​What is a battery?

By BD Bondy
 
I tend to think of a battery as a small cylinder, or that heavy box under the hood of my car, but a battery can be something quite different, like a lake, or a big container of sand. Basically, a battery is an energy storage container. Battery technology is all the rage right now, and how to recycle and dispose of these newer lithium batteries is also a technology, a bit behind the creation of them, but progressing forward.
 
I try and recycle the lithium batteries I’m given that come in older laptops. They are cylindrical, but housed in whatever plastic thing that fits the computer. They are 18650 batteries, fairly common these days. I buy flashlights that use them, and housings for phone rechargers so I can reuse them and give them away.
 
The bigger picture is what happens with all the car lithium batteries when they are at end of life. Those have generally been stored, waiting for something to happen. Fortunately, they are starting to be recycled, and sometimes, reused. Car lithium batteries are made of smaller batteries that can be reused into battery storage for homes with solar panels, for instance. Also, the lithium can be recovered in some factories. There are even some places that can refurbish these car lithium batteries for reuse in the car. There’s still a long way to go, but it’s happening.
 
How is a lake a battery? We start with water that is pumped up hill to a reservoir, when electricity demand is available, the water can then be drained to the lower reservoir through a turbine, in times of higher demand. It’s a low tech, fairly clean way to store power. https://youtu.be/6Jx_bJgIFhI?si=pWAbsK74PLbg-9GK
 
How about sand? Storing sand in a big container, then superheating it with wind or solar power can store that heat energy for months. Watch this:
https://youtube.com/shorts/FftChWEXe5w?si=-28xTFMRkpvdlxXR
 
Chicago has been doing something like it for years. There’s a company downtown, next to the river, that creates buildings full of ice over the winter. In the summer, it uses the ice as air conditioning for a number of buildings that are their customers. It’s been operating for decades. Exelon now has 4 plants, and produces over 90 thousand tons of ice to cool office buildings and skyscrapers, since 1995.