California company NDB says its nano-diamond batteries will absolutely upend the energy equation, acting like tiny nuclear generators. They will blow any energy density comparison out of the water, lasting anywhere from a decade to 28,000 years without ever needing a charge. They will offer higher power density than lithium-ion. They will be nigh-on indestructible and totally safe in an electric car crash. And in some applications, like electric cars, they stand to be considerably cheaper than current lithium-ion packs despite their huge advantages.
The idea here is that the isotope charges a supercapacitor which acts as the actual battery.
That’s going to be an extremely niche use case though. It would only be able to power something that uses moderate power for short bursts at a time. It doesn’t matter how good the supercap is if the charge source is extremely weak, and again, something like a phone would use too much power too frequently to be powered off this.
The video I linked to talks about the possibility for diamonds to be burned into carbon dioxide (which isn’t that hard to do), which would release all that radiation as a gas that can absolutely poison people and would be very hard to detect since most people don’t have any means of measuring radiation.
In terms of practicality and energy production, supercapacitors with renewable power sources like solar or wind will probably always be the superior combo to this.
It’s worth remembering about Koomey’s law. Right now it might be a very niche application, but in a few decades that could change significantly. And that’s at least as long it would take the technology to get to market. Perhaps it might not end up in phones, but I can certainly see it being used for anything that needs to have an independent power source without maintenance. I don’t think it replaces solar or wind, but would have different use cases.
That’s going to be an extremely niche use case though. It would only be able to power something that uses moderate power for short bursts at a time. It doesn’t matter how good the supercap is if the charge source is extremely weak, and again, something like a phone would use too much power too frequently to be powered off this.
The video I linked to talks about the possibility for diamonds to be burned into carbon dioxide (which isn’t that hard to do), which would release all that radiation as a gas that can absolutely poison people and would be very hard to detect since most people don’t have any means of measuring radiation.
In terms of practicality and energy production, supercapacitors with renewable power sources like solar or wind will probably always be the superior combo to this.
It’s worth remembering about Koomey’s law. Right now it might be a very niche application, but in a few decades that could change significantly. And that’s at least as long it would take the technology to get to market. Perhaps it might not end up in phones, but I can certainly see it being used for anything that needs to have an independent power source without maintenance. I don’t think it replaces solar or wind, but would have different use cases.