20 thoughts on “A Battery Breakthrough?”

  1. Sort of an Aerogel-like arrangement out of metal, excellent.

    it would seem like there’s strong capacitor improvements lurking in that same regime also.

  2. Just how abundant is Lithium? If we start putting it in every device we own (from airplanes to cell phones), how does that effect production and supply? Do we become constrained, like the rare earths?

      1. Going from a few laptops in the West to every device and vehicle in the world (including China and India) would be a dramatic change in demand though. It could matter.

    2. To answer my own question: Bolivia, Chile, and China have the largest known reserves, by far, greater than all other nations combined. There is a very large amount of lithium in the world’s oceans, but at low concentrations.

      So at some price we could filter seawater for it, but probably not cheaply. Chile becomes the new Saudi Arabia.

      1. Brock,

        Oops. missed this post. Yes, Chile and Bolivia are set to do well from increased demand for Lithium. The problem is that Bolivia has already nationalize its Lithium industry and Chile is looking to do like wise.

        http://americasquarterly.org/node/4054

        Chile’s Lithium Reserves: The Nationalization-Privatization Battle

        October 22, 2012
        by Olivia Crellin

        So we will probably get an “OPEC” for Lithium if it takes off as expected.

        1. Basically, worse than OPEC. China can be trusted to keep their own Lithium supplies to themselves. They might sell finished products, but they will aggressively move up the value chain, just like they’re doing with rare earths. They might agree to sell us electric cars and jets with lithium batteries, but won’t sell the lithium.

          Which leaves Chile and Bolivia. No one else has the reserves to be the “swing producer”, so there are the only guys that matter. Given their historical and cultural ties, I’m sure they’ll be able to cooperate fairly well to control this market.

          1. “Given their historical and cultural ties, I’m sure they’ll be able to cooperate fairly well to control this market.”

            You mean , …historical ties like the war that deprived Bolivia of a sea-coast, and all the resources attendant thereon?

            Yes, there are Bolivians still bitter about that. If Chile’s reserves are in the Atacama Desert, it might well spark a revival of revaunchism in Bolivia that would make oligopolistic cooperation quite difficult. That would be good for markets.

      2. “To answer my own question: Bolivia, Chile, and China have the largest known reserves, by far, greater than all other nations combined.”

        Mm-mmm. Some have speculated this is one of the reasons we are still there.

  3. The article is a bit fuzzy on the difference between energy and power, and the university press release isn’t much better. But it is pretty clear that the actual energy density of the new batteries isn’t significantly greater than existing systems. Probably slightly less, as I read it, which isn’t surprising as they are using the same chemistry but optimizing for something that isn’t energy density.

    Since existing battery technologies are fairly efficient at the C/1 rate, the new technology will not make much difference in applications where you’re already planning to use the battery for more than an hour at a time. That’s not cellphones – yes, you can send a signal thirty times farther, but you’ll have a dead battery in about a minute if you do. Also, your phone will be on fire. Marginal benefits for electric cars or airplanes, particularly in high-usage fleet operations where it would at least cut down on recharging times.

    And it would actually make things worse for the 787; Boeing’s problem is not that Li-ion batteries can’t store enough energy, it’s that if you insult them they can release that energy at a dangerously fast rate. Here, that rate will be even faster, whether you want it to or not. Battery explosions rather than battery fires.

    1. it would be very useful for electric cars, or hybrid busses, trucks, trains.
      Being able to capture energy from braking is a big deal and then meter it back into starting is a big part of making these efficient.

  4. The energy density is actually a bit lower than current batteries according to the article. IBM is actually working on the energy density issue.

    The breakthrough is speed of charging, but perhaps there is a better solution?

    Instead of fast punctuated charging, how about continuous charging? Solar panels are one example, but could we do better? Perhaps Tesla should look a bit more into their namesake rather than building fast charging stations all around the country. All they’d need to do is build one, if it’s the right one.

    http://www.fastcompany.com/1128055/wireless-electricity-here-seriously

    http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/mass-transit/a-critical-look-at-wireless-power/0

    1. How do you bill wireless electricity? A BBC style receiver tax?

      On top of which, I don’t believe Tesla had the numbers straight (if any real numbers) about electricity transmission.

      1. How do you bill wireless electricity?

        It would require honesty from the receiver. Not likely, I know. If production were cheap enough (say by not including litigation costs) it might be considered a benefit to the public like a library (but without a card requirement. Anybody in range would benefit.)

        I don’t believe Tesla had the numbers straight…

        He didn’t need to, he was doing research. My links indicate others going in slightly different directions. Wireless transmission of power happens all the time. It’s called a transformer. The question is how much range can that be done at.

    1. By which you mean kerosene when burned in air that you don’t have to carry with you. If you include the air, you get a much smaller number – about 2.5 MJ/kg, IIRC – which is only slightly better than li-ion batteries. Carrying LOX instead of air is a bit of a tradeoff but it gives you a better number overall. Same with LH2/LOX, but by that point the tradeoff has stopped being academic.

  6. Um, electric airplanes are possible now. Look up Pipistrel, Yuneec, Electra Flyer etc.

    Plus, if i had a penny for every battery breakthrough announcement, i could .. probably buy a coffee or smth. In real world, energy density of lithium based chemistries in COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE cells improves by about 10% a year, with spikes in power density happening here and there.

    Everything “in the labs” is always about 5 years from commercialization.

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