How the CO2 battery could be the future of energy storage?

[@UndecidedMF]

Do you think the CO2 battery will catch on for utility scale energy storage? Get Surfshark VPN at surfshark.deals/undecided and enter promo code UNDECIDED for 83% off and 3 extra months for free! If you liked this video, check out How Graphene Could Solve Our Concrete Problem kzbin.info/www/bejne/iZbakGWnhdZop6s

[@MattyEngland]

Makes sense, that's more than can be said for all the global warming hysteria. Remember when Al Gore said NYC would be under water by 2012?

[@CUBETechie]

I think in combination with regular thermal power stations it might be a very interesting idea you have the Carbon Capture technology added with this system and added Solar panels on the area and the good thing is if you use decommissioned powerplants blocks you have the necessary infrastructure like turbines generators and the entire power generation infrastructure

[@peterjohn8625]

Can you please say " Am I not Turtley enough for the Turtle Club. "

[@carlmartel8510]

LOL....LOL....So they charge the system with MANUFACTURED Co2....well that will fix everything !!!...(sarcasm)....why are you linking climate change with this?

[@Zextranet]

Great video but put the sponsor at the end to the video wont get interrupted and I would still pay attention

[@perandersson3977]

Every type of energy storage that doesn't degrade over time is a big plus in my mind. That means that it's not a question of if the system is profitable, but when

[@willvanderhorst9072]

What do you mean if profitable????? If it's not no one would ever build It ffs

[@Vile_Entity_3545]

@@willvanderhorst9072 most young people do not have the ability to think. Some do but most do not.

[@dtacto]

It's an attractive idea, but EVERYTHING degrades. The membranes, turbines, concrete, etc. in these are likely amortized over about 25 years as with similar construction. Making it last longer faces diminishing returns in the face of present value discounting and further would likely be superseded by much more efficient new technology at that time.

[@LazyLifeIFreak]

@@dtacto We need solutions NOW, not in 25 years.

[@stbuchok]

@@Vile_Entity_3545 Define young? I constantly hear negative things about Gen Z and young people, yet I know too many people that are 50+ years old that barely know how to Google something or how to research a topic. Why do people need to perpetuate the us vs them, the older vs the younger? I understand what the person is basically saying above, even if it wasn't written accurately. They are basically just saying that long term storage systems are easier to become profitable over short(er) term storage systems. Stop thinking you're better than someone because of your age. We all have short comings and we all have strong suites. Stop putting each other down.

[@jacana25]

I think the big difficulty that many people have is understanding that renewable energy does not just have a single solution. It will be a mix of generation including wind, solar, hydro, geothermal etc. It will also be a mix of storage including pumped hydro, lithium ion, flow batteries, hydrogen batteries and others. No solution is perfect for every context but together they offer a flexible way to generate and store the energy for the future.

[@float32]

And, lots and lots of nuclear.

[@fr2ncm9]

@@float32 Nuclear is the best option to get to net zero. There are many new designs out there that are far safer than traditional reactors.

[@MaxxMcGeePrivate]

@@fr2ncm9 Problem with it is, that it takes a lot of time to get it up. And you need cooling, which is getting more and more an issue with rising temperatures and low level rivers. New tech is there, but until they are up and running we could invest in renewable and storage in the meantime and it would be far better.

[@6Sparx9]

I wonder if there could ever be a situation that too many solar panels are reflecting or absorbing sunlight to the point we damage the environments we hope to preserve through changed local weather or localized average temperatures. Desertification around solar farms? I wonder how much landmass that would require to be covered for such a thing to arise?

[@KRYMauL]

@@fr2ncm9 I'm pretty sure this is going to be a big thing in the coming years.

[@BOK-04]

Clever setup using already standard parts, enhancing the ability to build fast. I like it and hope they are successful!!

[@mobaumeister2732]

They won’t, because nothing this guy reports on ever actually gets built. This channel produces more hot air than all CO2 and methane in the atmosphere combined.

[@sammadison1172]

Seems cool, wish he would have delved in to why C02 was chosen more.. is it really the most efficient gas possible for this application? I assume it is, but I can't help but be cynical that it may have been chosen purely as a hook for investment and brand. Is Nitrogen really worse? Why?

[@701983]

@@sammadison1172 I suppose, you would need extremely high pressure to get liquid nitrogen at room temperature. Wouldn't work with this concept.

[@TheLosamatic]

@@sammadison1172 you don’t make sense at all. If anything it’s an in your face deterrent to use CO2 as most people would think that’s dangerous! Do think about how available it is it’s put in the soda pop you dimwits drink all the time, used in pubs to keep keg bear fresh. Availability dude, cheap!

[@BEHEMOTH20]

@@sammadison1172 If I had to guess I'd say it's low toxicity and its very cheap

[@michaelmcchesney6645]

The only real downside as I see it is the amount of land the CO2 bladder takes up. While that isn't all that much of a downside, I imagine that solar panels could be placed on the top and/or sides of the bladder. Alternatively, they could dig a huge hole, put the bladder in the hole, cover it up and then install the solar energy or wind farm on top. Basically that would allow nearly all the land available for the installation to be used to generate power. I suppose the only problem with building it like that is it would be harder to perform maintenance on the bladder but I don't know how much maintenance would be required.

[@aone9050]

there is quite a lot of unused space in any wind farm for instance, and with how unreliable they are, you could use the extra capacity lmao.

[@magnumopus1628]

I had the same thoughts, especially regarding maintenance, but they could simply build an arc structure on top of the "dome" leaving enough space between the solar panel structure and the dome itself. P.S. Ironically enough, here in Italy it might actually be more difficult to use this in large scale because we don't have that much uninhabited flat-surface spaces, but there are places both in Europe (Germany, France and Poland or any other European country other than Italy and Switzerland) and outside europe, especially in Asia, in the Middle East and North&South America where space isn't really that much of a problem if the intention is to use them in large scale.

[@maniagokm3186]

@@magnumopus1628 The thing is, this looks like it could be scaled down to household size and be just as useful. Multiply that by each house hold that has a "balloon battery" and link them to the grid and you've got lots of capacity....one house at a time.

[@barracuda861]

@@maniagokm3186 good idea

[@theBabyDead]

@@maniagokm3186 that'd require too much maintenance. Probably better to put a central 'battery' on every block or so.

