Infinite Batteries and Applications

[Spacescifi]

Infinite Electricity Storage Battery: Granted you would have to gradually charge it rather than dumping too much electricity into it at once, but over time you could store however much electricity you wanted. There would be a loophole of charging with higher energy loads than the battery could normally take IF there was coolant to keep it from overheating. Doing this you could chargd vast amounts of electricity in shorter periods of time.

Science: Strangely, I read that batteries are slightly (very tiny amount) heavier when fully charged. So I imagine if one went and poured vast amounts of energy into the battery that over time it would become heavy for it's size. Meaning apparently physics won't let you cheat by having a low mass high energy source and increasing energy storage forever. There is a breaking point where the said mass will turn heavy.... so long you are using normal mass and not antimatter.

It is ironic because mechanical energy is much the same. You cannot rotate a tether or steel beam to infinitely faster speeds BECAUSE before you even reach light speed rotation the tether or beam would tear apart, since the ends would be much heavier than the mid-sections. I imagine if one did spin any object to infinity it would spiral out as it disintergrated... into relativistic shrapnel.

 

Real world applications of such are battery: Obvious... yet generating the power to use one depends wholly on how much power you wanted to store. I imagine one could charge higher amounts of electricity faster into the infinite battery if sufficient coolant was available. Which means charging facilities would have massive coolant tanks filled with LH, and proabably located near a water source where water is continually converted into LH.

Likewise discharging a lot of energy from the battery without overheating it would require plenty of coolant. So any schemes for uber lasers or thermal rockets would have to keep that in mind.

 

Totally Fictional Applications That Would Not Work At All: I thought it would be nice for reactionless drive powered by electricity to use an infinity battery. But the problem is the amount of electric energy measured in joules is staggeringly high to reach orbit from an Earth-like world. Which means that you need a middle man... coolant, to offset overheating your infinite battery while you discharge massive amounts of energy to fly. Which of course will mean the ship never leaves the ground unless you stage it like rocketry.

 

Any more thoughts on applications of such an infinite battery that I may have missed?

Edited December 20, 2021 by Spacescifi

[kerbiloid]

A battery is a couple of chemicals forced to appear by the external source of energy, which release the energy from thee chemical reaction between its components.

It can release much less energy per total mass than a rocket propellant pair, so there is no sense in using batteries to store large amount of energy.

That's why in the orbital lasers batteries are not included, and a usual propellant pair is used.

[magnemoe]

15 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

A battery is a couple of chemicals forced to appear by the external source of energy, which release the energy from thee chemical reaction between its components.

It can release much less energy per total mass than a rocket propellant pair, so there is no sense in using batteries to store large amount of energy.

That's why in the orbital lasers batteries are not included, and a usual propellant pair is used.

Now batteries can be recharged but yes they hold less energy than high capacity chemical fuel and oxidizer.
I assume this is also true for stuff like high capacity superconducting currency loops. Yes the later makes nice bombs who I assume can be more effective than high explosives. 
But high explosives are also not very effective neither is solid rocket fuel.  

[FleshJeb]

2 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Which means that you need a middle man... coolant, to offset overheating your infinite battery while you discharge massive amounts of energy to fly. Which of course will mean the ship never leaves the ground unless you stage it like rocketry.

What would happen if you got that coolant so hot that it left your ship at a really high speed? Man, you could even put it through some kind of nozzle to direct the output!

[sevenperforce]

1 hour ago, Spacescifi said:

Infinite Electricity Storage Battery: Granted you would have to gradually charge it rather than dumping too much electricity into it at once, but over time you could store however much electricity you wanted. There would be a loophole of charging with higher energy loads than the battery could normally take IF there was coolant to keep it from overheating. Doing this you could chargd vast amounts of electricity in shorter periods of time.

You have proposed a battery with theoretically infinite specific energy but a thermally-limited charge/discharge rate. From a semi-turgid science fiction perspective, this is actually a pretty reasonable idea. It would not be hard to conceive some sort of futuristic organometallic nanocapacitor bank which could hold effectively limitless amounts of energy. The fact that it has a limited charge/discharge rate keeps it from being as physics-breaking as most of your ideas.

