Radioactive Diamond Battery Will Run For 28,000 Years
By: Caroline Delbert (Popular Mechanics)
Old technology that may have become practical due to technological progress. Synthetic diamond production has improved quite rapidly over the last few decades. Chemical vapor deposition may prove to be a low cost means of producing nano-diamonds at scale.
What's interesting is this power source still relies on carbon.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
In two years, one startup says you'll be able to buy its diamond nuclear-powered battery. Even cooler: The battery will last for up to 28,000 years.
We know—that sounds wild. The potential game-changer comes from the U.S. startup NDB, which stands for Nano Diamond Battery, a "high-power diamond-based alpha, beta, and neutron voltaic battery" its research scientist founders say can give devices "life-long and green energy."
Could NDB's bold claim actually become a reality?
To build its nano diamond battery, NDB combines radioactive isotopes from nuclear waste with layers of paneled nano diamonds. Diamonds are a rare thing to begin with, but their extremely good heat conductance makes them even more unusual in the realm of construction of devices. Micro-sized single crystal diamonds move heat away from the radioactive isotope materials so quickly that the transaction generates electricity.
Scientists presented the first known diamond nuclear voltaic (DNV) battery concept using waste graphite from a graphite-cooled nuclear reactor. The radioactively contaminated graphite could last thousands of years, with the heat-conducting diamonds pulling that energy away into electricity alongside it the whole time. NDB's concept is the same, but with layers and layers of the diamond and radioactive waste panels to equal higher total amounts of energy.
You're probably wondering what the catch is. The diamond battery uses nuclear waste, lasts thousands of years, and involves layers of only the tiniest possible diamonds? That all sounds fantastic. But the truth is more complicated. Each battery cell will produce only a minuscule amount of energy, so the cells must be combined in huge numbers in order to power regular and larger devices.
There are also some simple questions about logistics. How can a battery made from radioactive waste be safe for human use? There's a reason it's so complex and expensive to "dispose of" nuclear waste. It's also costly to produce the nano diamonds because, well, diamonds are just expensive. That's before any manufacturing takes place.
NDB addresses these questions on its corporate site:
"The DNV stacks along with the source are coated with a layer of poly-crystalline diamond, which is known for being the most thermally conductive material also has the ability to contain the radiation within the device and is the hardest material, [12] times tougher than stainless steel. This makes our product extremely tough and tamperproof."
The present day and the future are both littered with applications for a small, almost indestructible battery cell. You could own one watch with a single battery and pass it down for generations without a change. Even nuclear microreactors designed to last decades without any maintenance are made into battery cells.
Diamond batteries could also power certain kinds of spacecraft like satellites. The 28,000-year claims are based on low-power space applications like this, where, say, a Voyager-like space probe could function on a tiny amount of energy over an extremely long time.
And if enough of these battery cells are combined, they still could power regular stuff, keeping our small LED displays lit up, for example, while providing thrust for human spacecraft or electric cars.
After working on its battery since 2012, NDB says it will finally have a working product in 2023. The world will be waiting.
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A 28,000 year battery that ultimately depends upon coal. Fossil fuels don't have to be used for combustion to produce energy.
"Nano diamonds are mainly created by the decomposition of graphitic C3N4 under high pressure and high temperature." "Graphitic carbon nitride (graphitic C3N4) can be made by polymerization of cyanamide, dicyandiamide or melamine. A new method of syntheses of graphitic carbon nitrides by heating at 400-600 °C of a mixture of melamine and uric acid in the presence of alumina has been reported."
" Over the years it has been said that diamonds formed from the metamorphism of coal . According to Geology.com, we now know this is untrue. “ Coal has rarely played a role in the formation of diamonds . In fact, most diamonds that have been dated are much older than Earth's first land plants – the source material of coal"
Where in the article does it say that these Nano Diamond batteries will "depend on coal"? Or was that an assumption you made because you saw Superman III?
" A huge plot hole that I’m sure a lot of you guys have noticed by this point is that neither process for forming natural diamonds nor synthetic diamonds uses coal. Diamonds created in laboratories are formed using graphite."
" Coal, on the other hand, is far from a pure carbon substance. Sure it has a lot of carbon, absolutely, but it also has a ton of impurities. Anywhere between 10% to 50% is not carbon, and that makes it an awful substance to try and make diamonds out of."
" If you hand Superman a stocking full of coal, best case scenario, he can make some real low-grade diamonds that really aren’t gonna fetch you much. A more realistic outcome is that he’s gonna hand you back a fistful of black powder."
My comment came from the scientific literature; not from a fictional superhero.
Coal is a readily available source of carbon that can be transported and handled safely. Low cost synthesis of diamonds requires the use of catalysts. Chemical vapor deposition does not mimic geological processes. Chemical vapor deposition can produce nano-scale diamond coatings.
Both of your links show that making nano diamonds from coal has been proven possible but has many problems.
"Current issues and problems in the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of diamond are those which relate to its characterization, its nucleation on foreign surfaces, the question of its formation in preference to the other phases of solid carbon (for example, graphite, chaoite, or lonsdaleite), why different morphologies and crystallographic orientations (textures) are seen in different experiments or with different parameters in the same experiment, and finally whether well-crystallized metastable phases can be obtained by CVD in other material systems or are only a peculiarity of carbon chemistry."
While experiments have shown it's possible to manufacture nanodiamonds from coal, that is currently not the method widely being used. If they're able to make it viable in the future then that's great, but it still wouldn't mean we need large amounts of coal such are are mined and burned as a dirty non-renewable fossil fuel for low cost power today. I get that some desperately want to stab back at green technology with any reasoning they can no matter how deluded, but trying to claim these nanodiamonds will somehow greatly "depend upon coal" is just pure fantasy.
How is that different than what is happening with fusion energy?
Stick this battery into the Energizer Bunny and the Bunny won't make it through Easter Day if there's a sledge hammer handy.