Lastspikemike Nobody has to even read my posts let alone accept what I say as accurate.
The problem is that there are myriads of people that come to these forums and read to get information, and they never post themselves.
Just look at the number of views some posts receive with few responses. Those are people looking for good information.
When innacurate things get stated, they need to be read and pointed out for the sake of these forums having continued legitimacy.
Anything that is posted just for fun, or to tantalize a response, should be confined to the Diner.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
It's worse than I thought - this product does not even exist yet, not in even a test sample, the company has been around since Feb 2019. And the energy density is absolutely horrid. Doing some math, if it was in the form factor of a standard AA battery, the self recharge from this "diamond and graphene technology" would take 2400 hours!
ANd nothing new - there have been tritium based ones available commercially for about 10 years now. OK, they last 20-40 years instead of 100 - but they really exist and have been tested. This supposed product is so much hot marketing air.
So unfortuantely, long life battery on board dead rail locomotives are still the future.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
LastspikemikeIt is most true in the USA. The maths isn't that difficult. And that's just for the passenger car fleet.
aren't you stating conclusions without explaining the facts they are based on
why should i be persuaded by whatever you say when you don't provide facts?
greg - Philadelphia & Reading / Reading
LastspikemikeThe single biggest obstacle to battery powered cars is the problem of external electricity generating capacity. The World does not yet have and cannot build sufficient generating capacity to recharge an electric powered vehicle fleet.
This is not true in North America, and we CAN build sufficient power generating capability from renewable sources or traditional fueled power plants with no new technology anywhere needed.
Maybe in a large enough scale, and if you're one of those once a month type operators. The current lithium technology that fits in an HO locomotive, no unprototypical "always couple this car behind the loco" shennanigans, last maybe 2 hours of run time tops. If you run trains no more than that, 3 times a week, that's 3 charge cycles a week. 150 a year. Typically they last 300-500 charge cycles - so that's 2-3 years. Yes, li-ion batteries in dead rail locos will need to be swapped out, not often but certainly many times over the loco's (or owner's) lifetime.
ANd this little IC size radioisotope generator - sure the concept works, we're still getting signals from Voyager after 45 years on the job, but it prodices so little power when shrunk down to that size, that to get usable power, you need enough of those little IC size things to fill a small computer case. The low power may be good for sustaining a device in its sleep mode - some modern devices can deep sleep with such low current consumption they might as well be off, but as soon as some actual work needs to be done and the device wakes up, current demand (relatively) shoots through the roof. This may be an ideal solution for somethign that spends 99% of its time in deep sleep - the little power generator has enough power to sustain sleep mode and very slowly charge a supercapacitor which then supplies the power during the active time. It's not suitable to power an electric motor hauling itself and a few pounds around on rails.
gregcare these intended as a replacement for a battery or as an additional device that continually recharges the battery so that a battery could be fully recharged overnight
Presumably some of this occurs in the surrounding blanket of normal diamond, but again they play coy on this. The part I get suspicious about is what happens over time to the N14 cumulatively produced; they probably have an answer but gloss it over in the cartoon.
Decay events are fixed by the relative half-life of the C14, which for most of the prospective source is relatively young. Getting much practical output will involve a considerable actual mass of C14 diamond, which poses an interesting risk if the composite fractures in service or is inadvertently burned (diamond having much the combustion characteristics of good anthracite). I do not have my rubber bible handy to see any uncommon decay modes in C14 or possible volunteer 'dopants' from other activated contaminants of their graphite, but those too might limit the practical size if one of these things as a primary power source; I think it likelier that it will be a continuous 'trickle charge' to a more conventional battery pack, like the engine in a tripower locomotive or the original Green Goat.
are these intended as a replacement for a battery or as an additional device that continually recharges the battery so that a battery could be fully recharged overnight?
I just spent a small fortune on a CMX track cleaning car! Now you tell me that I won't have to bother cleaning track in the future!
Seriously, I choose not to pronounce this sort of technological innovation as being a scam. I'd rather wait and see. As for the nuclear waste aspect, I have a collection of 'dead' smoke detectors that I believe are radioactive. I haven't been bothered to take them to the County Hazardous Waste Disposal, so they sit in my basement probably glowing in the dark and making the spiders grow twice as big!
Cheers!!
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
Lastspikemike,One new battery per decade may not sound like much for one electric toothbrush, but when one has 100 to 200 locomotives like myself, that's a different story. At say $20 per battery, that's $2000 to $4000 every ten years. Provided, of course, that they still make the same battery in 10 years.
rrebellWe need a billionare to get into model railroading.
