Live data from Hacker News

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

extremetech.com

71–80 of 89 posts

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

#71
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could electric car battery use a dual type battery pack to optimize charging and range?

The Tesla Model S already uses 7000 individual battery cells. This is how it's able to charge as quickly as it does with the supercharger. The main limitation of household charging is lack of power.

That isn't necessarily true. Them using small batteries to make a larger battery is what allows them to make their car sized batteries cheaper, since the smaller sized batteries are already mass produced for things like laptops. For charging time it depends on how those batteries are connected.

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

#72

It discharges/charges much faster, that is all about the new battery. Discharging fast make it more possible to catch fire. Overall, it seems not very useful for smartphones.

But nowhere does this article even talk about using this for smartphones or in any form of application.

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

#73
post #72

It discharges/charges much faster, that is all about the new battery. Discharging fast make it more possible to catch fire. Overall, it seems not very useful for smartphones.

But nowhere does this article even talk about using this for smartphones or in any form of application.

"In real-world use, this tech will probably be used to equip consumer devices with batteries that are much smaller and lighter — imagine a smartphone with a battery the thickness of a credit card, which can be recharged in a few seconds."

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

#74

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…

Imagine shorting this capacitor.

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

#75
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

10 gal = 37.85L 37.85L x 36MJ/L = 1,362 MJ in the tank. 1,362 MJ / 60s = 22MJ/s from the hose. J/s is Watts, so that's 22 megawatts. A cable that carried 200A at 110KV would do it. I think 000 gauge would handle 200A, it's just under 11mm in diameter.

Agreed, stunning it is that so common and reasonably safe a thing as a self-serve gas pump is a 22 MW chemical energy delivery system!

Some reflections:

* Perhaps an EV might be 10x as efficient with its input energy as a gasoline powered car. Perhaps 220 KW would do.

* Perhaps a robotically mobile, rather than a counterweighted, manually lifted and connected cable is in order. The present day robotic car wash design where the car stays still while the motile, rotating washing machinery moves around it comes to mind.

* Electrical connectors give me more trouble than wires and cables. A replaceable, quick-disconnect connector capable of 20KA seems more of a design challenge than the cables that would go with it.

* High voltage insulation and wiring is "easier" than high current conductance (low resistance) wiring, for example: Common engineering practice with 30-volt solar panels is to wire them in series so that the total string voltage is 300 to 600 VDC at 8 Amps, rather than in parallel so that the current would be 80 to 160 Amps at 30 Volts. Air is a lousy and unsafe insulator, but there are good liquid insulators which could easily, temporarily fill a two-pole, ground-surround high-voltage connector (displacing the air) before it's allowed to be electrically energized and ramped up to a high voltage. Precise ground fault current detection could make it safe from fault currents (i.e. shocks & shorts) in the milliamp range even as the cable carries hundreds or thousands of Amps. But any HV supply requires up-conversion at the station and down-conversion in the EV; whilst these can be 95% efficient, the effect of each conversion inefficiency is multiplicative, and they add weight.

* Then there's the charging station itself. If it has eight charging stations at, say 250 KW each, that's 2 MW draw from the utility (or an underground group of batteries recharged at a lower rate from utility power?) when all stations are charging cars. Not trivial; just the 500 KVA (call it 500 KW for discussion purposes) utility distribution transformer outside building where I work is the size of four refrigerators, not including its switchgear, all of which is enclosed by a 20 foot tall fence surrounding about 200 sq feet. Multiply that by four in volume to get 2 MW supply required from the utility.

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

#76
post #59
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-vo…

Once you start getting into the thousands of volts, it becomes very dangerous. That stuff will arc through the air and kill you. There is a reason why we use a hundred or two volts in consumer appliances.

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

#77
post #67
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You still need to convert this high supply voltage to a lower voltage to match the cell voltage for charging. No, instead you charge the cells in series. That delivers the same power while avoiding the problem of having to produce overly high currents. > The currents involved mean this converter is still likely to dissipate a lot of heat, even if it is extremely efficient. Yes, but there are ways to minimize this l…

By 'cell' I meant the overall pack, not the individual unit within the pack. From your link: "A full recharge of the battery system requires 3½ hours using the High Power Connector which supplies 70 amp, 240 volt electricity" Multiply that current by 10-100 to 'charge it faster' and you have a huge problem with thermal dissipation, not to mention using truly massive cables.

> Multiply that current by 10-100 to 'charge it faster' ...

No, that can't be done without damaging the batteries. A fast charge in this context means multiplying the default charging current by roughly three, not 10, and certainly not 100.

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

#78

It discharges/charges much faster, that is all about the new battery. Discharging fast make it more possible to catch fire. Overall, it seems not very useful for smartphones.

Even if it doesn't catch on fire, discharging faster isn't what I want for my phones battery.

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

#79
post #76
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-vo…

Once you start getting into the thousands of volts, it becomes very dangerous. That stuff will arc through the air and kill you. There is a reason why we use a hundred or two volts in consumer appliances.

Not necessarily. If the connection would be unmanaged, as having the power available for drainage all the time, then you're right! ...but we have computers and all kind of complex systems now. The cable may be "empty" of that high voltage current until the cable is safely plugged in and ready. After plugging, before unleashing energy, the car's system and the power source's system may first communicate and verify their sensors if everything's ready to go, like isolation and other things. The high voltage risk and its management it's an engineering solvable problem.

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

#80
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electric cars?

Weight, Energy density. and cost are what's most important for general Electric car energy storage. So if this cost's more or weights significantly more it's next to useless for that. However, they might have some use as part of a more efficient regenerative breaking system. PS: As to faster charging, issues are going to Limit that. A 99% efficient battery charging 100x as fast as Li-Ion is going to dump a lot of hea…

About charging speed, you're invoking another problem, that of (over)heating. That however, deserves a separate context of its own to be addressed in. I think it's safe to assume that a lot of efficiency can be safely salvaged from that 100x improvement.
Post reply on HN