Sulfur Better than Hydrogen for Energy Storage, Engineers Find

Sulphur storage? Hmm. This concept smells a little funny.

Ah yes, I believe Hell runs on a similar system.

My first assignment as a refinery process engineer was to assist in the start up of a sulfuric acid plant. It mainly was used to burn H2S recovered from desulfurizing refinery products, but it could burn sulfur for startup, or to even out production. This process must be entirely different, since there is no way that process could have been converted to be so energy efficient to act like a battery. And it was a masterpiece of complex material engineering, with parts of the plant being plain carbon steel, lead lined sections, fiberglass ducts, acid resistant bricks, cathodic protected heat exchangers,etc.

If only we had more fluklear energy, we could basically power anything we want indefinitely. Fun fact, the first anti nuclear protests were actually because of concerns that humanity would become too powerful when we would deploy enough fluklear plants. Such a shame we make decisions nowadays mostly on how people feel and getting reelected. Keep informing them Sabine!

They can convert sulfur to sulphur and back again.

Regardless of all these thermal solutions not being perfect, I am heartend by the amount and diversity of entrepreneurs willing to invest in the sector.

Dunkeflaute.😂. I like the rain detail, its a keeper🤪

I'm a mechanical engineer working to commercialize graphene. Came across some companies doing heat storage in graphite and running the temperature up to 2000c, then getting the power back with high temp infrared photovoltaics. It would work better with graphene because of high thermal conductivity.

Just the thought of heating up sulfuric acid to 1000 degrees is absolutely terrifying. I hope nobody ever has to go near that.

You don't need two weeks of storage. Even on cloudy days you get 20% power from solar panels. So you just over provision them by a factor of 5. This is viable because of how cheap solar panels are. Now you only need 1 day of storage. You can improve this further with geographically diverse wind and solar. (the chances of cloud cover and no wind over a very large area is very small) A long running simulation in Australia shows you can get to over 99% renewable energy with just 5 hours of storage.

remember that thermal transfer is flux through an area. Volume is 3rd power, surface area is 2nd. the larger the tanks are, the less heat will leak w/respect to the volume. raising efficiency with respect to "self-discharge" means making bigger vats. can it get easier. the remaining loss is an artifact of the exergy

In general though, I think one of the best ways to deal with storage is to price energy by the minute, and have devices which react to this pricing -- both people and companies will get pretty inventive when financial incentives are given.

Thanks for the new word "Dunkelflaute "

Only in German will you be able to describe the "worst case scenario" with one word: Dunkelflaute, Weltschmerz, Schadenfreude...

Your mastery to switch from content to the sponsored part without me noticing it scares me

I was waiting for something both sulphur and April first related. But the last time I saw Hell being presented as an energy source was in the Doom videogame or in an ACDC concert.

Please make an episode about Cellcius heat battery, also developed by Eindhoven university. It is based on Potassium carbonate and its hydrate - it can be easily harvested from wood ash.

May I suggest a heat exchanger in hell, which is great until hell freezes over. With the current supply of evil in the world that will not happen for hundreds of years the least

Balanced views of new ideas. TY Sabine. You are a great physicist. Your understanding and then helping ordinary people understand complicated ideas is remarkable. Gratitude.

I think it is great that so many methods of storing energy are being tried. Then we can weigh up the pros and cons and use the appropriate method for the circumstances. And of course that is what you are doing Sabine. Making us aware of the Pros and cons. Thank you.