jmiller

joined 1 year ago
[–] jmiller@lemm.ee 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Very true. Unfortunately, this process just pulls gold from dilute sources and gathers it into nuggets, from small ones to very very large. No gold is being made new though, that would be great.

[–] jmiller@lemm.ee 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Well, that is the amount gold that is mined or recycled every year that is used in electronics. The thing is though, a lot of the gold used in electronics is never recovered. So a considerable amount of the gold used in electronics is removed from from circulation in a way the gold in jewelry or bullion or coins isn't. It isn't the primary driver of gold's price increase, but it is a significant factor.

[–] jmiller@lemm.ee 17 points 2 months ago (8 children)

Gold prices have risen steadily for a long time, partly because of its use in electronics. Over $2500/ounce now. But another quirk of gold is the ease with which we can make very thin coatings of it over other materials, sometimes only a few atoms thick. So it is commonly used, but in very very small amounts per device.

[–] jmiller@lemm.ee 20 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Probably worse for Barbra than the picture is this phenomenon being named after her. I was familiar with the the Streisand Effect and who the name came from, but didn't know the backstory and hadn't seen her house.

For anyone curious.

[–] jmiller@lemm.ee 14 points 6 months ago

Maybe that was literally the case, he apparently had mercury poisoning at around the same time.

It's starting to sound like a retelling of the old lady who swallowed the fly.

Someone needs to invite /u/Poem_for_your_sprog to Lemmy.

[–] jmiller@lemm.ee 20 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Growing crops to make ethanol is not particulatly green. In fact, in most existing production loops we would be better off environmentally to just burn pure gasoline than produce the ethanol to mix into it, unfortunately. Too much water, too many tractors and trucks, and way too much electricity into ethanol production to be worth what we get out of it. And the bit of carbon the crops sequester doesn't overcome it. Electric vehicles are by far the greenest option right now.

[–] jmiller@lemm.ee 15 points 7 months ago

It won't have started getting closer again before the Milky Way collides with the Adromeda galaxy in 5 Billion years, so it and anything we send on a similar path isn't coming back.

[–] jmiller@lemm.ee 15 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] jmiller@lemm.ee 5 points 9 months ago

I am not any kind of expert either, but I have been following this company for a couple of years. If it makes it to market and is at all price competitive i can't see it not being a big deal. Granted, that is an if, not when, but they seem to be further along than most battery tech you read about.

No rare earth metals or even nickel or copper, has a very flat degradation curve even at charge rates up to 30C (testing stopped at 3k cycles in the coin cell tests), non flammable and non toxic. The only thing you would wish for is better capacity, but it is already better than any mass produced Li ion cell, and it has a theoretical maximum a couple times that of Li ions.

[–] jmiller@lemm.ee 7 points 9 months ago

You're right, battery news IS always breathlessly excited about the next crazy advancement, but they have a lot of things in their favor on this one. They broke ground on a manufacturing plant last year, which is not the case for most battery news stories. And the battery uses no rare earth metals, is non flammable, and performes better by nearly every metric than lithium ion. If they make it to market, I think they will absolutely be revolutionary.

 

Very interesting company. They started with a way to produce graphene at scale, then went looking for something to do with it. Their first idea was to use it as a cement additive. They have since used it as friction reducer in engine oil, and are selling it in Australia, Canada, and soon the US, as a radiator coating to improve HVAC performance.

[–] jmiller@lemm.ee 4 points 9 months ago

A increasing percentage of new construction gets heat pumps. Some replacement HVAC units make the switch, but there is still a large portion of people who won't because of misinformation and/or stubbornness.

But, unfortunately, most existing residential systems do not use heat pumps, under 20% in the US I believe.

[–] jmiller@lemm.ee 28 points 9 months ago (14 children)

They are too expensive. But only because auto manufacturers are only making midsized and larger suvs or luxury cars. The average price of an EV has dropped over 50% in China since 2015. That would have been tough for us to match, mostly because of batteries, but we could have made much more progress than we have.

The electric grid isn't nearly as unprepared as people say. Sure, we need to build out more charging stations, but the grid as a whole far exceeds current needs. In fact, nationwide electrical usage is actually trending down in the US because of efficiency gains. Better building codes, heat pumps, LED lighting, if it uses electricity newer stuff is more efficient. If we had sold 8 times as many EVs in 2023 than we did, electricity usage would have stayed about flat.

https://cleantechnica.com/2024/02/02/the-us-added-1-2-million-evs-to-the-grid-last-year-electricity-use-went-down/

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