What type of discharge rate are you thinking of? These things are typically measured in specific power, i.e., the amount of power that the battery is able to receive or produce per unit mass. This is also referred to as "power to weight ratio." You would want to get units of W/kg (that is, watts per kilogram). Some examples of specific power, for reference:

• Household rechargeable nickel-cadmium battery: 200 W/kg
• Tesla PowerWall battery: 43.9 W/kg
• ISS Solar Array Wing (each of the solar panels on the ISS): 28.5 W/kg
• TOPAZ nuclear reactor (used on Russian spacecraft): 15.6 W/kg
• MMRTG (the radiothermal generator on Perseverance): 2.4 W/kg

So if you want your ordinary discharge rate to be reasonable, you would want it to be higher than the power-to-weight ratio of a solar panel, but probably lower than the power-to-weight ratio of a household battery.

1 hour ago, Spacescifi said:

I read that batteries are slightly (very tiny amount) heavier when fully charged. So I imagine if one went and poured vast amounts of energy into the battery that over time it would become heavy for it's size. Meaning apparently physics won't let you cheat by having a low mass high energy source and increasing energy storage forever. There is a breaking point where the said mass will turn heavy.... so long you are using normal mass and not antimatter.

Antimatter is normal mass. Antimatter does not have negative weight or negative inertia.

However, I doubt you'd need to worry about this. If you converted all the chemical energy in the entire first stage of the Saturn V into electricity, and you stored that electricity in batteries, the total mass of all those batteries would increase by only around 0.14 grams.

1 hour ago, Spacescifi said:

I imagine one could charge higher amounts of electricity faster into the infinite battery if sufficient coolant was available. Which means charging facilities would have massive coolant tanks filled with LH, and proabably located near a water source where water is continually converted into LH.

No need for liquid hydrogen. You'd just use water as your coolant. The energy required to convert water into liquid hydrogen is pointless when you can just use more water.

1 hour ago, Spacescifi said:

Likewise discharging a lot of energy from the battery without overheating it would require plenty of coolant. So any schemes for uber lasers or thermal rockets would have to keep that in mind.

On the flip side, if you need coolant for increased use -- well, now you've got a handy-dandy propellant source.

1 hour ago, Spacescifi said:

Totally Fictional Applications That Would Not Work At All: I thought it would be nice for reactionless drive powered by electricity to use an infinity battery. But the problem is the amount of electric energy measured in joules is staggeringly high to reach orbit from an Earth-like world.

The actual challenge here is going to be the thrust-to-weight ratio of your reactionless drive. You'd need a reactionless drive which can actually get itself off the ground.

[Spacescifi]

1 hour ago, FleshJeb said:

What would happen if you got that coolant so hot that it left your ship at a really high speed? Man, you could even put it through some kind of nozzle to direct the output!

I was fully aware of that.

1 hour ago, sevenperforce said:

You have proposed a battery with theoretically infinite specific energy but a thermally-limited charge/discharge rate. From a semi-turgid science fiction perspective, this is actually a pretty reasonable idea. It would not be hard to conceive some sort of futuristic organometallic nanocapacitor bank which could hold effectively limitless amounts of energy. The fact that it has a limited charge/discharge rate keeps it from being as physics-breaking as most of your ideas.

What type of discharge rate are you thinking of? These things are typically measured in specific power, i.e., the amount of power that the battery is able to receive or produce per unit mass. This is also referred to as "power to weight ratio." You would want to get units of W/kg (that is, watts per kilogram). Some examples of specific power, for reference:

• Household rechargeable nickel-cadmium battery: 200 W/kg
• Tesla PowerWall battery: 43.9 W/kg
• ISS Solar Array Wing (each of the solar panels on the ISS): 28.5 W/kg
• TOPAZ nuclear reactor (used on Russian spacecraft): 15.6 W/kg
• MMRTG (the radiothermal generator on Perseverance): 2.4 W/kg

So if you want your ordinary discharge rate to be reasonable, you would want it to be higher than the power-to-weight ratio of a solar panel, but probably lower than the power-to-weight ratio of a household battery.

