For that
reason, the battery business is among the most sizzling recently, as various
organizations compete to be the ones to create the class-driving battery. Many
battery materials have been tested but there is a new battery material in town
that shocks the entire industry.
it's the
nuclear diamond battery that can run for 28 000 years. what is a nuclear diamond
battery, how does it work and why is everybody talking about it? In this blog,
I am going to explain everything that you need to know about the amazing
nuclear diamond battery that shocks the entire battery industry.
Will you put
waste material from a nuclear power plant in your smartphone or let it power
your electric car many people squirm at the mention of nuclear materials? I
know the harmful radiation that they produce.
However, the
waste from the process of generating power from nuclear materials can be the
power source of the future. Nuclear diamond batteries are a huge jump from the
standard lithium-ion batteries that are time bounded.
Lithium-ion
battery batteries, no doubt, played a massive role in the proliferation of
electronic devices. They have their drawbacks which are serious enough to make
scientists continue searching for better batteries.
The
shortcomings of lithium-ion batteries are no more apparent than in electric
cars thanks to their low energy density lithium-ion batteries have to be heavy
to provide decent driving ranges, but they fall behind gas-powered vehicles in
the distance. they can cover a full tank making some people hesitate to
embrace electric cars lithium-ion batteries also take a long time to charge you
could be tied to a spot for almost an hour to fill up the battery. even with
the fastest charger, this is not ideal when you compare it to filling up an ice
car's gas tank which happens in a matter of minutes.
Lithium-ion batteries
are also costly while it's true that the prices have dropped significantly the
batteries are still costly being the single most expensive component in an
electric car.
In fact, the
battery of electric cars cost significantly more than their ice counterparts
and are out of reach for most car owners. one other problem with lithium
batteries is how long they last. one more issue is that all lithium-ion
batteries face degradation which causes them to gradually lose capacity with
time.
The problem is
better observed in gadgets like smartphones whose batteries may struggle to hold
a decent charge after a few years of use bring out your smartphone.
From three
years ago and you will notice it doesn't last as long as when new in electric
cars you have to change the battery. when the degradation cuts the capacity to
a certain percentage even though the rest of the car is still excellent and
changing the battery is an expensive step.
Nowadays, scientists
have been experimenting with a wide range of battery materials and compositions
to arrive at the perfect battery.
For instance,
there has been attention given to solid-state batteries which are an advanced
form of the lithium-ion battery, but with some benefits like enhanced safety
and longer higher energy densities graphite batteries lossless batteries and
many more.
However, non-promises
the longevity of nuclear diamond batteries. These are batteries that can last
thousands of years and help the environment as they use up what could become a
safety hazard.
Just imagine
your smartphone battery lasting 28 000 years in that case the battery will
outlive the phone back.
In 2016 a team
comprising researchers’ physicists and chemists came together at the University
of Bristol and began working on what they called a beta voltaic device. The
name was chosen because the beta decay of nuclear waste powered it.
However, the
batteries came to be known as radioactive diamond batteries or NDB.
Beta decay
happens when an atom's nucleus has an excess of particles and releases some of
them to obtain a more stable ratio of protons to neutrons.
This produces
a kind of ionizing radiation called beta radiation which involves a lot of high-speed
high-energy electrons or positrons known as beta particles.
A regular beta
voltaic cell comprises dainty layers of radioactive material put between
semiconductors as the atomic material rots it produces beta particles that
thump electrons free in the semiconductor making an electric flow.
Be that as it may, the power
thickness of the radioactive source is brought down the further it is from the
semiconductor.
This implies
that atomic batteries are significantly less effective than different kinds of
batteries. But there is a fix for this polycrystalline diamond or PCD
Radioactive
batteries are made through a process called chemical vapour deposition, a
process that is also widely used for making artificial diamonds. However,
researchers have modified the process to grow radioactive diamonds by using
radioactive methane containing the radioactive isotope carbon 14 which can be
harvested from a radiated reactor graphite block.
