hear a mention of cycle life, but maybe I missed it

I think that the 700+Wh per kg, is just the theoretical limit.

agreed will

All chemistries have very high theoretical energy potential, in practice only a fraction is realised.

I think you are correct about the C rate.

Lithium-ion and iron-air will likely work in tandem, with li-ion handling storage up to 8 hours, and something like iron-air for longer storage. Lithium-ion for grid storage will likely use the LiFePo chemistry, which is mostly iron and phosphorous. Lithium in the long run won't be scarce, and Fe, P are abundant.

I worry about the energy density. The example offered is 1 MW per acre. 3 MW at best. So, to go a grid sized battery e.g 500mw, it's going to need hundreds of acres. Not an impossible achievement but a significant amount nevertheless.

@@billhill4479 this technology is still in it's infancy too. It wouldn't be surprising if they increase energy density by quite a bit. (Also nothing is stopping them from building up/down when land becomes a limiting factor

@@billhill4479 in these discussions I notice a lot of (obviously knowledgeable) people use e.g. 'mw' ( megawatt) when they actually mean megawatt-hours. Commenting on energy density, you must mean megawatt-hours/acre...has this become a shorthand convention or is it simply inattention to accuracy? I'm not concerned about those who are just ignoramuses & don't know what they're talking about, but you've apparently done at least a bit of research yet write a comment which in technical terms is meaningless.

@@Nighthawk20000 agreed. there are plenty of played out mines, dead subway lines, or they could dig the equivalent of missile silos to stack them in. If they were rolled out for home owners to power their homes and charged on off peak hours it would save the individual money, be an emergency power source for home or grid, and lower peak demand for electricity. batteries need to come in many flavors just like fossil fuels have to meet specific needs

ha ha ha

I imagine a future where the automatic car wash also "reverse rusts" your car before it washes it, lol.

there is! though it would require immersion in electrolyte and electric shocks😁

@@dizzywilliams3557 that’s not a problem.

There's a fellow who built a tank full of dilute molasses to reverse his trailer into. (Apparently, molasses contains or produces by reaction chelating agents). As mentioned, there are also electrolytic methods.

It's just another sideshow. Forget about it.

Side solar and wind just use up more resources and put more poison out in the environment there's no way they can be recycled yet

@@brandonmusser3119 No way what can be recycled ? There's a problem with recycling the fibreglass in wind turbine blades but everything else recycles wonderfully. Also glass isn't a poison ! Solar PV panels will probably go on generating electricity for 100 years or more, albeit at reduced efficiency but it's paid for after say 15 years so who cares ?

Every time this benighted huckster opens his mouth he spouts disingenuous nonsense in which the wide-eyed youtube flock here love. The best battery storage resolutions won't scratch the surface of the grid-scale energy storage conundrum. The periodic table and the physics simply DO NOT LEND THEMSELVES TO RESOLVING SUCH A GRID SCALE BATTERY STORAGE PROBLEM.

@@grahamstevenson1740 no the heavy metals and stuff in there do not recycle they will have to be buried somewhere far away from us and other animals heavy metals are dangerous if you don't believe me go do a little research it won't take very much

Try to invent a solar cell that doesn't eventually wind up in a landfill in 20 years.

@@235buz Silicon based solar cells are not the only way to harvest solar energy

Caden, you make an old man very happy. What a great attitude!!

But why do you believe this is real when there isn't so much as a photo of the alleged (non existent) battery? You're so gullible.

@@Withnail1969 Metal-air electromechanical cells already exist. This is just a variation. This company is also not the only one to have worked on developing these cells and there are published papers on the topic. The chemistry also makes sense to me. If we can accelerate rusting with electrolysis why can’t we do the opposite? Why are you so quick to push it off as fake?

No it isn't. There is no evidence this alleged battery even exists.

Your EV is that.

@@crhu319 your EV can do it but what dose it do to the cycle life? If your car is good for 250k miles or 1,000 cycles over 10 years, and you do a cycle every day while the car sits on your drive way....