[@annegajerski-cauley7624]

First of all, congratulations to my Italian cousins for being first off the block with a significant product of this type! It is sure to find a significantly big niche for any energy storage cycle that follows the day-night latency. I would caution, in connection with Sion's observation below, that this sort of practical thermodynamic cycle only works well (i.e., near its peak efficiency) near some such cycle time, as it depends critically on the use of a so-called heat regenerator to recover the energy used in the compression phase. Not an insignificant part of the energy stored is locked up in the regenerators, and any attempt to rush or prolong the storage time means going off-cycle to accomodate, or loss of that heat, respectively. Anyway, any good tech has its optimum operational constraints. Nice report Matt...thank you. Domenico Barillari

[@alw6589]

What would be the best use case for this technology? Does it just need a window daily to recharge?

[@johndoh5182]

There's another company, ESS in the US that developed the iron redux flow battery. Either is effective, I don't know which would be cheaper or take up more space, and neither uses elements that are under high demand for other use cases, other than iron, but that's the most common element so no big deal. Actually after watching the process and efficiency the ESS system is more effective and I'm sure it takes up less space.

[@Blox117]

its a lie, everything on this channel is bs

[@DavidHalko]

@@alw6589 - “best use case” If it were me, I would use all renewable to compress CO2, send extra renewable to the grid, and increase CO2 power generation when renewable drops. Imagine it as a big capacitor used on a pulsed DC power supply, which fills in the gaps, but on a massive scale.

[@BrettCooper4702]

This system would work well with geothermal generation as it's 24/7. The off peak power could be stored and geothermal plants have a lot of waste heat that could be used in the liquid to gas phase.

[@Seraphus87]

Regarding the space requirement of the storage bladder, yes, that uses up quite a bit of surface area as shown here, but that doesn't have to be a problem. See this is a just pilot plant. Once the maximum extent of inflation of the dome is established, one could simply design a solid structure to be built around the dome, which can then be fitted with photovoltaic panels, thereby "reclaiming" some of the surface area for energy production on top of energy storage.

[@kedrednael]

Though the structure is round so that's quite akward to place solar panels on I imagine.

[@Seraphus87]

@@kedrednael How so?

[@kedrednael]

​@@Seraphus87 Just practically speaking it seems hard to me, to place solar panels on a large round structure. You'd need to use a crane or something? Or build a permanent stairs and walkway specifically for the panels? Regular solar power facilities are easy to build: just place panels on the ground, all in the same way. Or on roofs, where there is room to walk on too. Even then, the work of placing the panels is like 15% of the cost according to google.

[@Seraphus87]

@@kedrednael It seems I misunderstood part of the video, the bladder is already inside a solid shell, probably for protection. Simply adding a framework on the outside of the shell, including walkways and hardpoints for mounting the panels, would work. Yes it would cost more than leaving the solid shell as shown here, but if space is an issue, this would provide more utility per square meter of the ground the bladder is built on.

[@302big5]

@@kedrednael not really there are curved panels and panels that can be put on a sheet blanket like material. So there are implications to reclaim some energy of that space.

[@RossReedstrom]

I'm wondering how far you can scale down: this will never be a household storage option, but it strikes me that a lot of farmers might find it intriguing: the parts are all standard, so there's no magic single source dependency. Wonder if you could retrofit a silo with a bladder.

[@injunsun]

You've hit on something others have missed. These things don't have to all be above ground and made in this shape. Theres no reason they couldn't be made as tall as skyscrapers, with a tiny footprint, perhaps even topped with wind turbines, with solar panels all up their sides.

[@mpoisot]

I think turbines, heat exchangers, heat storage, and lots of precision balanced moving parts don't scale super small easily. I think traditional batteries will be a better fit for small outfits like homes and farms. Of course a farmer could opt to plop a grid scale dome or two on his land, but then we're not really talking about scaling it down.

[@NotOneToFly]

@@mpoisot You're neglecting the bottleneck in raw lithium production. If ranchers (who are already leasing their land for wind production) are going to get in on energy storage, the demand for batteries will become prohibitive. The battery industry is already in a lithium crunch; making storage with off the shelf components where the only specialty piece you'll need is the custom bladder to fit your old silo is a massive, massive win when we need rapid adoption of storage to halt climate change. Bear in mind, these silos might be smaller than the demonstration dome, but not by an order of magnitude. Maybe 1/2 or 1/3 the size. You only need a few of them and a rancher whose land has desertified and you have a plant almost ready to go. Brilliant idea Ross Reedstrom!

[@janami-dharmam]

@@mpoisot This is not heat storage; this is energy stored as PV (pressure-volume) which can be theoretically converted into electricity with 100% efficiency.

[@mpoisot]

@@NotOneToFly It's true there are lithium supply crunches today, but if we just go off the price per MWH quoted in the video then it assumes batteries as a family won't always be in a dire supply crunch. Otherwise we should revise the price per MWH of batteries to be much higher and essentially rule them out of the toolbox of storage options. Going back to the original comment, I can't imagine this stuff scaling down super small. Think of the careful maintenance that happens at power plants and refineries. Those turbines are incredibly expensive and any rotational imbalance or other mechanical issues can mean huge expenses, down time, and expert help needed to bring things back online. I think there's a reason we don't all have micro turbine co-generation units at home supplying both electrical and heat energy to businesses and residences. Those complicated machines and heat driven processes doesn't scale small efficiently. On that topic, I think the heat exchange and heat storage component of pressurized gas storage needs a minimum size to be cost effective. If that processes isn't done right it takes a big dent out of the round trip efficiency and probably limits the power output (the max speed you can convert stored gas into electricity). The bigger the heat system gets, the more efficient it can be, especially for longer term storage like days instead of hours. Matt kind of glossed over how the heat storage works in this system, and I bet that's because they're still actively figuring out how to improve that system and whatever they come up with will be their "secret sauce".

[@kylecramer8489]

It's a clever way to think about long term energy storage. Helping monetize CO2 capture is a nice bonus. Also congrats on hitting 1 mil, Matt!

[@southcoastinventors6583]

This doesn't do that in the least the CO2 storage even when fully built out is nothing compared to what we put up in the air. This is just a battery although it looks like a much cheaper one for grid storage which is good.

