Part 1 in 3 part look at Solid State Batteries. Why you should read widely. Lastly, CDPHE answered my emails about the Office of Gun Violence Prevention and funding to Colorado Ceasefire
What is a solid state battery?
There has been a lot of news lately about a company up near Boulder that is producing solid state batteries. See the CU Press release below. The company has gotten notice enough to get money enough to start growing--due in no small part to money from automakers.
I thought a brief run down on solid state batteries might be good--so that you and I have a nodding familiarity with them (I had to do some looking myself).
In this first post, we'll talk about how batteries work in general (both liquid--current state of the art--and solid state).
Then we'll talk about why solid state batteries might be handy. Post 2.
Lastly, we'll talk some of the problems. I say that not to hint that this technology won't be useful, but rather to call your attention to the fact that, despite the hype and the people throwing wads of cash at the company, we're a ways away from viable solid state batteries that can do better than the current liquid ones. Post 3.
Let's talk basic basics first. A battery is a device which has stored up electrical energy which, when you connect it into an electrical circuit, causes electrical charge to move through the circuit. Those electrical charges in turn give their energy to a device which does something useful (a light, a motor, what have you).
You can think of a battery a lot like a water tank in a small town. Water sits high up and when someone in the town opens their tap, the pressure from having the water at a high elevation causes the water to flow down through the pipes and out the tap. See screenshot 1 attached.
There are two kinds of batteries and those are rechargeable and non-rechargeable. Rechargeable batteries, like those for starting your car or that power an EV, can be reset. That is, to use my water tank analogy, it's like you see in the drawing where you can turn on a pump to put more water high up in the tank as needed. Non-rechargeable batteries are like the ones in your flashlight. Once the tank has drained, it can't be refilled.
I'll stick with rechargeable batteries here since that is the type of (solid state) battery the company will produce.
Let's consider the battery in your car that you use to start the engine. It's a lead acid battery. It has lead sheets dipped into a sulfuric acid solution. When it is charged you have a chemical compound of lead and oxygen on one sheet and plain lead on the other with sulfuric acid molecules in the water. See screenshot 2 attached.
As it sits now, there is energy stored up in the chemicals that make up the battery. When you connect the battery into a complete electrical circuit, you provide a chance for charge to flow to equalize the energy imbalance that exists.
The sulfuric acid molecule splits into two parts with the electrically negative part going to the negative pole of the battery to combine with the lead and the positive part going to the positive pole to combine with the lead oxide.
This induces two electrons to flow through the wires from the negative to the positive side (which then get used to make the bulb light up--see screenshot 3). If you're a big fan of chemistry and want details, I attached the reactions as screenshot 4. I also included the source of these screenshots which gives a pretty good basic-engineering level look at the process second below.
Charging the battery works the same way, but in reverse. This time, you push two electrons backwards down the wire which separates the sulfuric acid parts off of the lead sheets and resets you for another go later.
What determines a batteries performance? This comes down to how hard you push on the electrical charges (the voltage with higher voltage meaning you push harder--to return to the water analogy, this would be the pressure in the pipes), and how much flow you can get (this is the amperage the battery is capable of delivering--water analogy again would call this gallons per minute).
The voltage, how hard you push on the electrons, is determined by the chemicals you use for your battery. A lead acid battery (one type of a liquid state battery) is only able to deliver about 1.8 V of electrical "pressure" while a lithium ion battery (another liquid state battery** but the one often used in cell phones and EV's) can deliver about 3.6 V.
You cannot really design around this; this is a function of chemistry not engineering. The amount of flow you can get out of a battery is, however, a function of design. Build bigger sheets and get more acid, and you'll be able to deliver more flow. Change the shape and layout, you can get more or less flow.
Phew! Okay, so that's the basics of batteries and the basics of liquid state batteries, both the kind that start an engine and power an EV.
So what makes a solid state battery different?
It's pretty basic: instead of a liquid between the plates, you have a solid material. I found a screenshot off the internet comparing a solid state lithium ion battery (on the right in screenshot 5) to a liquid state lithium ion battery (on the left in #5). The only real substantive difference here in design is that rather than putting the electrically active chemicals in a bath of liquid, you embed them in a solid material.
Everything else about the battery works similarly: energy is separated and when released charges move through the solid material between the two plates instead of through the liquid in the plates.
This small substitution, can have a pretty good sized effect on the performance of the battery and its safety which is why they've attracted the attention of researchers and the EV community.
You'll have to read up on that in post 2.
**if you're curious at the chemistry of the lithium ion battery and are up to it, you'll find it at nearer to the bottom of the second link below.
https://www.colorado.edu/venturepartners/2023/04/24/internal-news/cu-boulder-spinout-solid-power-building-better-battery-consumers-and-climate
https://www.engineersgarage.com/how-rechargeable-batteries-charging-and-discharging-cycles-work/
Someone ought to have put these two reporters in the same room at the same time.
Below another object lesson in reading widely.
Imagine what you'd think if you'd only read one.
Those schools are draining our state!
Those schools are great and a boon to our state!
Neither of which is entirely true.
https://denvergazette.com/news/polis-discusses-cu-and-csu-success/article_e28d4ea0-5268-11ee-a6d2-ef4f5245b51f.html
https://www.cpr.org/2023/09/12/colorado-universities-athletic-programs-cost/#:~:text=Of%20the%20three%20Colorado%20DI,Stadium%2C%20which%20opened%20in%202017.
An update on Colorado Ceasefire's grant from CDPHE …
I wrote earlier about Colorado Ceasefire getting a grant from the Office of Gun Violence Prevention at CDPHE. I linked back to the earlier post below if you want to go back and read or re-read.
I said that if I got a response to the questions I had asked the Office (see the attached screenshot for the questions) I would update.
I did get an update. The first email response was (quoting from the response and spokesperson Ms. Henderson):
"Thanks for reaching out to us. The Office of Gun Violence Prevention awarded a one-time grant to Colorado Ceasefire Outreach. Grant funds cannot be used for political purposes, as stated in the State of Colorado Purchase Order Terms. CDPHE grantees are subject to monitoring of expenditures."
In response to this, I followed up with a couple more questions. They are:
1. Is the monitoring for all grantees? Randomly chosen?
2. And is it done once? More than once?
To which I got the following (again, quoting from an email from the same spokesperson):
"Grantees must submit invoices to the Office of Gun Violence Prevention within 45 days of incurring costs, and they are reviewed at that time. Staff may request additional documentation from the grantee to support expenses incurred, if necessary."
So, there is some accountability there. I still hold by my original claim that this is swampy, but I think there are reasonable enough checks there to prevent tax money going directly into activism by this group.
You now know what I know.
https://open.substack.com/pub/coloradoaccountabilityproject/p/how-much-is-growth-of-govt-propping?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web