"harry" wrote in message
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On Saturday, 13 August 2016 07:54:03 UTC+1, Rod Speed wrote:
"harry" wrote in message
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On Friday, 12 August 2016 13:36:23 UTC+1, newshound wrote:
On 8/11/2016 5:58 PM, Capitol wrote:
Read a Telegraph article today on these. Do they have a
future?

I was asked this in the pub last night, but had to look up the
article.
What I thought was particularly poor was the journalist's implication
that there is so much progress that we will be able to rely on them
completely in five to ten years. Picking this Harvard one as a leader
when it is clearly still at the small scale laboratory stage was a
cheap
tactic.

There's been serious research into batteries since the 1970's, I
remember meeting a guy who was working on the sodium-sulphur battery
when I was on a sodium handling course at Dounreay, at a time when
that
was supposed to be imminent. Obviously, I welcome research by world
class organisations and I suspect that Musk is on to something for
high
end domestic. But I don't see solar panels and windmills on the roof,
plus a cellar full of batteries, taking something like a major
hospital
or medium to heavy industry off the grid. Not any time soon, at least.

We are always going to need oil/coal for the production of metals from
ore.

The only metal that is done with is iron.

All metals that exist in the earth as oxides need coal etc to reduce them.

No coal is used when turning bauxite into aluminium.
Or with any of the other metals like copper, zinc tin etc either.