Nuts! Guess I shouldn't have bought that last Accurail kit. Now I'm a little short.
https://tstage9.wixsite.com/nyc-modeling
Time...It marches on...without ever turning around to see if anyone is even keeping in step.
Well, as a startup, this sounds alot like Theranos. The tecnoligy works but not ready for prime time. Theranos was able to do some of what they said, but not all and not in the timeline that was said. They already have batterys that last 10 times Lithium. They could do a real working deadrail tomarrow but not without spending alot of money. We need a billionare to get into model railroading.
Ed, you probably have a copy of the paper on the plutonium-battery-electric locomotive, really the only "practical" '50s design (although the molten-salt design spun off from aircraft research and I think 'in play' for the Alco A-100 was certainly intriguing as long as you had Navy-disciplined engineers to watch the plant like a hawk...)
NVSRRNuclear powered train. Where have I heard that. Oh yeah. The 1950,s. Can't say it is not prototypical then.
AAR_atomic-train by Edmund, on Flickr
George Jetson would be proud.
Cheers, Ed
Nuclear powered train. Where have I heard that. Oh yeah. The 1950,s. Can't say it is not prototypical then.
for some reason most forget the power requirements of a train. Train weight, length, grades speed, sound or not. All factor to how long that small battery will last on a charge. It works in large scale cause the battery size and and the bank that can be built in a trailing car To supply the locomotives. Plus space. The numbers don't work the same in small scales due to the batteries themselves.
it I have said before. It could work on a switching layout. Removing the headache of electrical isolation and shorts. Slow speed and light loads. With a few designated charging rails. It will work nicely and reduce head aches
Dead rail isn't very useful in any larger small scale application
Shane
A pessimist sees a dark tunnel
An optimist sees the light at the end of the tunnel
A realist sees a frieght train
An engineer sees three idiots standing on the tracks stairing blankly in space
A 'battery' by definition is a power source composed of a number of cells (by analogy with a battery of guns, itself so named essentially because it can 'batter' objectives more effectively). It does not matter if the "cells" are electrochemical, or reversible storage batteries, or other technologies like TACs or older nuclear-electric batteries.
As noted, one well-understood trade off is speed of 'charge provision' (at given EMF or range thereof) vs. various kinds of associated non-electric emission (notably gamma EM, charged particles or neutron emission of various kinds, undesired heat or mechanical energy, or noxious chemicals as in the originally-promising Daniels or Page batteries to be used in railway traction. High specific power is going to result in higher such emissions, in the past usually to a point that managing them is less cost-effective than the power or power-density increase. One characteristic example was the plutonium-electric construction of the 1960s, which would happily scale to 'contemporary' locomotive packaging... but in an imperfect world, why would you want to?
Here you have 'game-changing' nuclear and electron-transfer physics that are much more ideal for nanoamp low-power electronics, but likely no more cost-effective or useful than TACs for use at 1:1 locomotive scale. Even for model deadrail the rate of recharge might be slow; as noted, use as primary power might begin to involve 'interesting' amounts of the radionuclides involved.
(I suspect the 'waste' refers to the anticipated cost of the nuclear material, not a judgment of its quality or potential unrefined danger. But I have been surprised by would-be 'nuclear engineers', particularly in the general realm of thorium-cycle scams, no few times...
hgodlingThis kind of technology is fairly common in spacecraft, but it is usually very small amounts of actual energy. Also you end up with a fairly radioactive battery. I'm not sure I want that in my train room.
I'm real sure I don't want that in my train room. Can't imagine it being generally popular with consumers, presuming they are able to overcome the regulatory issues. And cost will be a barrier for those willing to go there.
It's not that I don't respect them for trying, but my research tells me that the good things about nuclear energy are often way too optimistically portrayed and the bad things shoved under the table, err, layout.
I do like to have fun with these things, though, otherwise life is just too grim to contemplate sometimes. I have most of the nuclear fuel cycle represented on the layout, including the local nuke plant seen here while hosting some peculiar visitors...
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
Not free power.
It uses radioactive waste as the power source to charge capacitors.
The man-made diamond is the radioactive shield.
The amounts of electricity are tiny. However, this company claims they can put these together in amounts large enough to make batteries, much smaller and at lower cost than lithium batteries.