100% this... I'm tired of hearing of these all being grid-scale. 99% of all outages I know of (Only the big ones make the news) are "last mile", When it comes to the regular daily (there's always power out somewhere) outages, grid scale helps NO ONE. Grid scale needs to be only an interim solution where the infrastructure can't yet handle point-of-load storage or buffering. Sure, load the keep-out area of active or decommissioned nuclear plants, around coal plants, etc (already dedicated land owned by the power companies) and there is room around almost any sub-station for a few mega-packs but those need to be supplemental to last-mile storage. Having distributed capacitors is never a bad thing, but it needs to be the least-focused piece. The economies of scale definitely work for grid-scale, but is that what the battery and inverter companies want when they can gouge individual consumers at retail prices? Grid-scale requires large plots of land, buildings, building permits, large time-consuming projects that take months/years filled with not-in-my-backyard protests. Point-of-load provides jobs for many installers instead of a small crew, the permitting is spread out to local authorities, the projects go in much faster, and when you CHOOSE to have it installed, it's yes-in-my-backyard. If the power companies want to own and control the storage, our neighborhood also has in-ground transformers that could be deepened. An option they could offer would be to put their own version of the power-wall upstream of the meter, then if I want to install solar, they would still own the safety-disconnect aspect and can coordinate the neighborhood smart-grid to either assist the supply of the sub-grid or disconnect it completely if necessary. They could also just subsidize any home power-wall/solar installations and then charge/credit under a number of schemes - ie: excess energy generation is paid as credit towards the equipment lease or perhaps fixed monthly lease price (paid-off at end of lease) and the sell-back is credit

@@AaronCoakley Microgrids are one way to better prepare the grid for all renewables, efficiency, and climate change events.

If the technology was really cheap, then there would be companies using it to monetize the energy demand spikes.

Thanks Rajesh. I appreciate your support :-)

Dave is a great presenter as opposed to others who are the annoying smart ass kids in school everyone hated.

Because we should be using zero batteries

Yes I hope this works out. No more need for power stations and big energy bills from greedy companies

Generally, there's three issues with residential storage - cost, service, and regulation. On the cost side, all energy systems have some sort of support components - the 'balance of plant'. Even if it's just a box and a fan, the Balance of Plant for small systems tends to be very expensive compared to grid scale. Similarly, someone has to occasionally provide service to the battery. Residential scale service has a high entry barrier- even if it's just training new service techs, and few companies want to front that cost. Finally, is regulation. The grid is interconnected. In the event of a power interruption, a central premise of all utilities is that power is off at source. Batteries make the grid into 'electrified islands' that present risk to line repair folks so regulation requires automatic disconnect equipment, etc. That also costs a lot of money when you're talking about millions of little houses instead of a few thousand substations.

@@occhams1 economies of scale

What the video doesn't say is what the storage capacity of the washing machine sized battery might be, therefore how many you would need to complement a home generating set up. If, for instance, 20 were needed for such a purpose, only very few homes could afford the space.

The home owner can afford " his own generating system" It's the storage that is still prohibitive. Paying for poles, wires and transformers in a rural area is seriously expensive. If building where I live now, I would go stand alone far cheaper.

Also very easy to maintenance, repair, replace, and responsibly dispose of. Those are all great costs in battery industry as it is now.

Sounds like high density storage with a slow charge and slow discharge. I like the liquid metal battery best for grid scale storage where you want rapid max charge, rapid max discharge, low cost, safety, and 100 year lifespan in heavy use. High max rates allow more aggressive grid stabilization when needed (you need more aggressive grid stabilization when you take fossil fuel off the grid).

I suspect the discharge rate is also temperature dependant,in any case, it looks like it could be a part of the solution.

Which is fine, really. Weather patterns persist for days, so long term storage works great for that.

@@tsamuel6224 Why not both?