These diamonds can act as a radioactive
source and a semiconductor when exposed to beta radiation. You'll get a
long-term battery that needn't bother with being re-energized with the atomic
waste in its inside powers.
It, again and
again, permits it to accuse itself for periods of very little to no
quantifiable debasement more than many years.
Theoretically
speaking, a single battery can be used for over a thousand years you don't need
to replace it and you don't even need to recharge it. one of the startups
active in nuclear diamond batteries is nanodiamond battery or NDB.
The company is
basing its batteries on high-powered diamond-based alpha beta and neutron
voltaic formulas for long life and green energy batteries.
It aims to
power devices from small insulin pumps to space rovers traversing the surface
of Mars for decades without human intervention. NDB has been building its
nuclear diamond batteries by using layers of impossibly tiny panelled
nanodiamonds for proper context.
One nanometer
is one billionth of a meter the company prefers diamonds, because of their
exceptional heat conductance which makes them ideal for electronic devices. in
fact, they're the best-known natural conductor of heat and are three to four
times more effective than copper or silver. these diamonds are actually
produced by a process known as chemical vapour deposition which uses gases at
extremely high temperatures to force carbon to crystallize on a substrate
material.
However, the
diamonds produced through this process have a blue colour and higher
conductivity than your average diamonds.
Off course,
you can find blue diamonds naturally, but, they are rare and more expensive than
those produced artificially so after sourcing the nanodiamonds.
NDB combines
them with radioactive isotopes from nuclear waste. NDB uses radioactive
isotopes of uranium and plutonium from radioactive power plant waste. there is
a single crystal diamond which is just a few square millimetres in size, which moves
heat away from the radioactively decaying isotopes so quickly that the
transaction actually generates electricity.
The rot sources store their
energy onto the NDB transducer which changes over the active energy of the
occurrence radiation to electrical energy.
Every battery
cell will deliver just a limited quantity of energy. But they can be combined
in huge numbers in order to regularly power large devices.
Nema Gol Sharifi
the CEO of NDB, touts the tiny size of the nanodiamond battery cells as an
advantage for scalability. For example, a wristwatch which consumes around two
microwatts is a great fit for a small NDB cell. But if you need to power a
different application the number of stacked cells can be increased to meet the
demand.
Gol Sharifi,
imagines the nuclear diamond battery powering satellites or space vehicles as a
great example. The iconic twin NASA probes named voyagers which do not consume
much power when they launched in 1977.
They were each
equipped with three multi-hundred-watt radioisotope thermoelectric generators. To
power, each generator's power output began at just 158 watts which are less
energy than needed.
In order to
power a household light, a fixture for a year the voyagers are gradually losing
power after spending decades in space.
NASA has been
shutting down features to keep them powered for as long as possible they may
not last another 10 years. One day, eventually, we will lose communication with
them permanently.
However, with
nuclear diamond batteries, they can keep going for like eternity here on earth
electronic devices that are implanted in the body can be installed once in the
lifetime of the wearer instead of having to perform surgeries to replace them. When
the batteries wear out these include devices like hearing aids Elon Musk's neuro link
device that will work with the brain can also be fitted with nuclear
diamond batteries which means they do not have to be charged regularly for its
first commercial product.
NDB plans to
introduce a smart watch with an expected launch date sometime in 2022, if that
really happens, you could own one watch with a single battery and pass it down
for generations to generation without ever needing a replacement talk about an
electronic heirloom of course.
NDB is not
revealing everything about its nuclear diamond batteries yet, and we understand,
for example, we have not heard about the power density.
However, the
most important thing for now is the nuclear diamond batteries and not vaporware.
they're actually products that we will be using soon also using nuclear waste.
In this way,
it is good for the environment. for example, the United Kingdom has almost 95
000 tons of graphite blocks.
And by
extracting carbon 14 from them their radioactivity decreases which reduces the
cost and challenge of safely. What you think about nuclear diamond batteries? Comments
below.
Thank you.