hey 42 here we've been using the same Battery Technology for 30 years now and our lives depend on it your phone laptop car smoke detectors medical equipment and so much more but what if I told you that a deceptively simple but previously Out Of Reach technology is about to change your life forever and that's no exaggeration by the end of this video you'll discover why we can't continue to use our current batteries for much longer and the unbelievable replacement that will change the way you live your life and I'm not just talking about prolonged battery
life for your phone what this new technology will unlock is so so much more than that the future of Battery Technology is much closer than you think and the outcome might just surprise us all let me tell you why but first I want to ask you a question why is this regular old clay pot from about 0 ad one of the most important discoveries in human history to answer that we need to travel back to to 1936 when this very pot was dug up along with a bunch of other similar artifacts in a small Village
near Baghdad Iraq this particular pot which is believed to be about 2,000 years old sat in a museum for 2 years just a Dusty not all that remarkable exhibit amongst many others also that's what everyone fought except for one man H when Austrian archaeologist vilhelm kig first viewed this vessel he suspected there was something exceptional about it that everyone else had missed and he was right it turns out this 2,000-year-old clay pot is the first known example of a battery built by humans now known as the Baghdad battery it's a fairly unremarkable thing it's just
a clay pot plugged up with a stopper made of asphalt sticking through that asphalt is an iron Rod which is surrounded by a copper coil and there was also an acidic residue inside of it suggesting it had once been filled with grape juice the grape juice inside the pot was acidic enough to react with the copper and iron electrodes which would have created a small electric current it only produced a measly 1vt not enough to power lights or to keep people's 2,000 year old iPhones charged but the Baghdad battery was never built for any of
that it was probably made to electroplate small objects with a thin layer of copper for decoration but the principle behind this archaic invention has remained exactly the same ever since and that very same principle now Powers [Music] Teslas I've been having trouble getting to sleep recently it's just such a busy time of year and I've got this huge workload that runs through my mind repeatedly every night and the less sleep I get the less productive I am the next day so it's just a vicious cycle luckily I've managed to put an end to my sleepless
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boil it down actually don't ever boil batteries that's a spectacularly stupid idea a battery consists of a cathode the positive electrode an anode the negative electrode and an electrolyte that allows ions to move between them usually a liquid gel or paste in the Bagdad battery the cathode was the copper cylinder the anode was the iron rod and the electrolyte with the grape juice so you see nothing has changed the lithium I am battery in your laptop has a cathode lithium metal oxide an anode usually graphite and the electrolyte is a lithium salt solution sure we've
made plenty of refinements over the years but the fundamental principles are almost to Millennia old modern batteries however didn't arrive until 1800 when Italian scientist alesandro Volta stacked alternating zinc and copper discs separated by pieces of cardboard soaked in brine to create a voltaic pile this was the world's first continuous electrical battery when vola connected wires to the top and bottom of his pile a steady flow of electricity was produced the next major breakthrough came in 1859 when French physicist Gaston Plant built the world's first rechargeable battery the lead acid cell then in 1899 Swedish
scientist alir yunger built the first nickel cadmium battery and it was another 70 years before we saw the next big step forward the lithium battery it's hard to overstate just how gamechanging the lithium battery was in the 1970s when it was invented by Michael wittingham and patented by Exxon Mobile it was the first battery that was both rechargeable and capable of delivering a high voltage it made all the futuristic portable Tech that we now use possible and it's still the foundation of most modern batteries John B good enough later expanded on whittingham's Research to double
a capacity of lithium batteries speaking of which the lithium battery is pretty good but it's just not good enough sure we can make even bigger lithium batteries but there's a scientific limit on how much energy can be stored within a given weight of the host battery and that number is 260 W hours per kilogram it's pretty decent considering older Battery Technology sat at around 75 the latest iPhone 15 Pro is pretty bloody good it lasts about a day in a bit on its 12.7 W battery but if Apple wanted the next iPhone to last for
one week they'd have to put a five times heavier battery in it I can see it now introducing the iPhone 16 Pro super Max the fattest most powerfullest iPhone we've ever built but there's a second sort of secret big invisible barrier to making bigger better batteries that big Tech doesn't like to bother your big brain about but it's a big problem sorry I got a big carried away there we're running out of raw materials to make the damn things according to a really intelligent scientist that I interviewed to make a liian battery you need lithium
and to make a nickel cadmium battery you need nickel and cadmium and to make a lead acid battery you need lead and acid I think you can see where I'm going with this the problem is none of these materials grow on trees in a magical battery Orchid they're all really hard to come by and require dangerous energy hungry environmentally shitty mining processes usually carried out by child slaves in unsanitary unhealthy conditions and that's a big problem because if we're going to build a battery Revolution we're going to need a lot more of of these Rare
Earth minerals and our current system just isn't sustainable or well good the two primary goals of all new theoretical batteries are increasing energy density and decreasing charging times and there are a few really exciting new battery technologies that could change everything I'll tell you about those in just a minute but first you've probably already heard of one of them the battery industry's poster child I'm talking about solid state unlike traditional batteries which use a liquid or gel electrolyte solid state batteries use a solid one yeah I know oh I'm sorry were you expecting laser batteries
made from the tears of alien hamsters it's a minor change but it's hard to understate just how revolutionary this tweak will be the most promising prototypes use a ceramic electrolyte it's the perfect choice really since it's highly conductive allowing ions to easily pass through it but the biggest Improvement will actually be in safety current batteries have two fatal flaws firstly they are susceptible to Thermal runaway leading to fires explosions and bad times secondly lithium based batteries can form dendrites these are strands of lithium metal that grow inside the electrolyte over time if a dendrite grows