[@miroconzelmann5027]

i thought that too and it would be really intersesting to plug in the numbers and see how it would play out. Like How much CO2 is Stored in One Cycle/Storage Plant and how much is that compared to global CO2 Output. It wont be much, but i'd be interested in the numbers

[@josieriley9334]

@@miroconzelmann5027 ….he said “ 100 to 200 tons “ at the beginning of the video. Burning one gallon of gasoline, makes 20 pounds of CO2 (climatekids.nasa.gov/review/carbon/gasoline.html) ……. so 20,000 gallons of gas to make 200 tons CO2…… sadly, in 2021, the USA burnt 369 million gallons per day…….still good technology though!

[@miroconzelmann5027]

@@josieriley9334 ok so thats less than nothing 😅.... aaanyway

[@Scoots1994]

I've been talking about energy storage as the killer technology we need since the 80s. If (and it's a big if) they can get half of what they say then this really could be the killer technology we've needed. I still think we should be building dozens of modern nuclear plants to get us the energy needed now to get us clean water and get us to a time when solar/wind can fill the CO2 batteries.

[@drachenfels6782]

Nuclear energy has one killer feature not a lot of people mention, 1% of Uranium is useful for energy production, 99% needs to be dumped somewhere and there is not a single (yet) landfill we can store some dangerous stuff for 10k years (or more). It would be a good transition technology 50 years ago but is not a good one today. cost of dealing with the mess of spent fuel or indeed 99% of uranium ore that cannot be used is just too expensive. (Thorium, slow wave reactors and etc probably would make sense 30 years ago with solid founding, but not today with no founding and being 20 years away).

[@Scoots1994]

@@drachenfels6782 modern reactors are far more efficient and nuclear waste is tens of thousands of times less volume than coal power. We should have been building more for 50 years we'd be in much better shape

[@beyondfossil]

@@Scoots1994 I agree *if* we were building that many nuclear power plants we'd be in a different world. But nuclear has been a disappointment for growth. The first production-ready nuclear power plant was started in 1951 but yet, 72 years later, nuclear only provides 10% of the world's power. Nuclear power was like the promising college grad with all the honors, degrees, extra-curriculars, and praise from all his professors. But, ultimately, he never left his parent's basement nor had a real job and is well past middle age. There's a lot of reasons why this is the way it is.

[@amitgupta25121993]

@@beyondfossil nuclear growth stalled because of Chernobyl disaster.

[@beyondfossil]

​@@amitgupta25121993 Sure, the Chernobyl was a huge disaster. We also have more recent major incidents like Fukushima Dai-ichi, Japan (2011) which costed between $1.2B to $2.1B. Then before Chernobyl was Three Mile Island, USA (1979) which costed $2.4B to clean up. But consider every other year, there are minor incidents at nuclear power plants all over the world. Some leaked radioactive material into the local waterways too. They resulted in millions of dollar spent for repairs and clean up: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accidents_by_country Another factor is the nuclear is an expensive form of energy. Lazard lists the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of nuclear between $131 to $205 per MWh. Similar LCEO for solar farms is between $30 to $41 per MWh and wind farm is $26 to $50 per MWh. Nuclear construction also has a consistently bad track record of being billions over-budget and years over-schedule. Its laughably bad and has become an inside joke in the energy industry.

[@Music5362]

This is probably one of the best electricity storage solutions I've seen so far, which seems to actually work, rather than 'it might work' in the future. However, Thorcon nuclear is promising to generate electricity cheaper than this can store electricity. Nuscale says it will be starting to generate at about 7c kWh, getting down to about 5 c kWh over time which is the same cost as this solution only stores power. I believe the 'silver bullet' you mentioned, is actually 4th gen nuclear.

[@jamesashurst]

Talk is good but where are the reactors. We need solutions now, not promises that seem to perpetually fade into the future.

[@Jetfast619]

They were talking about thorium reactors at my university 10 years ago and there still aren't viable solutions

[@wadebrewer7212]

A marriage between the two technologies. Storage can prevent the requirement for over building a reactor to support the peak demand. If the reactor is stable at over production of say 10% for 70% of its production time and only falls short for 30%....the energy could be stored for later use and supplement times of peak demand. Think of it like peak shaving your home with the use of solar amd batteries, but on a much larger scale. We do the same thing with air compressors in manufacturing. Don't install a giant electric gobling air compressor for leak loads on the system. Install two smaller units, the second unit will supplement the system for peak demand but when you are steady state...you have a much smaller, more efficient unit running.

[@paul1979uk2000]

@@jamesashurst I have to agree, we need solutions now or just around the corner and not promises of what might work in a decade or two. Many companies talk a good deal but it takes forever for them to deliver and in a lot of cases, they don't deliver. It's why the tech that interest me the most is near future tech over the next 5 years and not the promise of tech over decades.

[@SeeNickView]

What's the timeline for building such a plant? What's that timeline if you include all of the funding, bureaucratic red tape, public awareness campaigns to turnover opinions on nuclear, and sheer construction lead times? Solar, wind, and storage are ready to go NOW. Although, I do have to give it to nuclear that the supply chains and waste streams are more defined for that tech compared to solar, wind, and storage. Those issues will burden the renewables sector in the next decade, if they haven't already. I don't think Thorium is that silver bullet you're looking for, but I definitely think nuclear is part of the silver buckshot of sustainability. All depends on how fast we can get stuff out so that we can transition from fossils to renewables

[@SparkyGaming212]

You could also put solar panels on the dome itself to get the most energy out of the space used.

[@IronmanV5]

Tesla switched over to LFP batteries for their Megapacks which use neither nickel nor cobalt. Also, IIRC LAES stores the liquified air at 15 Bar(218 psi) at room temperature.

[@Charles-tq9tc]

I love how this system uses the same principles than cryo storage, but side stepping most of the hurdles but choosing the right fluids.

[@StefanvanderFange]

It's look more like a standard air-sourced-heat-pump. Compressor, vaporizer. You can get those too with CO2 as the 'coldgas', these days.

[@badrinair]

hopefully this catches on . seems good and it is simple in design. if the CO2 they required could be captured on site then it is even better.

