Summary of Steve LeVine's The Powerhouse

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 Jeff Chamberlain, the head of the Argonne Lab, was extremely worried about Wan. He was a Chinese materials scientist and the head of the Department of Energy in Beijing, and he wanted to steal Chamberlain’s team’s breakthrough lithium-ion battery technology and bring it back to China.
#2 The Chinese were making huge advancements in electric car technology, and were planning on having a large-scale production of them by 2020.
#3 The global financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 had scared Americans, who were determined to create a new economy on a solid foundation rather than on financial, real estate, or dot-com bubbles. Europeans were also fearful of being left behind, and Asia’s export-driven economies wanted in on the action as well.
#4 China was dominating the market for lithium-ion batteries, but many countries were trying to catch up.

Sujets

• Energy
• Industrie

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 08 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669351375
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Steve LeVine's The Powerhouse
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Jeff Chamberlain, the head of the Argonne Lab, was extremely worried about Wan. He was a Chinese materials scientist and the head of the Department of Energy in Beijing, and he wanted to steal Chamberlain’s team’s breakthrough lithium-ion battery technology and bring it back to China.

#2

The Chinese were making huge advancements in electric car technology, and were planning on having a large-scale production of them by 2020.

#3

The global financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 had scared Americans, who were determined to create a new economy on a solid foundation rather than on financial, real estate, or dot-com bubbles. Europeans were also fearful of being left behind, and Asia’s export-driven economies wanted in on the action as well.

#4

China was dominating the market for lithium-ion batteries, but many countries were trying to catch up.

#5

The Department of Energy’s seventeen national laboratories are where many of the government’s scientific research takes place. Argonne, in Chicago, was one of the most respected because it had been set up by Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi.

#6

After World War II, the Manhattan Project sent many people to work at Stagg Field near Chicago. One of these people was Dieter Gruen, who had been dispatched to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to help with the production of uranium-235 for the bomb makers at Los Alamos.

#7

The government bought additional surrounding farmland. Argonne now covered 4,100 acres. To fill it in, workers planted about a million pine seedlings, which thrived and created a massive home for the growing herd of deer.

#8

At first, Dieter Gruen was assigned to a team building a nuclear submarine under the direction of Captain Hyman Rickover. He was tasked with figuring out how to eliminate hafnium from zirconium, which was needed in combination with uranium to fuel the subs.

#9

At the Argonne lab, scientists worked regular hours, and it seemed like everyone was envious of the young scientists who had access to advanced equipment.

#10

At times, the 1960s seemed aimed at Argonne. The lab director noticed that the scientists were becoming discouraged, and he decided to make the lab more inviting. He added lights in the public areas, and had a jazz and blues concert series.

#11

Alessandro Volta invented the first battery in 1799. It was a feat rooted in a debate with Luigi Galvani, who claimed that frogs possessed an internal store of electricity. Volta theorized that the electricity observed by Galvani originated in metals used in the experiment.

#12

In the early part of the twentieth century, electric cars powered by lead-acid batteries seemed superior to rivals featuring the gasoline-powered internal combustion engine. But a series of inventions, including the electric starter, gave the advantage to the internal combustion engine propelled by gasoline and contained explosions rather than a flow of electricity.

#13

Batteries were no longer boring after the invention of the lithium battery. Everything changed when John Goodenough, a scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, outdid everyone by inventing almost every major battery advancement.

#14

John Goodenough was dyslexic, which made it difficult for him to read and understand his lessons at Groton School. He was eventually sent to boarding school, where he had little contact with his parents. He went on to thrive at Yale, where he received his doctorate in mathematics.

#15

Goodenough was not a chemist, but he was chosen to teach and manage the inorganic chemistry lab at Oxford University. He was underqualified for the position on paper, but he was lucky two times.

#16

Goodenough was a tough professor. He was on the hunt for big advances in solid state chemistry, a field known for creating the kinds of materials that go commercial. He found that oxides could be charged and discharged at a higher voltage than Whittingham’s creation, and thus produce more energy.

#17

In 1980, four years after Goodenough arrived at Oxford, lithium-cobalt-oxide was a breakthrough even bigger than Ford’s sodium-sulfur configuration. It was the first lithium-ion cathode with the capacity to power both compact and relatively large devices, which made it far superior to anything on the market.

#18

The Comrades Marathon is a 28-mile race from Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, to the port city of Durban. It is the first time that Mike Thackeray ran the race, in 1968, and he finished in ten hours and three minutes. He was determined to do better, and he did, finishing fourth in 1976 with a time of 6:32.

#19

The iron oxide battery had the potential to be much more powerful and cheaper than the lithium-cobalt-oxide battery. It was also much easier to work with, as it could be shuttled in and out of a cathode at room temperature.

#20

Thackeray was nervous about attending Oxford, because he knew that the people he met there must have repulsive thoughts about him and his family. But Goodenough did not hold Thackeray or his family personally responsible for the sins of their country.

#21

Thackeray had shown that intercalation of lithium occurred at room temperature when combined with iron oxide.