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WILL HUMANITY FIND A DECENT REPLACEMENT FOR LITHIUM-ION BATTERIES?! ADGEX HAS ANSWERED THAT QUESTION BY DEVELOPING A NEW WAY TO CONVERT HEAT INTO ENERGY

FINDING NEW ALTERNATIVE WAYS TO STORE AND DISTRIBUTE ENERGY

Today's world is critically dependent on energy resources. The energy crisis in the West is a case in point. Gas and fuel prices have reached new historic highs again and again. The lack of energy resources leads to higher energy tariffs and inflation, which causes a general decline in the economies of the developed countries.

The search for reserve energy sources is becoming a top priority for the global industry. As technological progress has turned to electrical devices, priority is being given to batteries capable of storing electrical charge. The main battery on the market today is and remains the lithium ion battery and its various derivatives. However, unless humanity moderates its appetite for lithium batteries in the growing market for consumer devices and electric cars, the earth will run out of lithium and other rare earth metals in the next couple of decades. Nor should we forget that humanity is facing a new and growing environmental problem that people have not yet effectively learned to solve: the recycling of lithium-ion batteries.

Indeed, there is cause for reflection: to sound the alarm or to look for a way out. There are two ways of dealing with the issue. The first is to look for ways to increase lithium production in order to saturate the rapidly growing market and replace lithium-ion batteries with more efficient derivatives. The second is to look for the latest technologies in energy storage and distribution.

Undoubtedly, the breakthrough solution for the latest energy technology is thermal storage. This approach has clear advantages over lithium-ion batteries. They are cheaper to produce, they are more durable, but most importantly the capacity of thermo batteries is higher than traditional lithium-ion batteries by about 20 - 30 times. So are thermo batteries able to displace their direct competitors from the market and take a decent place in the market as a subclass? Let us find out.

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF THERMAL STORAGE

Thermal accumulators, as an alternative energy storage source, are ideal for storing thermal energy.

Heat accumulators have two main advantages:

• 1. When building large capacity storage units, they are considerably cheaper (approx. 10 times cheaper) than lithium-ion batteries of the same capacity.
• 2. Per 1 kg of weight or unit volume, thermal storage batteries store 20 to 30 times more energy. For example, 1414 Degrees has developed a molten-silicon heat storage system that can store 500 kWh of energy in a volume of around one-third of a cubic meter. According to the company, 1414 Degrees is 36 times the capacity of Tesla's 14kWh Powerwall 2 lithium-ion battery.

Why, if all is so well with the performance of thermal storage batteries, now they are not able to challenge the lithium-ion competitors on the market by even a fraction. The reason is their most important weakness. Scientists around the world still have not come up with an effective way to convert the accumulated heat of thermal storage batteries into electrical energy. There are several technological directions in solving this problem, and the main one by far is thermoelectric power generation.

Thermoelectric generator (or thermoelectric generator) is a technical device (electrical generator), designed for the direct conversion of heat energy into electricity using thermoelements (thermoelectric materials) in its design.

The most common thermoelectric generator today is a steam turbine. Heat is used to generate steam, which spins a turbine attached to the generator. Thus, the main method of generating electricity is indirect conversion of heat, which involves a very significant energy loss. On average, the efficiency of steam turbines reaches a maximum of 20-25%. Therefore, to produce 1 watt of usable electrical energy, on average, about 5 watts of heat is spent, of which four goes to heat up the environment.

In today's science, there are other advanced methods for converting heat into electricity. For example, thermo EMF - the selective heating (or cooling) of the contact point of two conductors with different chemical properties is accompanied by an electromotive force. Put simply, a voltage is generated at the opposite ends of the conductors, and if they are closed, an electric current will flow in the circuit. This is the principle on which the thermocouple, a simple device used to measure temperature, operates. Attempts to adapt the phenomenon of thermo-electricity to produce electricity have been made repeatedly. Appropriate devices, called thermoelectric converters, have been developed quite actively over the last 50 years and even found application in some industries. However, they are clearly unsuitable for mass production of electricity. Firstly, the efficiency of such converters does not rise above 7%. Because of the search for alloys with a strong crystalline structure ensuring reliable stability at high temperatures thermoelectric converters are also expensive to produce.