[@williamt4749]

I think the biggest problem with this idea will be safety. It is good news that most renewables are best placed in areas that have low population density. But an accidental release of an industrial quantity of liquid CO2 would result in a ground-level CO2 cloud that would suffocate any animal unfortunate enough to be caught in it. As long as that risk is fully mitigated this seems like a good use of CO2. Goodness knows we have enough of the stuff!

[@graham1034]

Would be interesting to hear what passive safety features they have in place to deal with catastrophic leaks. Any compressed gas stored at an industrial scale always makes me think about the Bhopal disaster back in the '80s. CO2 isn't THAT dangerous, but a sufficiently large quantity could be a risk. Perhaps having it far enough away from populated areas would be enough mitigation (other than for on-site workers). It would warm up and dissipate into the air fairly quickly.

[@ilenastarbreeze4978]

Genuine question but would putting walls up around the tank storage force the co2 up and away from people? Or maybe enclosing it in a larger box that isnt air tight but slows the expansion of the co2 so less is released into the area at once? Yes anyone in there wouls be dead but it might stop a ton of people dieing

[@701983]

@@graham1034 CO2-detectors, an alarm system and respiratory masks with a small air tank (for several minutes of breathing) would reduce the risk for on-site-workers almost completely.

[@matthewmcree1992]

If this energy storage solution is actually able to manage a LCOS of $50/MWh, we may have just found the quick and cheap route to solving the problems of intermittency (although nuclear power must be a part of the energy grid for now, unless the situation dramatically changes in the next 50 years and we succeed at making nuclear fusion power into a cost-effective and viable energy solution, thus launching humanity into its next stage of evolution as a species). This technology definitely appears HIGHLY promising. I'm cheering on its success fully and completely.

[@kstricl]

The land use issue could possibly be solved by using smaller dome groups that are hidden under the solar cells themselves. This would also have the advantage of you being able to do maintenance on the dome assemblies without taking the entire system down, simply by using isolation valves. Manufacturing and deployment times may also be quicker as you would have smaller structures to build.

[@SeeNickView]

Now this is an intriguing idea. Reminds me of how Dave with Just Have a Think on YT just this year did a video on distributed underwater hydrostorage bladders encased in concrete spheres that operate on the pressure differentials presented at the seafloor. With these membrane bladders for CO2 storage, you could raise the solar panels in the air like 2-4 meters or so and scatter the bladders sparsely to allow working clearance for maintenance and inspection. The only problem here is that these bladders might impede any convection cooling that might be gained from raising the panels, and so the entire solar fleet may run at a lower efficiency as a result. To an environmentalist, reduced efficiency but with greater storage capacity via distributed domes still sounds like a good deal. The problem arises when you consider economists and investors that want to see their ideal rates of return. There's different patterns you could do with this idea, though. You could stagger rows of bladders / solar arrays so that there would be corridors underneath the panels for improved convection cooling. PV plants could reconfigure like this, as well as CSP plants that use parabolic troughs and are already spaced out (although the spaces are there to allow for maintenance and removal of dust/sand that build up on the trough, but I digress). You'd have to calculate what the space savings for distributing the bladders + all of the additional piping, cabling, and equipment needed to operate the bladders (and the inherent losses therein) compared to lumping it all together. I have an idea the calc would have to depend on how much surface area is available, and that distributing the bladders may work better for larger and larger utility-scale farms. Awesome idea though!

[@COREDYNAMICSLTDA]

More expensive tho

[@EddieGonzalez]

I really want to see a micro version of this for home / small business use. This looks like a simple enough system that hyper-local energy storage could be more viable that the PowerWall solution.

[@reservdel]

My thought exactly, erect one of those old water towers that farms have, get some used pressurized canisters to contain it while liquid, and if everything else is commercially available we have a off grid dream possible. Feels like a totally viable battery storage for anyone that might be a bit handy.

[@jackmccarthy4047]

My guess is it's too big (as in takes up too much land) for small scale

[@brsaweda]

There will be no micro version. Storing CO2 in liquid and gas form, storing heat, generating power - all of these work *much* better at larger scale.

[@EddieGonzalez]

If it scales linearly, then eyeballing the bladder, the needed space is ~7cubic feet per kilowatt. If an average house is using 10Kw/day then you need around 70 cuft, or a 5'x5'x5' block of space. Double or triple that footprint for the other component and you have a small out-building less that the size of a guest house. Thats very doable in a lot of locations.

[@theBabyDead]

@@EddieGonzalez you still need the pump to generate 70 bars of pressure and the power to do so, etc. Doing this at small scale would bring that entire system out of balance. You'd need the same power for a lot less storage. It won't get small until the pumps and everything get efficient enough to be smaller. But even then, big-scale will yield way more. As I've commented on the other 4930 comments saying this; It'd definitely be better to do this for an entire block or neighbourhood instead of per household.

[@apostolakisl]

There is another plus for batteries not mentioned and that is speed. In microseconds, batteries can change their output/input to stabilize the grid. I also question the 75-80% efficiency, but if true, that is pretty good. Not sure why they chose CO2 over other gasses that compress into liquids at reasonable pressure/temps. This thing is sort of a backward air conditioner and as such, you could use any number of refrigerants used in the hvac industry. Perhaps CO2 is just a good choice based on price.

[@varno]

Co2 is unique with its point being so easily accessible, also liquid is accessible at room temperature. Other gasses that behave like this like methane have far worse compression ratios and global warming potentials.

[@apostolakisl]

@@varno Not really unique at all. Look at a list of all the hvac refrigerants that exist All of these compounds were specifically designed to have their gas/liquid transitions happen at reasonable pressures/temperatures and to do so with substantial heats of condensation/evaporation. My guess is that they use CO2 because it is cheap.

[@luipaardprint]

And also its a great marketing ploy to say you store co2.

[@varno]

@@apostolakisl there is actually a big move to use co2 as a refrigerant, as almost all other refrigerants have massive global warming potential. Further other refrigerants tend to be very expensive comparatively, which is a big negative for a storage system.

[@lylenighswonger3511]

And safety, abundance, availability, ease of use.

[@Dudleymiddleton]

This Energydome is a brilliant idea, it works in a similar way to the old gasometer tanks that rise and fall in a frame - instead a huge "bladder". Thank you, Matt, for another great video.

