Good thread for understanding grid modernization (batteries make an appearance on down the thread!)

🔋The biggest bottleneck for Western battery manufacturing isn’t capital or policy. It’s talent. There just aren’t enough people with the experience to run gigafactory-scale production. That shortage is a key reason why companies like Northvolt have failed. #battchat #greensky 🔌💡🧪

I'm not inherently opposed to AI images, but I spent some time trying to get it to make me an illustration of an "industrial electrochemical process" and it came up with this.

I agree with this. I think (college) education is a solved problem. Access to education is what's revolutionary.

When you write the Butler-Volmer equation, do you include "n" (number of electrons) terms in it?

“Batteries push investment into flexibility, smooth demand peaks, and keep the grid stable at lower cost. They will be the foundation of a power system that can deliver abundant electricity, with reliability built in, rather than as an afterthought” #battchat www.worksinprogress.news/p/the-beauty...

Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) was a scientific illustrator most famous for her 'Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium'. In this book filled with beautifully illustrated plates she explored the then poorly understood concept of insect metamorphosis.

The real news of the week if that Michael Stipe is telling people what the lyrics are to It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

As an educator, this is almost obvious to me. You don’t learn a topic or a skill without putting in the work. I’m currently going through every problem in a thermodynamics textbook to relearn the subject. Slow & sometimes tedious, but the only way to gain anything more than a superficial knowledge.

The National Weather Service bulletin for Hurricane Katrina, issued 28 August 2005, was the most upsetting document I had ever read in my life at that point, and 20 years later it still is. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationa...

After months of intensive collaboration, I am thrilled to present our latest #paper: a review of zinc-based rechargeable #battery technologies and a techno-economic analysis of the various battery types. Many thanks to my co-authors for the excellent collaboration. #battchat doi.org/10.1002/aenm...

We redid our website last week, check it out here: www.batteryburnbook.com #battchat

Me and PhD student Yogesh at DOE OE Energy Storage Peer Review this week.

New paper from us today in Joule. Led by Eric Zimmerer, we used operando EXAFS and Raman spectroscopy to structurally characterize disordered intermediate materials during MnO2 cathode cycling. These cathodes are special because they cycle 2 electrons from Mn(IV) to Mn(II).

I'm at DOE OE Peer Review. The struggle is real:

The grid battery storage line looks small on this plot, but no other line grew by a larger percentage. Batteries are coming to the grid, as we speak.

This week we bid farewell to Calli and Vincent, both high school researchers who joined us through Northeastern's Young Scholars Program (YSP). They studied alkaline CuO cathodes, working with their mentor Yogesh. Great work!

Facebook showed me a snow speeder toy, and I have to share it, not for the snow speeder, but for the early 80s vintage batteries.

I've had a Google alert for "alkaline battery" for about 15 years. More than 50% of the hits are medical journals, and it has shown me what can go wrong with babies and batteries.

Picard leadership tip: The larger your audience and the higher your position, the greater the need to communicate with care and precision.

Holy moly, I did not know Tom Lehrer was still alive

28) Another amazing thing to think about is that life as we know it basically boils down to manganese breaking water and iron putting it back together.

Gallaway Research Group, Summer 2025

🔋recycling: what are the different types and how do they compare? #battchat

In MacOS I love how "Eject disk" and "Erase disk" are now right next to each other. Awesome job everyone.

Great battery information coming out from Battery Burn Book. Check it out and subscribe!

This IEA graphic shows how global sales of electric vehicles & improved efficiency of combustion vehicles (eg hybrids) is slashing growth in global oil demand. Use in road transport has peaked & likely to soon post annual declines. Aviation & petro-chemical feedstocks only drivers of growth now.🔌💡🔌🚗

🔋 All solid-state battery producers and their manufacturing readiness levels. #battchat #energysky #greensky 🔌💡🧪

America and the world's brightest X-ray "microscope" - now 500x brighter. It can: 🔋 watch a battery charge atom by atom, 🛫 help us understand fracture in fighter jet alloys, and 🧬 speed up cancer-drug discovery. Welcome to the new Dept. of Energy Advanced Photon Source at Argonne! 🥳🔬⚡️

The Venn diagram of posts Just For Me is small, and this one is right there

I'm sure I'll take shit for saying this, but this passage from Glenn Loury's Chronicle interview perfectly captures for me the civilizational necessity of a relatively autonomous academic sphere. www.chronicle.com/article/the-...

Formation in Na-ion batteries. Beautiful cells there.

Right when the sun goes down but people are still awake. That is the *time of the battery*.

If you're at ECS, I have two talks this week. Come say hi. #ECSMontreal #ECS247

::Lands in Canada for one second::

The liftoff report for Long Duration Energy Storage is great. Give it a read, since apparently you still can.

I was today years old when I learned that the Magic Schoolbus was an NSF-funded project.

Anyone going to #ECSMontreal #ECS247 who's on BlueSky? See you soon! 🔋

Héctor Abruña, an electrochemist and Émile M. Chamot Professor at Cornell University, was named winner of the 2025 Dreyfus Prize in the Chemical Sciences. cen.acs.org/people/award... #chemsky🧪

Exactly the kind of class I wanna take:

Sad to hear it. This version of Pere Ubu deserved to have a top 40 hit.

Fuel cell electric vehicles amazingly outsold Ferraris for two years, but no longer.

I was down on sodium-iom batteries a couple weeks ago, but CATL—who knows a bit more about battery tech than I do!—believe sodium-ion could eventually take up half of the market share that’s currently dominated by lithium, iron phosphate batteries. www.detroitnews.com/story/busine... 🔌💡 🔌🚗

Check out this comic! One of my crowning achievements of 2023 was when Luke was presenting the comic at a faculty meeting, they described this panel as "a taller Josh Gallaway."

There are 3 types of R&D: Basic research: new knowledge, don’t yet have an intended purpose (e.g. observe a planet’s orbit) Applied research: have an intended purpose (e.g. improve battery efficiency) Development: make a vegan McRib Applied research & development funding have seen bigger cuts.

We're hiring a postdoc to join our @berkeleylab.lbl.gov @molecularfoundry.lbl.gov plastics recycling team. Scope will include developing new reactions for selective functionalization of polyolefins, assessing properties and recyclability. phxc1b.rfer.us/LBLHM2EPD

This is my Mom. The drug that saved her life was developed through NIH grants. That includes critical indirect costs for overhead and equipment. #HandsOffHigherEd #NIH #savescience

If you look closely at the class, you'll see a student wearing a Fishbone concert shirt, third from the left. It's a variation on an older Fishbone shirt that I wore at my senior prom. (My senior prom was just following the Rodney King riots in 1992.)

Saying farewell to Conservation Principles (CHME 2308) class for spring 2025. Go forth and do mass and energy balances for the betterment of humankind!

Here’s why the US research system is uniquely valuable, and what stands to be lost https://go.nature.com/42tSfrd