It is true that there are breakthroughs in thermoelectrics, where two metal conductors are joined together using an artificially synthesised organic molecule. According to scientists, this means a real breakthrough in converting heat into electricity: organics are very cheap and easy to produce. The efficiency of such converters has so far reached a record high of 15%.

To summarise the efficiency of thermal generators, the whole advantage of having 30 times as much energy per unit weight or volume simply evaporates and is levelled against the low efficiency of thermal generators capable of converting heat into electricity.

The only area where thermal storage has an undeniable advantage is in CHP, where the heat goes directly to the use of combined heat and power generation. Only where a thermal storage tank is used to heat water does the cumulative effect reach 80 - 90 %.

Therefore, we conclude that thermal storage batteries can indeed claim superiority over lithium-ion batteries, but only under certain conditions.

However, let us just think, what would happen if some scientists, eventually, do learn how to convert thermal energy into electrical energy efficiently?

We are convinced that this would lead to an energy revolution in the market! Wouldn't it?!

ADGEX HAS DEVELOPED THE LATEST WAY TO CONVERT HEAT INTO ENERGY IN A HIGHLY EFFICIENT WAY

Nowadays, people produce electricity in two ways: the conventional way - by burning coal, gas or other fossil fuels - and by using renewable energy. In both cases, all of the electricity produced has to be fed into the grid by feeding into power lines. This approach is not energy efficient, because consumers do not consume all of the energy on the grid, but only some of it. The unused portion is a huge loss in the size of humanity as a whole.

Today, two-thirds of all energy consumed by humanity is lost as heat. Scientists have always looked for a way to convert this heat loss into usable energy as efficiently as possible. The team has succeeded in solving this technical challenge. Over the last few years, ADGEX has been working on technology to convert exhaust gas energy into an additional source of energy. As a result of this work, our specialists have come up with an alternative method of converting heat into mechanical energy and electrical current. We estimate that the method developed by the AGEX team is much more efficient than existing thermoelectric generators on the market.

The method developed by AGEX enables us to convert the stored heat into just the right amount of energy, i.e. we can convert the heat into electricity as and when required in an environmentally friendly way. The technological solution being developed by ADGEX, which involves collecting, storing and converting heat into clean energy, offers humanity the very latest approach to future energy logistics. ADGEX has every chance of becoming one of the world's leading companies in a new and highly efficient method of generating electricity and playing a key role in the transition to a back-up energy source.

In testing and developing the new technology, ADGEX takes a holistic approach to the technology as a whole - from the storage and distribution of heat to the conversion of heat into electrical and mechanical energy right at the point of use. The results obtained by our team of scientists are the following tried and tested methods and mechanical devices:

• • A compressor that enables high efficiency conversion of heat from low-calorie to high-calorie heat.
• • A thermal accumulator capable of storing high-calorie heat, storing it for a long time and which can be transported over any distance.
• • A new generation of rotary motors that can convert heat into useful mechanical work and electric current.

We would also like to highlight an applied market problem which ADGEX was able to solve, namely the utilisation and collection of low-calorific heat emitted into the atmosphere today. For example, this is parasitic heat generated by servers of large data centres and mining farms, bakeries and bakeries, etc. For example, recall that computers in the process of mining cryptocurrencies emit more than 23 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, which equals the carbon footprint of a small country. Scientists and environmentalists have calculated that mining could cause the average temperature of the Earth to rise by 2 degrees Celsius. AGEX could, in the near future, collect such "environmentally harmful heat" and convert it into useful and clean energy.

In summary, the new ADGEX technology is a new reality of our times, making it possible to collect and store excess heat in heat accumulators and, as needed, convert that heat into energy right at the point of use, including vehicles right in motion: cars, trams and locomotives. This is the latest and completely environmentally friendly method of generating energy from a renewable source, which is heat.

It fits in perfectly with the cooperation between our greenBLAZE systems for processing organic waste from human activity - the heat generated by the greenBLAZE processors can be collected in a thermal storage medium, which can then be transported to the users, set up energy storage facilities if necessary, and converted directly into mechanical and electrical energy. In this case, our thermal accumulators will occupy relatively small area and can store more energy than existing batteries per 1 kg of weight or volume unit.

In our assessment, the relevance of the ADGEX opening against the background of the worldwide growing trend of energy transition to environmentally friendly technologies is simply invaluable.