[@jedibusiness789]

Take away co2 from the plants….the horror.

[@boredgrass]

I consider myself pretty good informed about what is happening in science and equipped with a good general knowledge about science. But your videos leave me standing open-mouthed time and again! Keep up the excellent work! 💐

[@derrekvanee4567]

I'd just like to know, have any projects you've discussed over the years actudlly went to market? And met claims? Or need their aims? No pun intended that's your job Matt.

[@honestbusiness1371]

CO2 as a liquid is used in refrigeration systems. Seems to be an additional food industry opportunity here.

[@stephenstoufer3948]

I drove a hazmat tanker for 2 decades carrying liquid Co2 I learned quite a bit about it . This is a genius idea I think it could turn things around and we can finally shut down the coal plants .

[@nerdexproject]

It's an insanely clever system! Thanks for sharing and I hope this company goes FAR with this!!

[@beamztrustcic8963]

One problem in the way of longer term storage is the financial model. If the price of energy varies according to supply and demand throughout the day, a short term storage results in several buy/sell transactions per day. If your cost per MWh is similar but you provide long term storage, you might get one transaction per week or month even, giving a far lower return. We need long term storage for energy security, so we have to find a way to provide a return for the security the service provides, not just the transaction. Of course as more storage solutions and flexible usage schemes, international grids and diversity of sustainable generation schemes come on-line the daily fluctuation in value will decrease. Schemes to guarantee returns for energy security, are being applied to the nuclear industry, but need to be extended to long term storage. It is similar to buying insurance.

[@MaxxMcGeePrivate]

We need this now! Especially in countries with a lot of wind, sun and space it can't be that hard. But I'm sure it won't happen that fast as we actually need it.

[@abdelboussaid8978]

Thanks Matt. The italian Job!. Efficeint and looks simple! One of the culprits that delayed setting wind and solar power was the main critique of land use and the 'change of scenery'. Nobody is nowadys talking about it anymore. Here in Morocco, most of the renewable energy units are set up in remote areas. In short this looks good. I have a question the cost estimate what does it include ? Would it chnage for bigger units?

[@edeaglehouse2221]

Here in the US, people are still fighting the land uses that renewables would take. :-(

[@lastflightofosiris]

This is and you are one of the very few people/channels who understands energy as a whole and don't pump up the hype with flashy words. Thanks you for the channel and amazing videos.

[@MrSparkle404]

I think it is more his team that understands energy. That or they know how to read and repeat a press release.

[@Erik_Swiger]

So, if CO2 and its phase-change can yield this kind of performance, it would be interesting to see how ammonia, or maybe even a fluorocarbon, would do.

[@tjmzm1154]

Ammonia would facilitate much longer storage period. Weeks and months not just a day or two. To me, that type of solution would truly make wind/solar viable

[@jacobdeslattes3519]

Removing the fluorocarbons would be even better than co2 at reducing greenhouse gasses. They are responsible for like x4-x6 the amount of warming than co2, at just a fraction of the volume.

[@davestagner]

I was thinking about ammonia, too. It’s a common refrigerant, so there is a lot of industrial-scale equipment for exactly this purpose already. It may not have the buzzword compliance of CO2, and be more of a problem in case of a leak or accident, but it may be more thermally efficient. I’m sure someone else is working on exactly that, though… this really does seem like an obvious approach.

[@yolo_burrito]

The problem with anhydrous ammonia is material interactions. It degrades many alloys. CO2 is relatively inert and cheap. HFC are designed for very low pressure phase change for refrigeration. In this case the pressurization is what you want to run turbines.

[@yolo_burrito]

@@davestagner you’re not looking for refrigeration in this case. You’re looking for pressure differential of phase change to drive turbines.

[@nawarelsabaa]

This is very promising, if only due to the already streamlined supply chain. Using this as a future middle step between Carbon Capture Systems and CO2 Storage Systems could also be interesting: capturing CO2 from the air or exhausts, and sending it rather than CO2 stored in "The Dome" directly to the compressor, and when It gets used to produce energy, it can be sent to the long-term CO2 storage solution rather than returning it to "The Dome". Maybe even tewak the system to have CO2 leave the motor in a more favorable condition for long-term storage?

[@mkucstars1]

Matt, I've watched a number of your videos and just want to say THANK YOU. Always interesting, concise and understandable. You have quite a grasp on how to share information. Your passion for new tech and answers to major problems in our society is enlightening. Major respect for you, and again, thanks for all you do.

[@belladonnaRoot]

I gotta say, this is quite an attractive cycle from a mechanical perspective. It's a relatively benign process; not too corrosive, not toxic, not terribly hot or cold, readily available. I think they're vastly overestimating how easy it is to keep a large gaseous system closed over time, and the implication that they're not using customized components is unrealistic. Additionally, environmental planning will be tricky as they'll need to plan for what happens in the event that the whole system pumps liquid CO2 to atmosphere. (They'll likely need to avoid being up-wind and uphill of any inhabited area.) But those are all solvable problems that are much easier to solve than the problems inherent to other energy storage.

[@Cooper1]

I love all the options presented on this channel. The future looks bright thanks to technology innovators & risk takers despite the claims of science deniers and those who want to return us to technology of the 1950's.

[@TheLosamatic]

Leave it to the ancestors of Davinci to do it with off the shelf tech. Was back in the early 80’s when a friends US Navy ship snaps a main drive shaft in two. Told me they were all stoked for three to five weeks of liberty when the Italians in Napoli said they could fix it, the Americans did not believe it was possible but saw no harm in letting them try. Imagine how huge that drive shaft was. They welded it back together but who knows how they got it to be balanced? Friend said the moral on the boat was dead 5 days latter when they were all recalled and back out 6 or 7 days after being towed into port!

[@jopo7996]

A little late. I developed this gas storage system over 20 years ago after a Taco Bell run.