Well, I hope that wherever mining might take place, that very strict environmental regulations prohibit the use of acid leaching or anything like that... (it should be a simple matter of removal of the ore body... and then a restoration of the environment . In general, we need to begin to restore the plants and habitat of all the various species, with whom we share this sacred Earth. I had an amazing vision once... in which the epiphany consisted of actually "seeing" that the energy of something most of us are aware of as "the force".... or God.... letting me understand that its energy IS in Everything, withing the physical plane. (which was created by that force). Therefore, it would behoove all of us to come to this belief... that everything is sacred, no exceptions....and then act in ways which support it.... by demonstrating so much more attention and care... to all of who/what we come into contact. Hope you guys get a nice fat contract and lots of permanent jobs out of it. Sending BIG LOVE and good vibes to all of you out there, who struggle.with the state of things these days.

May the pasties rise again.

I'd be happy to go to work as a geologist in an iron ore mine in Michigan.

@@aafjeyakubu5124 Lol, and when the pasties rise, the Yoopers do too!🌲🌄🌲

@@richardmcdonald7565 My thinking aligns with yours! Generally iron mining is less hazardous than sulfide ore mining, oxides of iron and titanium in silicate matrices, though iron mining can expose elements like selenium which wind up flowing out of tailings ponds (wish they captured this valuable semiconductor element!). Some deposits, like the one in the northern half of our county are iron sulfide ores, basically iron pyrites, and the associated elements and acid generation that could leach out the hazardous ions are mainly in those types of deposits, but then probably so is the gold. Hopefully wise ethical and careful methods will be employed in any mining operation, but that seems to take a lot of government pressure and more ethical government officials, which hopefully we will see more of in the future.🌄🌎🌏🌎

Utter nonsense, no they can't.

@@Withnail1969 Not a scientist are you? no such word as cant its just a challenge!

@@jostouw4366 Sorry that's not science, it's just nonsense. Nothing of the kind will ever happen and iron/air batteries do not exist.

It is not that far off, it seems

Start with your energy needs. A typical house needs 10 to 30 KWh per day.

Second that, batteries are so expensive.

youre delusional. these videos are all nonsense.

like good old Goretex ?

@@diaman_d exactly what came to mind

they should pair it with graphene supercapacitors to solve the problem of high discharge rate.

@@diaman_d , Gortex was a wonderful idea, (if the correct water-repellent chemistry had been developed), however all of those waterproofing materials were made with PFAS chemicals... which we absorb, but apparently cannot cleanse from our bodies. Eventually; (depending upon exposure, and other uncontrollable factors), cancer can develop from it. :-( I couldn't believe it, the other day, when I got a petition to sign, to support a new bill for the cosmetics industry (here in the U.S.).. that they can never use PFAS chemicals in cosmetics AT ALL... (and they had a picture of lipstick, being put on a pair of lips). Is that the height of irresponsibility ? or what. ? Hey, but it looks as though we have finally discovered a very important key, which will finally enable 100% renewable energy, to replace all fossil fuels. The biggest thing is the huge mass of iron, in and on the Earth.... I truly pray that the mining processes used to extract the iron, can be totally restored, with permaculture... I'd actually love to see that stipulation, as a binding responsibility... to restore the environment 100%. This podcast gives me some hope for things to track in a positive direction, so we can learn to dance with our big Mother.

I was wondering about how much capacity that washing machine sized battery had. If it weighs 100kg (not a lot for something that size) then it's going to br 75kWh roughly. If it's more like 200kg then 150kWh and suitable for "distributed storage". Now that really would be a game changer.

They probably will end up working with Li-ion LiFePo chemistry for short-term storage, and a unit or more of these iron-air batteries for long-term storage at home.

I imagine the fruits of these low cost per Kwh batteries will primarily go to large corporate entities for the foreseeable. Consumer units will be a low priority - just look at the investors so far.

indeed, i'm always amazed these battery companies never seem to address the house size factor, its got to be a big market.

@@rtfazeberdee3519 Industrial markets are easier to sell to. They buy lots at once and sign long-term contracts. It costs a lot more to sell individual units.

I could see shipping container sized battery cells at every wind farm and solar farm as well as at ev recharging stations. This should go a long way to making self contained energy generating desalination and water purification stations all over the world. Let's get moving on this in a big way. Get Elon involved.

Imagine a "footprint" of 2 washing machine sized batteries, with a wind power system keeping it at 90% at all times. Make it two stack units and get twice the power per square foot.