Antimatter is normal mass. Antimatter does not have negative weight or negative inertia.

However, I doubt you'd need to worry about this. If you converted all the chemical energy in the entire first stage of the Saturn V into electricity, and you stored that electricity in batteries, the total mass of all those batteries would increase by only around 0.14 grams.

No need for liquid hydrogen. You'd just use water as your coolant. The energy required to convert water into liquid hydrogen is pointless when you can just use more water.

On the flip side, if you need coolant for increased use -- well, now you've got a handy-dandy propellant source.

The actual challenge here is going to be the thrust-to-weight ratio of your reactionless drive. You'd need a reactionless drive which can actually get itself off the ground.

 

I meant that antimatter is about as dense an energy storage medium as we know. Trying to pull that energy density level off with infinite batteries is possible, but imagine doing so would be regulated to nth degree, since we all know how great a bomb anything with antimatter energy density creates.

 

It would be a supreme feat to make a battery much heavier via energy storage, but I suppose it is possible if you were high charging the IB (Infinity Battery) for decades.

 

As for a specific power to weight ratio, why not just be like car lead acid batteries?

 

Lead acid battery180 W/kg

 

I presume the power is measured against the mass/weight in kilograms of the battery itself... correct? Meaning per kilogram of battery weight the battery can charge or discharge at said wattage?

 

So if that is so... and the loophole of cooling the battery for higher than normal charge/discharge is also possible via coolant, what does this imply for thermal rocketry?

I assume it means you can take a car size infinity battery, supercharge it at facility with the help of a lot of coolant to prevent overheating, and then make a thermal rocket that actually has good TWR. You only need a LOT of propellant.

 

You could make an even better plasma rocket..  even though plasma gives low TWR (assuming you do not want massive waste heat) that won't matter much in space anyway.

I think ideally you would two stage this using rockets. Only difference being that on low gravity worlds (just about anywhere smaller than Earth) your second stage would already be an SSTO.

In any case, I reckon booster rockets would be large, as well as second stages.... if they are using Infinity Batteries for power. Since all that heat needs somewhere to go.

 

Want some funny irony? Low mass probes using IB tech would have to have low TWR,  they would be like ion drives... only with longer range.

You cannot afford to use IB as missiles, since they require a lot of propellant to not overheat and explode.

 

Sounds like I finally made up a spaceship drive that would not be so overpowered that you could just slap it on a missile and make all spaceships obsolete for trying to outrun it.

If you wanted a missile...it would just be the size of a spaceship lol.

Edited December 20, 2021 by Spacescifi

[magnemoe]

3 hours ago, FleshJeb said:

What would happen if you got that coolant so hot that it left your ship at a really high speed? Man, you could even put it through some kind of nozzle to direct the output!

Probably nothing good as in temperature would be steam level 2-500 C and you are now loosing your battery. 
Now if you could have the battery break down in an controlled matter, think solid rocket fuel it could be useful. Added benefit is that the uncharged engine would be harmless unless it was build of very toxic materials. 

[NFUN]

didn't we already have this exact scenario?

 

 

Edited December 21, 2021 by NFUN

[Spacescifi]

45 minutes ago, NFUN said:

didn't we already have this exact scenario?

 

 

 

No... the situation is different in two ways that have been said at length.

47 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Probably nothing good as in temperature would be steam level 2-500 C and you are now loosing your battery. 
Now if you could have the battery break down in an controlled matter, think solid rocket fuel it could be useful. Added benefit is that the uncharged engine would be harmless unless it was build of very toxic materials. 

 

Realistically you would just blow up the battery... and your spaceship in the blast... as all the batteries stored energy is released at once.

Now with sufficient heat exchangers... perhaps maybe?

 

EDIT: Not even then. Only thing this battery is good for is a low weight thermal rocket.

 

Cannot SSTO, but better than NTR and smaller too.

 

Since the very heat which chemical rockets enjoy would blow up the battery.

 

This is an orbit to orbit only rocket.