[@UndecidedMF]

😂

[@docwatson1134]

I like this system, its simple, and in future installations possibly half the dome could be covered with flexible solar panels, as the flexible panel technology improves and becomes cheaper

[@Infrared73]

I have to say that I really enjoy your channel and content. It's nice to see positive presentation of the various options that are being presented. I wonder how well this might scale down? How much space would it consume to store power for a single household? The attic in my house is a large open void. Putting in bladders that could inflate to fill that space would be a great potential solution to localized storage. Powerwalls are interesting, but it's still a lot of metal with all of the negatives associated with it. I also wonder if this technology could help improve grid stability? I live in Ontario and honestly the most expensive part of my hydro bill has become the delivery charge, which is to cover the cost of the grid in Ontario. As capacity increases, the size and capacity of all of the redundant systems goes up as well. Could this be used at grid scale to help reduce demand on the grid in the event of an outage.

[@Pipedog42]

Modification of the storage building, covering it with a solar collector medium, and paying attention to it's solar alignment when building, could minimize the negativity of its space requirements. I think.

[@final_catalyst]

Yes AC and refrigerator are closed loops, but still has leaks and can break down. It seems for "cost cutting" they would generate new co2 rather then extracting it.

[@sebbes333]

Additionally, they can harvest BOTH Heat & Cold from the system (not at the same time). When the CO2 compresses, heat can be harvested, when un-compressing then cooling can be harvested.

[@Let_the_nonsense_blaze.]

I wonder if this aspect was already calculated into energy storage efficiency or not? If not then this system combined with heating and cooling plants can reach even higher efficiency levels.

[@whirled_peas]

The sun's heat would in theory increase the pressure too right?

[@KimTiger777]

A Sterling generator would be ideal.

[@johncochran8497]

NOPE NOPE NOPE! You seem to have ignored a major part of the system. When they compress the CO2, it gets hot, so they store that heat in a local Thermal Energy Storage System. They do not provide that heat for other system. They store it for their own future use. When energy is needed, they use that stored heat in order to convert the liquid CO2 into a gas that they can extract energy from. If they were harvesting heat and cooling, they would lose the energy they're storing.

[@ole-martinbroz8590]

apart from space usage, I don't see many other issues from my few sniff tests on it.

[@rubenflex2]

The company I work for has been supplying evaporators, condensers and compressors on co2 for the supermarket cooling for over 10 years here in the Netherlands.

[@dalsenov]

It is so funny! I've searched a way to store liquefied CO2, produced during winter, for a later time in order to sell it to the beverage industry and bumped into an energy storage solution that seems the best. No wonder it has the best roundtrip efficiency. Good video, Matt! Keep on the good work!

[@P8qzxnxfP85xZ2H3wDRV]

I know what would make a good battery. Using CO2 to create gasoline. I think that would store a lot of energy for a very long time and be pretty easy to handle and transport.

[@janjager2906]

I think there are several problems you have to take in consideration: 1 - A very inefficient process. 2 - If you burn fuel you produce NOx (Catalytic converters only converts NO to NO2). 3 - Produce of ultra fine particles. It is just soot, even if it is invisible to the naked eye. And no, there is no safe limit. The only pro, unregarded the source, is ease of use.

[@P8qzxnxfP85xZ2H3wDRV]

@@janjager2906 There are more pros. Existing infrastructure, highest energy density after hydrogen. And the ease of use advantage is a pretty big pro, because ease of storage and transportation also has an environmental impact.

[@lylenighswonger3511]

Gasoline does not store very well for long periods. A year maybe without stabilizers. The co2 gets re-released when used.

[@mullergyula4174]

Love the simplicity of this storage method.

[@Rick-5728]

The dome takes up a lot of space, but is there any reason they couldn't cover it in solar panels? And I wonder if this is something that could be scaled down to be useful in smaller industrial installations, or even in the home as an alternative to Powerwalls.

[@iamericlentz]

Exactly my idea! Why not?

[@Kevin_Street]

Thank you for the new video! This sounds like a pretty neat idea for grid-scale electrical storage. It has some nice advantages: it's made from already existing technologies, and they store the CO2 at ambient pressure and temperature. The less you have to fight nature, the cheaper and easier the technology becomes. Also there's that 30 year lifetime. But considering how it's made from easily replaceable parts, you could probably keep the battery going for longer than 30 years.

[@rustygear447]

This is the first time I think one of these new energy storage innovations would work. Why? Because it's simple. This design should be very cheap to make and maintain, and quite efficient.

[@sjwbond2]

Its not only the LCOS that matters, Batteries can provide system stability services that these type of storages will struggle to.

[@MegaPainLove]

I’d like to see how day-to-day maintenance compares to other systems. And I’d like to see how the efficiency stacks up against gravity batteries. I prefer this over most other grid level battery systems. The system could last indefinitely with only minor replacements needed to sustain its continual use. That is a big advantage over the cost of recycling lithium ion batteries. I’m excited to see how the test plant performs.

[@Jokerkles]

I recall that the city of Toronto was going to be experimenting with compressed air bladders anchored to the floor of Lake Ontario to use static water pressure to help increase the storage pressure of the bladders while maintaining a reasonably cool temp. The reasoning was that this way they could pump up the bladders during times of low public consumption (i.e. at night), and then use the stored compressed air to run compressors (and the electric motors that power them) in reverse, essentially turning them into a motor powering a generator. I haven't heard anything more of the plan, with the last I've heard of it being at least a year ago, maybe more at this point.

[@michaelmcnally9737]

That subtle 24 reference was topnotch

[@2MeterLP]

THe fact that this uses no complex proprietary technology or rare elements makes it the most convincing energy storage solution Ive seen so far. Just common, off the shelf parts and well researched processes.

[@chrisl1980]

Why not put the dome underground or put solar panels on it so it doesn't really take away room for power generation.

[@silversonic1]

Any time you can turn a waste product into a resource, you have my interest. The process is simple and seems fairly scalable. If they can figure out ways to improve their utilization of the land they're using and keep things maintained well to prevent leaks, they'll be a very good solution. The downside is what happens in the event of a total storage failure. The CO² could suffocate everyone in a certain area if it was attacked. That's the biggest concern I have, honestly.

[@kistuszek]

I think the interesting comparison for size is with pumped hidro. Everyone would build hidro, if they had the conditions. This does not need the water or the elevation change.

