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New lithium-ion battery design – 2,000x more powerful, recharges 1,000x faster

extremetech.com

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Re: New lithium-ion battery design – 2,000x more powerful, recharges 1,000x faster

#51

Post by lutusp »

jack-r-abbit wrote: post #3
lutusp wrote: post #2

This is a classic case of a submission title taking liberties with the meaning of the article it links. This submission's title: "New lithium-ion battery 2000 times more powerful, recharges 1000 times faster" The actual title: "New lithium-ion battery design that’s 2,000 times more powerful, recharges 1,000 times faster" The missing word is "design", a word that is crucial to the meaning of the article. The article d…

> So far, the researchers have used this tech to create a button-sized microbattery, and you can see in the graph below how well their battery compares to a conventional Sony CR1620 button cell. That sounds like a battery to me. The new design has actually been built and tested. The quote you pulled out refers to scaling it up to things like lasers and F1 cars. A button-sized battery sounds fine for a lot of electron…

> That sounds like a battery to me.

Not when the public thinks a battery is something you can buy for a reasonable price. This reminds me of the solar panel business, where the driving market issue is not cell efficiency, it's cell cost per watt. A panel that produces more watts per dollar will usually beat a panel that's more efficient at capturing the sun's energy.

Re: New lithium-ion battery design – 2,000x more powerful, recharges 1,000x faster

#52

Post by yoava »

The one thing they did not mention was the battery weight and size. The biggest barrier for electric cars and other battery uses is the ratio of energy to weight and size.

Today, this ratio enables about 70-100 miles travel for an electric car with a similar weight and size as a gasoline car.

will be interesting to follow this initiative.

Re: New lithium-ion battery design – 2,000x more powerful, recharges 1,000x faster

#53

Post by VLM »

icegreentea wrote: post #24
gabipurcaru wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electric cars?

Well... it's tricky. If you assume that current electric cars have the performance of that A123 battery from the graph, and then pick something in the middle of the spread of the colourful dots, you get a roughly 1 order decrease in energy density, and a 1 order increase in power density. So, taking the Model S as an example, you have a 300 mile range, and a charge time of like 45 minutes at a super charger. So... no…

Minor nitpick is charge time at a supercharger would remain 45 minutes. You'd need some kind of miracle superduper charger to deliver that kind of current. A cable that can handle that kind of current would be kind of unimaginable for the average civilian. It would resemble a telephone pole. Not the wires on the pole, but the pole itself.

A stereotypical thermodynamics class assignment was something along the lines of assume your 10 gallon gas tank is filled in a minute at the gas pump through a little half inch gas nozzle. Now calculate the thermal energy of that nozzle assuming perfect combustion in megawatts. Then given that the gas nozzle is about half an inch, look up what diameter copper wire would be required to transfer that kind of energy if it was electricity. The answer was pretty stunning.

Re: New lithium-ion battery design – 2,000x more powerful, recharges 1,000x faster

#54

Post by lutusp »

jack-r-abbit wrote: post #23
Someone wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building one in the lab likely does not give you the ability to build a million of them at a decent price in a factory. Yield probably is low, and the current process will likely be way too labour intensive.

True. But lutusp was shitting all over the submitter for dropping the almighty "design" word from the title and then claimed this is not an article about a battery but only about a design for one. That claim is wrong. It is more than a design... it is an actual battery. Maybe there is only one unit that exists. But that is still one more than a design. And if the tech proves sound but too labor intensive, your next t…

> But lutusp was shitting all over the submitter for dropping the almighty "design" word from the title and then claimed this is not an article about a battery but only about a design for one.

Yes, but guess what? That's true -- it's not a marketable product, it's a laboratory curiosity. That difference mustn't be dismissed. There are any number of research developments that never become products for reasons other than their theoretical properties.

> Isn't that how bleeding-edge innovation works?

Not exactly. If if were, a solar panel that converted a higher percentage of the sun's energy into electricity would beat a panel that produced more power per dollar. But in reality, it's the other way around.

Re: New lithium-ion battery design – 2,000x more powerful, recharges 1,000x faster

#55

Post by lutusp »

jack-r-abbit wrote: post #10
criley wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like they've developed a prototype, which is further than a design but also not a production model.

Agreed. But it is a functional battery more than it is "only a design"

Fair enough. Is a prototype flying car a design or a product? Can I get one -- not the design, the product?

Re: New lithium-ion battery design – 2,000x more powerful, recharges 1,000x faster

#56

Post by jack-r-abbit »

lutusp wrote: post #55
jack-r-abbit wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. But it is a functional battery more than it is "only a design"

Fair enough. Is a prototype flying car a design or a product? Can I get one -- not the design, the product?

Neither... it is a prototype. Somewhere between just a design and a product is a wide variety of other states. A single, physical item that actually functions as designed may not be a product yet (or ever) but it is leaps and bounds beyond "just a design." If "prototype" and "design" mean the same thing then a lot of people get that wrong everyday.

Re: New lithium-ion battery design – 2,000x more powerful, recharges 1,000x faster

#58

Post by talmand »

VLM wrote: post #53
icegreentea wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well... it's tricky. If you assume that current electric cars have the performance of that A123 battery from the graph, and then pick something in the middle of the spread of the colourful dots, you get a roughly 1 order decrease in energy density, and a 1 order increase in power density. So, taking the Model S as an example, you have a 300 mile range, and a charge time of like 45 minutes at a super charger. So... no…

Minor nitpick is charge time at a supercharger would remain 45 minutes. You'd need some kind of miracle superduper charger to deliver that kind of current. A cable that can handle that kind of current would be kind of unimaginable for the average civilian. It would resemble a telephone pole. Not the wires on the pole, but the pole itself. A stereotypical thermodynamics class assignment was something along the lines o…

For those of us that didn't study thermodynamics, what is the answer that's so stunning?

Re: New lithium-ion battery design – 2,000x more powerful, recharges 1,000x faster

#59

Post by lutusp »

talmand wrote: post #58
VLM wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minor nitpick is charge time at a supercharger would remain 45 minutes. You'd need some kind of miracle superduper charger to deliver that kind of current. A cable that can handle that kind of current would be kind of unimaginable for the average civilian. It would resemble a telephone pole. Not the wires on the pole, but the pole itself. A stereotypical thermodynamics class assignment was something along the lines o…

For those of us that didn't study thermodynamics, what is the answer that's so stunning?

The OP didn't give enough information to produce a specific answer. For a higher voltage and lower current (same power), the wire could be thinner with the same outcome. The reason electricity utilities string million-volt lines between cities is to minimize the heating losses in the conductors, not to impress the civilians.

It's the same reason electric car designs favor putting a lot of cells in series -- a high-voltage electric motor gets more of the power delivered by the batteries, less of it is wasted in the connecting wires. Also, in the car's charging circuit, the high voltage choice maximizes power transfer for a given connecting wire size.

Re: New lithium-ion battery design – 2,000x more powerful, recharges 1,000x faster

#60

Post by mbell »

wmf wrote: post #36
Florin_Andrei wrote: post #20

The title is completely misleading.

Yeah, it's literally correct if you understand the difference between power and energy but most people don't.

Including the author considering he is claiming that this would leed to smaller cell phone batteries...
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