Edited December 21, 2021 by Spacescifi

[kerbiloid]

9 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Now batteries can be recharged

to recharge the battery = to run its chemical reaction in reverse direction applying an external energy, to set the chemical components from stable state into unstable but frozen one

[K^2]

17 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Science: Strangely, I read that batteries are slightly (very tiny amount) heavier when fully charged. [...] There is a breaking point where the said mass will turn heavy.... so long you are using normal mass and not antimatter.

The mass defect of a battery is exactly by the mass of matter/antimatter required to produce said energy, since this is literally just equivalence principle at work. (Technically, chemical batteries can also exchange gases with environment, which is a much bigger factor in battery mass in the real world, but that's a separate issue.)

So yeah, if there was no other limit on storage, the best you could do is m = E/c² or about 90TJ/gram. Of course, with any known storage method, you aren't going to get anywhere close to that ratio. The best we have a working theory for that works remotely like an actual battery is nuclear isomer batteries. The hafnium-178 isomer ^178m2Hf can hold about 1.3GJ/gram. Sure, that's almost 10,000 times worse than antimatter, but it's also more than a million times better than Lithium Ion batteries, which top out under 1kJ/gram. This particular nuclear isomer has surprisingly good shelf life, with half-life over 30 years, making it an ideal candidate for batteries. Unfortunately, getting it to liberate that energy on demand has proven to be rather complicated, and the only known way to charge it is to chuck it into a particle accelerator, which is not ideal in too many ways to count. There was some optimism about it a decade or two ago, which even led to some research getting classified for the fear that somebody could weaponize it, but that fizzled out, and research has seen been released to the public. The conclusion has been that if there is an efficient way to store and release energy from this isotope, we lack technology to do so at present. But if you're looking for a "nearly magical" battery for your science fiction setting, you can do a lot worse than hafnium nuclear isomer batteries.

[wumpus]

15 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

 

No... the situation is different in two ways that have been said at length.

 

Realistically you would just blow up the battery... and your spaceship in the blast... as all the batteries stored energy is released at once.

Now with sufficient heat exchangers... perhaps maybe?

 

EDIT: Not even then. Only thing this battery is good for is a low weight thermal rocket.

 

Cannot SSTO, but better than NTR and smaller too.

 

Since the very heat which chemical rockets enjoy would blow up the battery.

 

This is an orbit to orbit only rocket.

Why wouldn't it be a SSTO?  Simply use the electricity to heat hydrogen, then use as a NTR with an Isp>1000s (first pass the hydrogen over the battery to cool the battery, then pass it through heating coils to further heat the hydrogen).  Other than the unbearably large fuel tank, it should have no other SSTO issues.  The big question is how in the world does adding charge create antimater, and how a reversed operation would create electricity (I thought I posted a reply yesterday which assumed that the battery would be nuclear.  A chemical battery storing electricity better than chemical fuels seems unlikely.

Of course once you are in Earth's  orbit, you can theoretically use the Earth's [or any other planet with a magnetic field, not sure their are any good targets] magnetic field for a truly reactionless drive.  Note that such a drive would likely be slower (no matter the tech) than current ion drives, so perhaps your fictional people won't even use it for cargo, but I'm pretty sure a proof of concept was done on a [tiny?] sat.

And you are discovering part of the reason that Rocket Labs only uses electricity to drive the pumps in the Rutherford engine (and not even the planned larger Archimedes engine).

 

[Arugela]

I'm pretty sure the applications are infinite....

[Spacescifi]

1 hour ago, Arugela said:

I'm pretty sure the applications are infinite....

 

The irony is that not all infinite things lead to overpowered situations.

Since while you could make the greatest bomb ever, it would take enough time and energy that yoy could not just make or have millions of them lying around.

[razark]

On 12/20/2021 at 4:26 PM, Spacescifi said:

You cannot afford to use IB as missiles, since they require a lot of propellant to not overheat and explode.

That's exactly why I would use it as a missile.

 

I launch the super-charged battery at a planet using regular physics, then short it out, causing it to discharge all it's energy in a short time, overheating and melting the entire planetary target.  Even if it didn't melt the entire planet, then it would at least make it uninhabitable.