[@AnimilesYT]

I hope this takes off. It sounds very safe since it isn't flammable, doesn't reach high temperatures, and even if the bubble bursts there is pretty much no harm done. Its efficiency is great and it also looks fairly easy to maintain and deploy all around the world. Maybe the dome could be build on top of a building that contains all of the other parts of the system. That could maybe reduce its footprint a bit. I am curious how the dome holds out in heavy weather. How well can it handle hurricane winds and potentially flying debris? Other than that it looks like a golden ticket

[@Tinman97301]

I really like that they are not trying to change the world with fringe tech. Seems like they are just trying to do something in a different way. Even just one small step forward is better than no step at all.

[@leonnelen151]

You could perhaps make a combination with the HBr flow battery (2HBr + e Br2 + H2) off Elestor and Vopak . Both the energy dome and the HBr flow battery require gas storage in the form of a dome. It is interesting that the energy dome needs the atmospheric gas storage during discharge and the HBr flow battery during charging. Now both processes will most likely not work with a mixture of H2 and CO2 in the same gas storage. But maybe that will work with a separate dome apartment in the dome?

[@Bmeri3]

As stated, there is no one single solution for all needs, but this like a great one to add to the mix.

[@michaelgeiss741]

Are these "TES" devices just heat exchangers? Are they heat pumps? How do they store the heat and for how long?

[@aaronkoch3273]

It's exciting that so many ideas are getting tried. It's far more likely to find a few that work well with many options to pick from, and even the ones that don't work teach us lessons.

[@foremanhaste5464]

Say that this setup only achieves a 60-75% efficiency, it can do it just about anywhere in the world. That is a mighty powerful benchmark by itself that where most of the tech for energy storage has hard conditionals on where it can be used safely or on what it can be used for. This might not have the best Megawatt per footprint but that can be exchanged for cost by building the storage vertically or underground. For many places the physical footprint is the least important factor. Take Australia, the heat and dust of the outback, where power storage will likely go, would be horrible for most of storage options but should work just fine for this.

[@nilesbutler8638]

Even expanding the grid-scale energy storage only a liitle bit helps make renewables more viable. I recently read denmark - who have a lot of wind turbines and export a lit into the well-networked european neighbour nations, have to turn down or stop about 20% of their yearly yield due to situational overproduction. That potential electricity is simply lost right now, even if they could sell it only a day later at profit. Every single mw stored at competitive prices during that time would enhance their profitability. Great concept! Please do a revisit once their first commercial project is up and running.

[@DataSmithy]

This CO2 storage technology is ticking all the right boxes for me: off the shelf components, ambient air temperatures (no cryogenics), simple energy transitions (compression and evaporation), low cost/low impact storage medium (CO2), long life span with no degredation in storage capacity over time, acceptable round trip efficiency, no energy loss during storage, low supply chain risk. I was already intrigued by compressed air and liquified air storage, and this just kicked it up a notch for me. Thank you, Matt!

[@mth469]

They should ditch the solar farm and use energy from the grid at night when nobody else is using it.

[@DataSmithy]

@@mth469 Energy storage can be used in lots of ways, including storing excess, or possibly cheaper power, overnight, and then selling it back to the grid when it's more expensive, or most needed because other power sources have failed. It's just a question of who owns the cheap electricity, and how you, as the owner of the energy storage unit, want to make your money. If you own your own solar panels, then the cheapest power will be at noon. Similarly, if you own a wind farm then the cheapest power will probably be overnight. Otherwise you need to buy the electricity from someone else and you can't control the price as much.

[@webchimp]

8:20 it will also need a lot of rubber for the big bladder, or whatever they use.

[@punkdigerati]

Efficiency matters less than LCOS. Any amount saved is better than curtailment, and we mainly need to cover the solar maximum to peak use divide.

[@alancapes5644]

My career was based on $million business cases for technology driven business transformation; This is a great business case. Scalable, efficient, cost effective, safe, standard components, assembly and maintenance. Batteries for short term, CO2 for mid term, pumped hydro for long term -> end of peaker plants.

[@stevelux9854]

And as mentioned; pumped hydro is designed to last up to 150 years without degradation. It is known and reliable technology. Places like Lake Meade, and many others, are perfect opportunities for pumped hydro with plenty of room for solar or wind power as the source for recirculating the hydro. Additionally it would make such locations far more drout resistant.

[@DeveloperChris]

the problem with pumped hydro is location, you need suitable terrain and height, and you need lots of it. Where it works its a good idea but in other areas its completely impractical.

[@audikid89]

The biggest problem I see with this is thermal expansion in the high pressure tanks. Anyone who’s ever played with airsoft guns or paintball knows that CO2 loses its expansion capabilities drastically in cold temperatures. If the temperature outside becomes cold enough the storage tanks of high pressure CO2 will not be delivering the energy that they are designed to deliver as the pressure will drop significantly. The only way I see it possible to avoid this completely is to bury the tanks far enough underground so that they are below the 55°F barrier. This however creates another substantial problem in the event of a leak, or a tank rupture causing serious affects to the landscape and therefore the climate

[@GamesFromSpace]

It would also take less energy to compress it, so it's not really an issue. It's meant for energy storage, not as an energy source like it is for airsoft.

[@audikid89]

@@GamesFromSpace if the temperature was hot when it was filled and cold when it needed to be released that would be an issue

[@GamesFromSpace]

@@audikid89 and it's just as likely to go the other way... Except the tanks will be well insulated, not to mention massive enough to ignore daily swings in temperature.

[@LeonardoBatini]

Very proud to be italian in this precise moment

[@audigex]

The best solution is probably multiple solutions for different use cases... and the most important thing is that we start building now. Sub-optimal storage available today is more important than some theoretical perfect choice that may never materialise

[@BenzinioB]

That looks interesting and promising. The air-compressed systems were my favourites so far, as they are based on long lasting simple mechanic - this CO2 solution is simply step above! Well done Italians!

[@jaybee3165]

another smart move would be to combine a very large co2 battery with a small megapack. just enough- even 20 minutes- would be sufficient to make the entire system automated- that is- buffer the co2 energy through the megapack. this would allow for sudden energy spikes & lulls, giving the system time to ramp up or down. a very small lithium pack would be much more affordable & wouldn't affect the overall kwh cost- but would make the human presence needed much less.

[@thomasb1521]

Compressed are (or CO2) storage has always been appealing. The ability to decide on more capacity or more total output is great.