Hi. I make homemade batteries. I’m working on a cheap nickel zinc battery 🔋. On my UKposts channel.

@The Tired Horizon I am hopeful that, after I fully investigate this, I can put the unit inside my utility room. Cost per unit is a definite factor, but it looks like you can add or remove units as needed. Imagine 2 of them doing a credible job, and being able to remove one for servicing, and not have to tear down the system. I am thinking about having up to four of them to power my farm. Small ( 8 feet or less) diameter wind generators ( in Kansas, the wind only stops to change direction, lol) will supply adequate power. It might be possible to charge off of a vehicle battery, but I don't see that as a common use.

That's exciting! I've spent a long time being skeptical about Form Energy because of the reliance on secrecy instead of patent.

What is the cathode material? If it's protected by patent, as the video states, it doesn't need to be secret.

@@somerandomnification Likely its the design of the cathode which may be copied with similar setup

So what did your friend say?

@@bru512 pretty much the same stuff that was outlined in the video. When he worked there he was just an intern and it was also two years ago so things have changed since then.

It's incremental my friend, batteries now power cars, a massive improvement from 46 years ago

LMAO!!!!!!

It's an interesting idea, but bridges and the like are made of steel, not raw iron. I'm wondering how reversing the oxidation of iron affects the structure and carbon content of steel which has been created and heat treated to achieve a specific toughness/hardness for any given use.

In the 1980s I worked in the gas supply industry and I was advised that sacrificial anodes were used to protect pipework.

Rust is how we find it in nature, unless we're lucky enough to find an intact meteorite, turning it into iron is step one.

Common rust is heavily hydrated form (contains lots of water molecules) but here rust can be reduced to iron back by electrolysis. But the voltage will be lower- he does not say how much. Oxygen reduction has high overpotential- means it is intrinsically inefficient and produces lots of heat. I do not know about the efficiency of such a cell.

Imagine turning the ship hull into a giant cathode?:0

Shame we can't grow ship hulls on a conductive framework submerged in rusty water.

@@morkovija that's why iron hull ships have aluminum anode blocks bolted to the exterior of the hull, to prevent oxidation.

Do you have to use that horrid passive term “is concerning”. It’s such a social science ohrase. Can’t you say something like “it’s of concern”?

Every time this benighted huckster opens his mouth he spouts disingenuous nonsense in which the wide-eyed youtube flock here love. The best battery storage resolutions won't scratch the surface of the grid-scale energy storage conundrum. The periodic table and the physics simply DO NOT LEND THEMSELVES TO RESOLVING SUCH A GRID SCALE BATTERY STORAGE PROBLEM.

@@dipladonic yea but if only we believe strong enough

@@viermidebutura Believe as much as you want. it'll make no difference. The chemistry and the physics will never fit in with the utility-scale battery storage fallacy.

@@dipladonic except they do and are. Sorry, reality is dissolving your poison fossil fueled dreams. And by the way, you already posted this generic response on this comment section.

Yes. We have a bank of VERY expensive Lithium batteries for a medical device.

Doesn’t much matter - even if it’s only 50% at the end of a year of use which would be completely terrible for a laptop battery a warehouse battery doesn’t care all that much since each cell only has a few dollars worth of material in it. And it’s fairly easy to just throw some more iron in it, similar to how the old (50 years ago) lead acid batteries didn’t have a lot of charge cycles in them either but you could just put more acid in every so often.

I've no idea if this paper ("A Review of the Iron-Air Secondary Battery for Energy Storage") refers to the same technology that Form Energy has, but it has a table which has Fe-air battery with 50% energy efficiency, with 2000 cycles (to failure!!), cell voltage 1.28V, 50-75 Wh/kg. The 768Wh/kg is theoretical energy density. These specifications don't impress at all. The C rate is supposedly really bad.

@@olyalphy Yes. Not impressive at all for a car battery. But the idea is to have them in something more like a datacenter. Google used the shittiest hard drives and consumer grade RAM for many years in its datacenters because you just have workers drop in replacement parts as they fail. The real question is how cheap is it to repair the battery every 2000 cycles or so. A laptop or cell phone battery is only supposed to have a 3000 charge cycle life, give or take. So the iron battery isn't that far off -- and the lithium battery is basically trash after its done. The iron battery? If it's just the iron that is destroyed then it's super cheap to just refresh the battery. We did a similar thing with the acid component for decades with lead-acid car batteries. I haven't seen a car battery that wanted an acid refresh in a while but it used to be very common.

