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A Glass Battery That Keeps Getting Better?

spectrum.ieee.org

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Re: A Glass Battery That Keeps Getting Better?

#11

Post by zamalek »

rconti wrote: post #8
srfilipek wrote: post #5

> thermodynamics might seem to demand that a battery only deteriorates over many charge-discharge cycles. Well that's just nonsense. Any armchair "physicist" claiming that entropy must decrease over time is completely ignoring the fact that the battery is getting energy from an outside source every time it's charged.

I almost feel like this is a straw man to make this controversial. I don't see why anyone, even a layman, would say this.

> even a layman

Agreed. As far as I remember, the chemical batteries in phones circa 2005 behaved like this: you'd get gradually improving battery life over the first few cycles and then start to experience normal battery deterioration.

So long as nature is paid back its entropy in full it seems to be happy.

Re: A Glass Battery That Keeps Getting Better?

#12

Post by ummonk »

klyrs wrote: post #10

Headline is misleading. The battery has a brief burn-in period where it gets better. > They also published a graph that showed an increase in capacity over more than 300 charge-discharge cycles. (This increase, however, pales in comparison to the cell's at least 23,000-cycle lifespan.) And once they dig into details, the "apparent increase of entropy" is further exposed as bait. Sounds pretty credible, and not contro…

Right, nothing surprising about having a break-in period.

Re: A Glass Battery That Keeps Getting Better?

#13

Post by Darkphibre »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #4

Lighter weight and cheaper. So both for transportation AND grid storage? A good direction.

> “The BMS is to control temperatures,” she says. “In our case, we don’t have to have that.” In fact, she adds, up to a point, rising temperatures only increase the electrolyte’s performance.

No need for the stainless steel bunkers to isolate cells. This IS an important breakthrough (if verified).

Re: A Glass Battery That Keeps Getting Better?

#14

Post by stcredzero »

rconti wrote: post #8
srfilipek wrote: post #5

> thermodynamics might seem to demand that a battery only deteriorates over many charge-discharge cycles. Well that's just nonsense. Any armchair "physicist" claiming that entropy must decrease over time is completely ignoring the fact that the battery is getting energy from an outside source every time it's charged.

I almost feel like this is a straw man to make this controversial. I don't see why anyone, even a layman, would say this.

A false "entropy of matter natural law" argument used to be forwarded by "evolution debunkers." Richard Dawkins debunked this fake natural law with a thought exercise involving an hourglass with water in one chamber and salt in the other. You can tilt the hourglass to mix the salt and water in one chamber, but if you sit the device in the sun, such that the sun shines on the full chamber, you will eventually see the hourglass return to a state where water is in one chamber and salt is in the other.

Re: A Glass Battery That Keeps Getting Better?

#15

Post by gnode »

This sounds similar to the concept of self-healing materials. Such materials aren't necessarily at full health (optimal structure) following manufacture, so could expect to see improvements through use.

Some materials and devices also benefit from being broken-in; where properties which impede utility are degraded more rapidly than properties which positively contribute to it.

Re: A Glass Battery That Keeps Getting Better?

#16

Post by phkahler »

Darkphibre wrote: post #13
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #4

Lighter weight and cheaper. So both for transportation AND grid storage? A good direction.

> “The BMS is to control temperatures,” she says. “In our case, we don’t have to have that.” In fact, she adds, up to a point, rising temperatures only increase the electrolyte’s performance. No need for the stainless steel bunkers to isolate cells. This IS an important breakthrough (if verified).

BMS Is also to balance charge in a string of cells. Also, I thought this material was actually heavier per kWh the last time it showed up here.

Re: A Glass Battery That Keeps Getting Better?

#17

Post by wlesieutre »

The really important bit, comparison to lithium ion:

>She did say that large battery banks that might be spun off from this research stand to not only have higher capacity, but also be substantially lighter than lithium ions. Although, she adds, perhaps the greatest weight savings will come not from comparing one battery cell's mass with another. “The biggest difference would be that you don’t have to have the same stainless steel bunkers in each of the cells,” she says.

Not flammable is a big deal in battery tech. We try to pack more and more energy into smaller and smaller cells, so continuing to improve the capacity makes inadvertently releasing all that energy even more dangerous.

Here's another cool project working on that problem with a solid polymer electrolyte. Video shows it continuing to provide power while being sliced into pieces with scissors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9-cNNYb1Ik

Re: A Glass Battery That Keeps Getting Better?

#19

Post by jascii »

phkahler wrote: post #16
Darkphibre wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “The BMS is to control temperatures,” she says. “In our case, we don’t have to have that.” In fact, she adds, up to a point, rising temperatures only increase the electrolyte’s performance. No need for the stainless steel bunkers to isolate cells. This IS an important breakthrough (if verified).

BMS Is also to balance charge in a string of cells. Also, I thought this material was actually heavier per kWh the last time it showed up here.

The two are inter-related, the unbalance in Li-Ion packs is largely caused by the negative temperature coefficient of the cell.
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