[@АлексейБычков-б6ч]

The volume limit is not a limitation. There is enough land for an unlimited number of such inflatable torches. By the way, I really like the aesthetics, in the style of alternative energy (bioreactor gas tank). In addition, in addition to standard spare parts from the oil and heat and power industry, we also receive personnel who have worked with this equipment all their lives. And whose current work is a thing of the past. This is an ideal technology! It is incomparable with the construction of gigantic cryochambers for air!

[@marcschaeffer1584]

The bottleneck is heat storage. Chemical heat storage is a pretty sweet option, you can do it easily with various combinations of hydrogen and carbon. Like gas. We could have some gas in a tank.

[@hatulflezet]

Looks like a very good candidate to be deployed in Africa and the middle east and cities that are in desert areas (not only of course). They could use solar for generating power due to having a lot of sun, and the CO2 dome for storage. Since we are talking about desert areas, space which seems to be the largest con for this technology probably will not be such an issue. I like this idea very much for all the reasons you have mentioned: it is really green, no special or hazardous process needed, its simple, so it should be easy to school future technicians to operate it even where education is a problem, and if it will really catch on on a global scale, maybe it will even help reducing CO2 in the atmosphere by actually making it profitable to "harvest" CO2 back from the atmosphere so it can be used in the domes (but to determine that we need numbers). I will be watching this technology for sure!. Thanks for sharing it!

[@alantupper4106]

I'm a fan of these kinds of solutions. On the issue of storage space, I wonder if solutions like this could be adapted as offshore systems. It would also be interesting to see if the dome structure is strong enough to host lightweight renewables of its own. That could potentially provide some excess generation that makes up for the efficiency loss, which I'm assuming is in the form of fugitive heat in the thermal store.

[@irrichman]

I would put this on shore probably, but the windmills offshore. Salt water is bad enough as it is.

[@robertpiazza]

It’s been a year and nothing significant has appeared to have occurred with this company. Feels like the promises of futuristic tech from places like Popular Science magazine that never actual pans out.

[@lucidmoses]

Sounds like a good option for all the places where pumped hydro is not realistic. However, marketing talk is cheap. Lets wait is see what there full size plants numbers are.

[@nagasako7]

Of all storage batteries this channel has shown.... This one is surprisingly good and I wonder why this hasn't happened before.

[@stephenlee5929]

If I understood correctly the 'dome' is just to store CO2 at normal temperature & pressure, which is then liquified and compressed and stored elsewhere holding the energy. Using the energy, returns the CO2 to normal temp. & pressure back in the dome. In the UK we have/had Gasometers, which were used to store Coal Gas then natural gas, could these work in this system?

[@juliancate7089]

Don't know if it would be worth it, but there is recoverable heat energy in the water used to cool the CO2. Perhaps, they could add a separate cycle to the water condenser to generate a bit more electricity.

[@jeechun]

About the land usage: CO2 battery - the dome - uses a lot of surface area. How about using that area also for the solar panels (on the top of the dome, or even on the top of the other equipments of the system) of the given solar power plant?

[@artboymoy]

That's what I'm talking about. Using existing tech to whip up something that's a good addtiion to the many solutions for energy storage. It does sound a bit too good to be true, but the advantage this tech has over the other mineral batteries is that added cost of mining and social order. I also like the idea that there's no refirgeration needed for C02 to be compressed. Getting 30 years out of this isn't bad. Make it so! Great video explaining this, thanks Matt!

[@juimymary9951]

So...carbon capture combined with energy storage? I like it

[@alsmith20000]

With the CO2, storage, you said (6:37) that they only have to worry about compression and evaporation. Compression generates heat that must be either stored or dumped (ideally stored), and evaporation will probably require heating. I think some care may be needed with the freezing of the CO2 during the evaporation phase. If it happens then it will clog up the equipment. I'm not saying that can't be managed, but it does require care/complexity in the design.

[@701983]

Yes, a thermal energy storage is part of the system. It's the "TES" in the animation.

[@adamdukat3693]

--- in my opinion, it might be a splendid alternative or addition to the other methods of energy storage. Depending on the circumstances, -- under some conditions, it might be the best. Economics will show. And particularly in AU, where space is not an issue.

[@Guitarman20001]

This is a good method of storage if it hits the efficiencies mentioned in the video. Just wondering if other common gasses would work better like anhydrous ammonia and be more efficient in the compression and expansion phases of storage. Ammonia was used as a refrigerant for many years in the early 1900’s. Which is basically the same cycle.

[@kristianveretskyi324]

As I see the dome has 2 parts: internal inflated, and second hard shell. So they can install solar panels on it and decrease its % footprint

[@Tsuchimursu]

I would not want to live downhill from a giant container of odourless killer gas any more than I'd live under a dam...

[@limbodog]

Seems like a good idea. But as for pumped hydro's costs -- Why can't we generate energy on both ends? Use gravity when the water travels down, and use focused solar heat to send the water at the bottom back up (turn it to steam at the bottom, run it through turbines, and then cool it off in the pond at the top)? Wouldn't that be more valuable?

[@BPBomber]

That Italian guy looked like Mattia Binotto from Scuderia Ferrari. I thought he was just eccentric looking but maybe that’s just the style in Italy 🤷🏻‍♂️

[@Donkeyearsa]

The only problem is that the low pressure CO2 dome has to be massively large as the bigger the air tank is the more affective it is, but that is not nessasery to big of a problem as it can be built underground. You take a strip mine build a massively large dome over it making it into a large hill and then build a farm on top of it. The rest of the battery plant can be built inside of the low presser CO2 dome as in that scale its extremely tiny. The low pressure CO2 dome can conceivably be a cubic mile or even bigger in scale.

[@Toastmaster_5000]

This seems like the most promising form of energy storage yet that isn't limited by local conditions. Even if it were twice as expensive, it would still be worth using. The amount of land used is irrelevant as far as I'm concerned, since solar panels could just be built on top of the domes.

[@chaimsil1653]

Life cycle energy costs and long term sustainability need to be considered when comparing different energy generation and storage techniques to decide what system or combination of systems are superior for variable circumstances.

[@saraw8104]

What about the Dome upside down in the ground - easy build with concrete, stronger and cheaper.