@@olyalphy The C rate is horrible, this is why they tout it as a 6 day battery.

Pokrec, Some solar panels may be off because they produce their power at the wrong time of the day for the grid's demand. Using such sporadic power is not practical for what needs to be a continuous process, it is not commercially viable. Steel is not made in a blast furnace, iron is and it needs the carbon from the coke used as fuel to make it into iron. It is not just a step in steel production but a valuable metal in it's own right.

@@iareid8255 I just thought, that it would be possible to reduce the Fe2O3 or Fe3O4 to iron electrochemically, like reducing the aluminum from aluminum oxide. But you are right, from blast furnace we get rather not chemically pure iron, but something called pig iron (iron + several % of carbon, silicon and other impurities), that is to be refined to steel of desired type in an open hearth furnace. But you are right, this would be impractical. Still it would be worth to think, if there is a process, that would be economically viable to use it using the intermittent solar energy to produce something useful. I know, that the machine to produce this something useful would be wasted during the night or cloudy days and the energy, that powers it, is cheaper than the cost of the machine, so it is rather cheaper to pay for the energy for the machine than have it stopped for the night...

@@iareid8255 But the idea of using the excess energy to run desalinisation plants is excellent. It doesn't matter what time of day something like that can run, or for how many hours, every extra gallon of clean, clear water is a bonus for the farmers. Better to put that excess energy to work rather than waste it. Reminds me of the days when they used to burn off gases when fractioning crude oil, and now those gases are being put to use.

Pokrec, to run any commercial production business it must run at times to suit teh process, most plants that produce materials are twenty four hour, three sixty five days a week businesses. They are unsuited and will not be economical with sporadic power supplies, even if it is free.

Mr Horne, the idea that we face extinction is not valid. Hyperbole is the current output from the media, do not believe it!

From my knowledge, Fe-Air batteries are not well suited for fast charging applications, since the oxidation process takes time, that's why Li-Ion would still be better for EVs.

If the weight isn't prohibitive and an easily switched out car battery could be made from this that was cheap - then you just have 2 or 3 of them at home and switch the drained one out for one that is charged. This concept (not using this battery) was proposed before as a way to capture excess energy generated from windfarms during low need hours (at night) so that it doesn't get wasted. Building such cars on a large scale (which are powered by easily switched out battery packs) would then enable "gas" stations to provide charged batteries in exchange for the drained battery on long trips. Essentially you wouldn't own the battery or their cheap cost would make it similar to how people exchange empty propane tanks for full ones. There would thus be no need to wait around for recharging either at home or on long trips. But if the pack would be too heavy it would kill that application. Cheers!

Yey for maths

I don't like reading, but I do like topics like these. He's a hero.

Glad to oblige :-)

And I guess it expands too and could fall off into the medium.(?) I am immediately very sceptical but of course all those problems explain why it took so long.

@@jean-pierredevent970 I would imagine that the anode and cathode would be laying horizontally as the video said that the anode was in stacks consisting of pellets.

Either as pellets, or perhaps some porus sponge form suspended on a non degrading conductive support, but that's a good question!

@@chuckkottke pellets for sure, large surface area and the ability to tumble the rust off. But also, I think we may be misunderstanding the process. Rust is Iron oxide, and the described recharging method strips the oxygen from the rust, leaving just iron.

And the reaction is also taking place under water, so the rust isn't going to develop and flake in exactly the way people are assuming it does, like in air. I'd be interested to hear more on that chemistry though

Lol there’s this video about batteries on here with so much fluff it feels the need to establish “atoms have protons and electrons” He then shows an animation and states “the blue and yellow dots represent the atoms” Oh thanks for explaining how symbolic illustrations work.

@@ramblingtothesun8969 Devil is in the details....

