Worldwide race to make better batteries

It is nice to see that the United State Government, in general, realizes that a profound and far reaching technology needs to be addressed for our national and economic security and that it is openly talked about rather then being of the often classified nature of revolutionary technology programs. Some such programs with a great degree of classification are the DOE/Naval Reactor projects which have and continue to produce excellent nuclear powered submarines for the U.S. Navy, the development of the Advanced Tactical Fighter plane, the B2 Stealth Bomber, and others.

However, the desired high mass specific energy storage density batteries commensurate with running cars for 250 miles between charges, may, if coupled industrially with solar and wind powered electrical energy generating stations, end up being just as important for our national security if not more so, then the major military R&D efforts such as the one I mentioned above.

It is interesting to consider just how far we could go in storing electrochemical energy within the paradigms of 20th/Early 21st century physics. Take for instance the hydrogen atom which has a lower mass than all of the other elements, and the element Flourine, which is the most electronegative of elements. If some sort of stable batterg technology could be developed using these two elements, a hard challenge since ordinarilly, if liquid hydrogen and liquid flourine combine, the result is a more exothermic reaction than the combustion of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, then perhaps battery packs could be designed to permit as much as a few thousand miles on a single charge according to some researchers in this field as of a couple of decades ago. Obviously, this never came to fruition. However, such energy storage density would permit electric helicopters, electric propeller driven aircraft, electric tractor trailors, electric buses; and for the military, electric powered gunships, long duration electromagnetic rail gun tanks, etc., thus revolutionizing to an unprecedented degree our wheeled vehicles and airtravel industry.

Applications of such long endurance batteries would be excellent for cell phones, laptop and note book computers, household emergency energy capacity incase the utility grid gets wacked by warfare, terrorism, or by natural causes, and perhaps among the most fun of all for a person like me who a few years ago bought a 10 million candle power hand held spot light, long endurance very powerful hand held spotlights and flashlights.

Could we go even further beyond this seemingly Hydrogen Flourine upper limit to electrochemical energy storage density in the form of any future type of galvanic batteries? Who knows! Some exotic yet to be developed chemistry might permit the above 3,000 miles per charge to be bested by a factor of a few. One possibility is that some breakthrough in electrical energy charged capacitors might work for this purpose although the best currently available charged capacitors, I believe, have a significantly lower mass specific energy density than even a typical Duracell brand D size battery sold in department stores.

I think the battery physicists and engineers are going to have a lot of fun in the rush to build ever higher mass specific energy storage density batteries. Eventhough I am far from an expert on batteries, the whole endeavor sounds like enough fun to the extent that I might be tempted to jump in.