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gcrank1
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# Posted: 11 Sep 2024 00:39
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We have a startup building a huge factory here to make 'hemp batteries'; supposed to be way more energy dense and have way more cylces than LFP.
Im skeptical, pls educate me 
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ICC
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# Posted: 11 Sep 2024 01:00
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Time will tell.
https://www.google.com/search?q=%27hemp+batteries&client=ms-android-google&sourceid=c hrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8
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gcrank1
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# Posted: 11 Sep 2024 03:06 - Edited by: gcrank1
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It is Wisconsin Battery Company (WinBat)
CEO Jeff Greene (you can't make this stuff up)
18ac site in Portage WI
58,500 sf facility
Not sure if there are smoke and mirrors involved, lol.
Last report was they had received some 5 mil from a 'private equity firm' that supposedly would cover about 80% of the start up.
And just this last week we've heard about 'gov' money to be tossed out to 'green/alt' enterprises.
I remember a bunch of that with some solar panel companies in the not too distant past. Afaik none of them are still in business.
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travellerw
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# Posted: 11 Sep 2024 18:23 - Edited by: travellerw
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There is so much FUD swirling around Hemp batteries that its very hard to determine who is who.. I'm pretty sure WinBat is a renaming/restructuring/commercializing of a company called BEMP.
In any case, the real underlying technology is LiS batteries (Lithium Sulfur). Hemp comes into play as it can be converted to boron carbide which is used in the anode of these batteries. However, there are quite a few other materials that can be converted to boron carbide (e.g. cotton), so it looks like hemp is being used for marketing. I suspect any successful company would quickly switch to the cheapest material (probably coal).
In short, LiS is a real technology with multiple research paths. Although it appears that no one has created a prototype that lived outside the lab. Has this company made a breakthrough? Time will tell. They have certainly received a ton of seed money.
For anyone that knows more about chemistry than me (and that isn't a lot), here is an article describing LiS and the different boron anodes being researched. The article is less than a year old.
https://www.amoytob.com/news/boron-based-material-in-lithium-sulfur-battery-72725661. html
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ICC
Member
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# Posted: 11 Sep 2024 23:22 - Edited by: ICC
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Lots of different battery chemistries with using assorted hardware components are out there. LANL (Los Alamos National Labs here in NM has a sodium sulfur (NaS) battery. It's a big thing, a double stack of 20 foot shipping containers. It's an experimental unit between LANL, the county and NGK Japan. Maybe some other Japanese company as well. The interesting and potentially dangerous thing is the battery interior runs at a temperature of 300 degrees Celcius. Ad of course a sodium fire can not be extinguished with water. The fire marshall, a friend, made a joke of it by stating the fire dept training mainly consisted of maintaining a safe perimeter and watching it burn, if it did catch fire. But cheap to make as sodium and sulfur are very common minerals and no rare earth elements like Li are used. Quite energy-dense too.
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