Never heard about it.I'm an ozzy

@@davyboy282able Apparently it was being built. amp.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/02/tesla-big-battery-fire-in-victoria-burns-into-day-three

Probably dam few............Paul

From their patents, it appears that they use what amounts to a sponge or foam structure for the iron electrode, which leaves plenty of room for the oxide - probably Fe(O)OH - to form. I think they'd have to be careful to oxidize only a portion of the iron, so that the electrode itself doesn't collapse (and stop conducting), and if that's the case, they can only store a fraction of the theoretical charge capacity per kg of iron. Hence the vast number of cells in a commercial installation. They're not large, but they are going to be heavy things. Shipping-container-sized versions would be more economical but would have to be constructed on-site.

How does the iron re-deposit itself onto the electrode?

None because this battery is a fairy tale.

@@crackedemerald4930 It doesn't. The battery doesn't exist.

I'm sure they've considered that

@@scottslotterbeck3796 I didn't say "they" hadn't. I just said I wanted to know about it.

The iron anode could be positioned horizontally at the bottom of the tank , the rust would thereby be distributed evenly on its surface .

If my cars anything to go by. You can quite stably build up very thick layers of rust with out it falling apart.

The anode is made of iron pellets, so it's possible that they crumble slowly.

Not moving the system around should help, worst case: melt it down and reshape it. My guess is the oxygen side is the expensive bit.

I'm guessing they don't because this battery is a fairy tale.

This (to me) should be the goal. I would think it would be less vulnerable to cyber attacks.

It sounds like if this technology gets validated and can be built for $20 a kWh, you could have a 100kWh battery at a price as little as $4k or $5k including production profits and distribution. This would mean you can put an oversized solar array on your house and have 3 to 4 days or more worth of energy stored in case of rainy or cloudy days. But we can't underestimate the resistance something like that would face from entrenched utility interests with massive amounts of money and lobbying power. In the USA, that industry generates around $400 Billion dollars a year in a mostly monopoly protected sector. They are not going to abandon that money printing machine without a fight.

Like all other tech. The deep pockets get it first, but it filters down relatively quickly

@@Jhale716 Possibly. The good news is that there is a lot of money behind this venture, including Bezos, Gates, Mittel and others. So, if it is viable, it will probably enter the market eventually. But, even the stated focus of the venture is "before the meter storage" which is utility storage. In reality, micro grids would be more efficient and more cost effective, along with more reliable since you can eliminate large part of the power transmission infrastructure. However, as noted, it is not in any company's interest to sell you a one time solution. They would much rather produce and store the energy, and then sell it to you on a continuous basis. So, while I hate to be cynical about this, the predatory behavior of many utilities in the USA has made me well aware that their primary focus is not looking after my interest.

I still like the idea of occupying an entire exterior wall(preferably against a garage or driveway) with energy storage as well your other HVAC and communication equipment. Serviceability can be done with access ports that double as storage space. For larger homes these things need to be more centralized, but can still be accomplished with a utility closet. I think local storage (and more importantly production) of energy is the only viable future this type of technology has. A global effort is a recipe for disaster.

It de-rusts every time it charges. A battery like that would erode more from the air ports than the electrolite cell parts. It could last over 100 years with little maintanence if kept from the elements.

This is where fancy electrolytes come into play. However, if it's just something like cast iron and saltwater gel, it's dirt simple to rebuild or repair cells. Life cycle extensions are typically easy to identify with long term testing or prototype use.

@@fieldlab4 Fingers crossed the initial costs + maintenance costs do work out well, giving us a low financial cost and low environmental impact cost alternative battery.

This paper give it at a few thousand cycles for the best tech : "A Review of the Iron-Air Secondary Battery for Energy Storage" (doi:10.1002/cplu.201402238) This paper show a step increase in the degradation rate around one thousand cycles : "Improved battery capacity and cycle life in iron-air batteries with ionic liquid" (doi:10.1016/j.rser.2021.110729)

I remember a battery powered by piss. Whatever happened to that ?

CATL is putting a Na (sodium) battery into production 60% power density of Li battery but 30% cheaper than Li . Yes inefficient & low C rate but cheap.