It helps to simplify the problem into a more fundamental thing instead of focusing specifically on batteries.
Essentially, all practical energy storage can be thought of as putting some sort of strain on chemical bonds. That is, you're taking things away from a low-energy configuration to a high-energy configuration and back to store and retrieve the energy.
The insightful part is that all energy storage systems (aside from Nuclear) are fundamentally this! They're all made of matter, and they all "strain" chemical bonds of one type or another.
People think of "batteries" as something special, but they're fundamentally the same as explosives, compressed gas cylinder, superconducting magnetic storage, flywheels, or whatever.
All of them are limited by chemical bond strengths and start going BOOM if you push them too far.
Explosives... explode if the stored chemical potential energy is too great. A lot of research goes into finding novel compounds that approach such limits as close as possible without actually going bang.
Compressed gas cylinders can store energy, but explode when the pressure ruptures the walls -- which have a tensile strength dependent on the chemical bonds of the material used to make them.
Magnetic storage is an exotic approach, but used in MRIs and some power stations. The ultimate storage limit is that strong magnetic fields produce significant forces that can rip even steel apart.
Flyweels are typically made of materials with high tensile strengths to allow them to be spun up to higher RPMs. Again, the tensile strength depends on the internal chemical bonds of the material.
In all cases, the upper limit is ultimately bounded by the available chemical bond strengths of the known elements, one way or another.
There are only very few ways past this limit. Anti-matter storage is probably the most "practical" energy storage method currently known that significantly exceeds chemical bond strength limits.
In practice, separating chemicals helps a lot. Liquid fuels can store much more energy than explosives. People think a stick of TNT has a lot of energy, but a candle the same size releases vastly more when it burns. There are grid-scale battery systems that rely on this approach, using tanks of chemicals to keep things apart.
Still though, the maximum energy you can recover from a fuel and an oxidizer is limited by the difference in chemical bond strengths between the reagents and the end product. I'm not quite sure what the maximum possible energy release is, but chances are that it's whatever the Caesium-Fluorine reaction produces, or close to it.
PS: This is why I chuckle when people are shocked to hear about exploding phone batteries. Well... duh. That's literally what a "high capacity battery is", it's a chemical system that's packed full of energy. Literally ready to explode, held back from the brink only through careful arrangement of its constituent parts.
Essentially, all practical energy storage can be thought of as putting some sort of strain on chemical bonds. That is, you're taking things away from a low-energy configuration to a high-energy configuration and back to store and retrieve the energy.
The insightful part is that all energy storage systems (aside from Nuclear) are fundamentally this! They're all made of matter, and they all "strain" chemical bonds of one type or another.
People think of "batteries" as something special, but they're fundamentally the same as explosives, compressed gas cylinder, superconducting magnetic storage, flywheels, or whatever.
All of them are limited by chemical bond strengths and start going BOOM if you push them too far.
Explosives... explode if the stored chemical potential energy is too great. A lot of research goes into finding novel compounds that approach such limits as close as possible without actually going bang.
Compressed gas cylinders can store energy, but explode when the pressure ruptures the walls -- which have a tensile strength dependent on the chemical bonds of the material used to make them.
Magnetic storage is an exotic approach, but used in MRIs and some power stations. The ultimate storage limit is that strong magnetic fields produce significant forces that can rip even steel apart.
Flyweels are typically made of materials with high tensile strengths to allow them to be spun up to higher RPMs. Again, the tensile strength depends on the internal chemical bonds of the material.
In all cases, the upper limit is ultimately bounded by the available chemical bond strengths of the known elements, one way or another.
There are only very few ways past this limit. Anti-matter storage is probably the most "practical" energy storage method currently known that significantly exceeds chemical bond strength limits.
In practice, separating chemicals helps a lot. Liquid fuels can store much more energy than explosives. People think a stick of TNT has a lot of energy, but a candle the same size releases vastly more when it burns. There are grid-scale battery systems that rely on this approach, using tanks of chemicals to keep things apart.
Still though, the maximum energy you can recover from a fuel and an oxidizer is limited by the difference in chemical bond strengths between the reagents and the end product. I'm not quite sure what the maximum possible energy release is, but chances are that it's whatever the Caesium-Fluorine reaction produces, or close to it.
PS: This is why I chuckle when people are shocked to hear about exploding phone batteries. Well... duh. That's literally what a "high capacity battery is", it's a chemical system that's packed full of energy. Literally ready to explode, held back from the brink only through careful arrangement of its constituent parts.