Again, notice I used the word 'claims'.
I guess we'll know in five or ten years if this is legit.
York1 John
So, if I decide to nuke my layout, can I do it with a Nuclear Diamond Battery?
Rich
Alton Junction
The Quest for cold fusion has been going on for decades. Free power forever is a dream, that will not occur in my lifetime.
Based on
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_battery
A single cell would only generate 0.000007 amps. However, it would last 7000 years. You could use a separate battery/capacitor to store power butfor itlarger surges, but it would take a very long time to fill up enough.
This kind of technology is fairly common in spacecraft, but it is usually very small amounts of actual energy. Also you end up with a fairly radioactive battery. I'm not sure I want that in my train room.
DoughlessA battery that charges itself sounds more like a power source than a storage device. I'm skeptical.
While I am always skeptical of miracle inventions, it makes for interesting reading. The articles claim it passed its first tests at Lawrence Livermore and Cambridge University.
And yes, it is a power source, along with capacitors to store the charges. I think they are using the term 'battery' because bunches of these small power sources can be linked into a battery.
Here is another article that explains a little more.
Don't shoot me, I'm just the messenger:
https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/25/self-charging-thousand-year-battery-startup-ndb-aces-key-tests-and-lands-first-beta-customers/
I'm no scientist but my basic conceptual understanding of batteries is that they are mearely a device for STORING energy. You have to generate the energy somewhere then put it into the battery to then use the energy at some other time or location.
A battery that charges itself sounds more like a power source than a storage device. I'm skeptical.
Batteries that can be recharged many times or hold their charge for longer periods without fractional dimunition of energy from the amount of energy put into it seems more doable.
- Douglas
That whole article smacks of a scam. Surprised they don't mention Tesla (as in Nikola, not the car company) since that seems to be an absolkute requirement for dodge energy technology. We WANT to believe this is real, but I have serious doubts about their claims.
Heck, if the wireless energy people are real - we wouldn't need batteries in the loco, just a controller. Direct radio control that also provides the power. Dead rail AND no batteries that need to be recharged. Just a pipe dream though.
railandsailhttps://newatlas.com/energy/nano-diamond-self-charging-batteries-ndb/
California company NDB says its nano-diamond batteries will absolutely upend the energy equation, acting like tiny nuclear generators.
The heart of each cell is a small piece of recycled nuclear waste.
If the nano diamond technology is actually realized, model railroading will be a minor issue.
This technology, if realized, would change the world's energy system. Just imagine batteries that recharge themselves, with no external energy source. Batteries that recharge hundreds of thousands of times with no energy drop-off.
Sounds like pie-in-the-sky, but at one time, so did almost everything we use today.
From the man with the permanent left index finger and pinkie hovered over Ctrl+V...I guess I'll warm up the dead horse for the eventual beating...
The quest for deadrail continues.
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
I know this subject has come up on the forum on several occasions, but I never paid much attention to it, nor do I recall how the subject conversation was titled. .....the idea that we could have battery powered model trains, free from track power.
I was reading my mail today, and this item caught my attention,
https://newatlas.com/energy/nano-diamond-self-charging-batteries-ndb/
To create a battery cell, several layers of this nano-diamond material are stacked up and stored with a tiny integrated circuit board and a small supercapacitor to collect, store and instantly distribute the charge. NDB says it'll conform to any shape or standard, including AA, AAA, 18650, 2170 or all manner of custom sizes. In a consumer electronics application, NDB's Neel Naicker gives us an example of just how different these devices would be: "Think of it in an iPhone. With the same size battery, it would charge your battery from zero to full, five times an hour. Imagine that. Imagine a world where you wouldn't have to charge your battery at all for the day. Now imagine for the week, for the month… How about for decades? That's what we're able to do with this technology."
To create a battery cell, several layers of this nano-diamond material are stacked up and stored with a tiny integrated circuit board and a small supercapacitor to collect, store and instantly distribute the charge. NDB says it'll conform to any shape or standard, including AA, AAA, 18650, 2170 or all manner of custom sizes.
In a consumer electronics application, NDB's Neel Naicker gives us an example of just how different these devices would be: "Think of it in an iPhone. With the same size battery, it would charge your battery from zero to full, five times an hour. Imagine that. Imagine a world where you wouldn't have to charge your battery at all for the day. Now imagine for the week, for the month… How about for decades? That's what we're able to do with this technology."
Brian
My Layout Plan
Interesting new Plan Consideration