so large that it breaches the gap between the cathode and anode it can short circuit leading to fires explosions and bad times solid state batteries eliminate both of these concerns ceramic is chemically inert and extremely stable under high temperatures so thermal runaway is no longer an issue and being solid dendrites will have a tough time penetrating the electrolyte solid state batteries promise energy densities of around 100% more than lithium primarily because there's no permanent anode in solid state batteries reducing the weight by by almost 50% just think about what that means an EV vehicle that
has a 350 M range today with the exact same weight would have a 700 mile range that would basically eliminate the whole range anxiety argument against electric cars for those of you who've never driven an EV that's the concern that you'll be stranded 100 miles from the nearest charger because your manufacturer lied to you and then you have to ret all your passengers American company quantum AP is currently fronting the charge of solid state battery development but more refinement is needed to make them stable and operate consistently it's currently estimated that we'll see solid state
batteries inside cars and consumer Tech by 2025 but what if there was a simpler solution to better batteries what if we could just take lithium ion batteries and replace one of its primary minerals Cobalt with a cheaper more abundant and more effective alternative there are 118 known elements surely one of them can provide the answer Without fire explosions and bad times well it turns out sulfur might do just that at least that's the aim of lithium sulfur batteries what makes these such a game Cher is their energy density sulfur the cafod material is both lightweight
and capable of Hosting much more lithium ions for comparison prototype sulfur batteries have demonstrated 550 W kg of energy density compared to the 260 of current lithium batteries and it's likely that that 550 figure will be increased with further research sulfur is also abundant and very low cost in fact it's the 10th most abundant element in the universe by mass whereas Cobalt and nickel used in lithium ion batteries are both considerably rarer and more difficult to extract oh and did I mention that there are countless Labs that have already built working sort of commercially viable
sulfur batteries right now in fact we've been working on this concept since the 60s and our current iterations are pretty far Advanced so what givs why aren't our laptops phones and cars half the weight with twice the energy well commercially viable is a loose term and the current version suffer from very low lifespans during charge and discharge Cycles the sulfur cathode tends to dissolve which leads to a rapid decay in battery performance over time another challenge is the shuttle effect where poly sulfide molecules shuttle between the cathode and anode degrading the battery's performance some prototypes
have only demonstrated in the range of 10 to 30 charging Cycles before giving up entirely and nobody's going to buy EV that can be charged 30 times even if it does have a 1,000 mile range however rapid improvements are now being made on reducing these drawbacks and in the past year there have been some lithium sulfur batteries produced that have lifespans in the hundreds of Cycles instead of tens by the way the general consensus is that the target for a battery that is properly commercially viable is 2,000 Cycles the most prominent name in the space
is lion a venture capital funded startup that is building an automated production line in San hose California specifically for producing lithium sulfur batteries with the primary buyers being EV manufacturers it expects to start shipping in 2024 if that holds true it would be extremely exciting and the start of a portable energy Revolution and yes I give you permission to return to this comment section in a year's time to ask me where the hell all those damn sulfur batteries actually are and that's the big question isn't it when if ever will we see these Technologies in
the real world in our homes and workplaces there are quite a few other promising battery technologies on the horizon such as sodium iron graphine and even Quantum batteries but like nuclear fusion they all seem to be just around the corner let's just hope that corner isn't actually a bloody Circle and that it actually has an end but just like nuclear fusion a new battery technology is a very high stakes reward we've been using the same batteries for well over 30 years now a cheaper lighter more energy dense alternative is proving to be extremely elusive but
if we do crack that nut it's no exaggeration to say that the world will change forever there are the obvious changes such as electric vehicles with more than double the range and 5 to 10 minute charging times laptops phones and wearables that last for days instead of just one and we'll see massive improvements to the stability and efficiency of the power grid with better load balancing to prevent power cuts and more efficient usage of renewable energy but then there are quite a few changes that could come from better batteries that will turn our world upside
down and they might not be immediately apparent to you let me explain what if we develop batteries that are so energy dense so cheap and so efficient that a remote Village could obtain one charge it using solar and the entire Village could then enjoy a steady uninterrupted supply of close to free electricity forever obviously solar would need to become more efficient too but that's happening in parallel with better Battery tech for reference current solar Tech is about 20% efficient but recent prototypes have pushed that up to 40% okay now imagine every community in the world
does the same thing generating and storing most if not all of their energy needs suddenly you're looking at a decentralized energy Network communities that generate and store more electricity than they use could sell it back into the parag grid for a profit and use that money to improve their Community this would also ease the strangle holds that big energy has on our power bills a power grid built by the people for the people could mean that citizens of every nation might enjoy cheaper cleaner electricity forever that might all sound a bit farfetched and utopian and
I realize that things don't always pan out in the most ideal way but just think for a moment how much political controversy Warfare and general shittery is caused by the global power struggle between ideologically diverse governments and the bmic gas oil and electricity company don't worry I'm not turning into a hippie I'm just saying that if we can all generate a little bit of our own electricity just like some people grow some of their own food and get the rest from the supermarket it would reduce the demand and strain on continent spanning energy grids that
are messy and all too often a bit bloody Troublesome what if you didn't have to worry about the next power cut because you know that you're in control of your own power supply for most people the cost and size of the batteries required for a single household's needs are the biggest barrier right now to this ideal scenario but if we can make those batteries significantly cheaper lighter and more energy dense we might just find that we're all energized with a little spark of hope thanks for watching just a quick word to say that I couldn't
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