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Scientists say new material can triple lithium-ion battery energy density

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Re: Scientists say new material can triple lithium-ion battery energy density

#71

Post by gregpilling »

ksec wrote: post #69
givinguflac wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could say the same about lithium :).

When was the last time you read about a Car carrying tank of fuel sudden burst into frame? When was the last time you read about battery explosion?

U.S. fire departments responded to an estimated average of 152,300 automobile fires per year in 2006-2010. These fires caused an average of 209 civilian deaths, 764 civilian injuries, and $536 million in direct property damage.

Facts and Figures

Automobile fires were involved in 10% of reported U.S. fires, 6% of U.S. fire deaths. On average, 17 automobile fires were reported per hour. These fires killed an average of four people every week. Mechanical or electrical failures or malfunctions were factors in roughly two-thirds of the automobile fires. Collisions and overturns were factors in only 4% of highway vehicle fires, but these incidents accounted for three of every five (60%) automobile fire deaths. Only 2% of automobile fires began in fuel tanks or fuel lines, but these incidents caused 15% of the automobile fire deaths. https://www.nfpa.org/Public-Education/By-topic/Property-type...

Re: Scientists say new material can triple lithium-ion battery energy density

#72

Post by cutler »

Is it just me or have we been fed stories about potential improvements in battery life for over a decade now with no real improvements? There seems to be a vortex out in space where all these promises about CPU and battery improvements somehow get swallowed up. Take graphene, for example. Discovered in 2004, it was touted as something which was going to change the world and replace silicon in CPU production. Yet a recent article (https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/what-is-graphene-and...) concluded: "Unfortunately, this is all theoretical. Current graphene cells are not yet up to par with silicon cells".

Re: Scientists say new material can triple lithium-ion battery energy density

#73

Post by zimablue »

taneq wrote: post #57
linsomniac wrote: post #33

If even half of these amazing battery technologies had come true, my car would be driven by a D cell battery. But I'm ok that it hasn't, because I once heard a battery chemistry guy say that "the higher capacity a battery is the more it resembles a bomb." I can't find the reference any more, but with all the Samsungs and Teslas catching fire, it rings true.

> the higher capacity a battery is the more it resembles a bomb A battery is a package containing the reagents necessary for a highly energetic reaction. A bomb is a package containing the reagents necessary for a highly energetic reaction. A high-capacity battery is effectively a bomb, pretty much by definition.

This sounds reasonable but I think it's actually pretty silly. In physics everything is at some high energy level rolling doesn't to some lower state. Your body has tons of energy. If we threw you into the right sort of fusion reactor or dropped you down a giant well you'd release massive amounts of energy.

It's not about "high energy" "low energy" or even "by definition an explosive" it's about how likely and favorable the pathway to releasing that energy in a bad way is. Just because you can release it slowly doesn't mean you can release it quickly. Some radioactive materials have lots of energy and a long Half-Life, try making a bomb out of them. It is not a simple question it's a lot of chemistry physics and engineering to answer.

Re: Scientists say new material can triple lithium-ion battery energy density

#74

Post by the8472 »

slavik81 wrote: post #62
inteleng wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to see someone fusing water at sea level.

The oxygen would be the hard part. You'd want a temperature of about 2 billion degrees Kelvin and have it compressed to a density of about 4 million kg/ml. That's a lot of activation energy, but it takes money to make money. Err, takes energy to make energy.

> activation energy

Which was the very point of my example.

Re: Scientists say new material can triple lithium-ion battery energy density

#75

Post by princekolt »

cutler wrote: post #72

Is it just me or have we been fed stories about potential improvements in battery life for over a decade now with no real improvements? There seems to be a vortex out in space where all these promises about CPU and battery improvements somehow get swallowed up. Take graphene, for example. Discovered in 2004, it was touted as something which was going to change the world and replace silicon in CPU production. Yet a re…

Another thing to keep in mind: It makes no difference if battery capacity grows but power consumption goes up as well. When you have hungry apps (say, Chrome) hogging resources with no regard to the user's device, there is little to be gained from having denser batteries.

Re: Scientists say new material can triple lithium-ion battery energy density

#76

Post by mastax »

cutler wrote: post #72

Is it just me or have we been fed stories about potential improvements in battery life for over a decade now with no real improvements? There seems to be a vortex out in space where all these promises about CPU and battery improvements somehow get swallowed up. Take graphene, for example. Discovered in 2004, it was touted as something which was going to change the world and replace silicon in CPU production. Yet a re…

Lithium-ion batteries have been slowly improving over the last 30 years. Every year they get a little cheaper, a little higher capacity, a little more reliable, a little higher discharge, over a few more charge cycles.

> In 1994, the cost to manufacture Li-ion in the 18650 cylindrical cell was over US$10 and the capacity was 1,100mAh. In 2001, the price dropped to below $3 while the capacity rose to 1,900mAh. Today, high energy-dense 18650 cells deliver over 3,000mAh and the costs are dropping.

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/lithium_based_bat...

It's not the revolution we may want, but it is the successful application of battery research.

Re: Scientists say new material can triple lithium-ion battery energy density

#77

Post by mastax »

gregpilling wrote: post #71
ksec wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When was the last time you read about a Car carrying tank of fuel sudden burst into frame? When was the last time you read about battery explosion?

U.S. fire departments responded to an estimated average of 152,300 automobile fires per year in 2006-2010. These fires caused an average of 209 civilian deaths, 764 civilian injuries, and $536 million in direct property damage. Facts and Figures Automobile fires were involved in 10% of reported U.S. fires, 6% of U.S. fire deaths. On average, 17 automobile fires were reported per hour. These fires killed an average of…

Thank you for being the only person willing to do research in these threads.

Re: Scientists say new material can triple lithium-ion battery energy density

#78

Post by neltnerb »

ksec wrote: post #68
phyller wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gasoline is not explosive, it requires oxygen to burn. We wouldn't allow normal passenger vehicles to drive around with big tanks of explosives.

Why hasn't anyone invest into synthetic petrol that is carbon neutral?

... like the DOE, ARPA, USDA, and NSF? They all are, I've personally worked on projects funded by these organizations to make carbon neutral petrol replacements. Heck, even the oil majors are funding that kind of work, they see the writing on the wall even if politicians play-act that the fossil fuel party will continue indefinitely.

Re: Scientists say new material can triple lithium-ion battery energy density

#79

Post by plaidfuji »

Animats wrote: post #13

Actual paper [1]. They don't have a battery yet. Just a "half-cell".[2] They have the cathode side, but not the anode side, apparently. This group has access to all the good toys. They're doing X-ray crystallography with a synchrotron beam line. They have a scanning tunneling microscope with a 3-axis nano-manipulator. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04476-2 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-cell

I believe in battery research a half cell is a perfectly acceptable test bed for quantifying cathode performance, given that the anode material is not the bottleneck in the device. Researchers shouldn't have to spend their time doing full-device optimization every time they want to demonstrate improvement in a material.

Re: Scientists say new material can triple lithium-ion battery energy density

#80

Post by plaidfuji »

I see the Silicon Valley mentality of "it's not news until the product ships" is pretty prevalent here. News flash: this is how R&D works on physical products. Most advancements are incremental. Some are larger than others, but are always built on years of other incremental advancements. This one appears to be larger than usual, so it's news. Your phone battery will continue to grow incrementally in energy density in order to run the increasingly bloated software shipped by the "true innovators". Life goes on.
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