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Australia first to test new lithium-sulphur batteries

newscientist.com

11–20 of 56 posts

Re: Australia first to test new lithium-sulphur batteries

#11

Four decisions to make on cookies before being able to read the article? Are you trying to break the internet?

I'd recommend using using "I don't care about cookies" and "Cookiebro" to restore your sanity. Basically you want to automatically accept all cookies, say yes to all cookie banners, then remove all cookies when you close the browser except the ones you explicitly want to keep (for staying logged into certain sites). Those two firefox extensions facilitate that.

I'm using just uBlock Origin and since I haven't seen any cookie dialog I assume it did the job just fine. YMMV.

Re: Australia first to test new lithium-sulphur batteries

#13

Four decisions to make on cookies before being able to read the article? Are you trying to break the internet?

I'd recommend using using "I don't care about cookies" and "Cookiebro" to restore your sanity. Basically you want to automatically accept all cookies, say yes to all cookie banners, then remove all cookies when you close the browser except the ones you explicitly want to keep (for staying logged into certain sites). Those two firefox extensions facilitate that.

> Basically you want to automatically accept all cookies

I don't.

Re: Australia first to test new lithium-sulphur batteries

#15

Lithium-Sulphur has high energy per kilogram which makes it good for transportation. Also high energy per dollar to manufacture which makes it good for grid storage (where weight and size don't matter too much, but cost does). At the nominal rate of 750 amp hours per kilogram for lithium-Sulphur is well above normal lithium-ion batteries. But compared to gasoline, it raises the bar from 1% vs gas, to 2%. Do I have th…

What makes electric cars viable isn't that batteries have anywhere near the energy density of gasoline, it's that if you use them, you get to replace half a ton of engine, transmission, alternator, fuel pump, emissions and exhaust with a This naturally makes battery improvements a huge win. If you double power density you can cut the weight of the battery by more than half for the same range, since not only do you get the same power from a lighter battery, now the car is lighter and requires less energy to accelerate.

Re: Australia first to test new lithium-sulphur batteries

#16
post #14

Sion Power has been working on this technology "since 1989". https://sionpower.com/about/ It still only lasts a couple of hundred charge cycles before wearing out: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/1/eaay2757 "The cells are stable for more than 200 cycles..."

200 charge cycles at 4x the storage = 800 lithium ion charge cycles. That’s easily competitive. Put another way if your getting 300 miles of range a current EV that’s 300 x4 x200 = 240,000 miles.

Re: Australia first to test new lithium-sulphur batteries

#17
post #16
post #14

Sion Power has been working on this technology "since 1989". https://sionpower.com/about/ It still only lasts a couple of hundred charge cycles before wearing out: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/1/eaay2757 "The cells are stable for more than 200 cycles..."

200 charge cycles at 4x the storage = 800 lithium ion charge cycles. That’s easily competitive. Put another way if your getting 300 miles of range a current EV that’s 300 x4 x200 = 240,000 miles.

Only if you change your habits to maximize the lifetime of the batteries. For example avoid charging the car every night and instead charge it for a few nights after it's completely empty.

Re: Australia first to test new lithium-sulphur batteries

#18
I've read dozens of papers on Li-S over the years because of how much incredible potential the technology seems to have. The "dirty little secret" seems to be not the charge cycles (which are less than, but similar to, other batteries), but the large amount of electrolyte required, which reduces the effective energy density of the battery. There are all sorts of papers reporting high-capacity and durable cathodes but fewer that address the electrolyte problem, so I'm curious to see what their plan for that is.

A few papers about the electrolyte problem are e.g.:

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acscentsci.7b00123

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/adma.2017059...

Re: Australia first to test new lithium-sulphur batteries

#19

Lithium-Sulphur has high energy per kilogram which makes it good for transportation. Also high energy per dollar to manufacture which makes it good for grid storage (where weight and size don't matter too much, but cost does). At the nominal rate of 750 amp hours per kilogram for lithium-Sulphur is well above normal lithium-ion batteries. But compared to gasoline, it raises the bar from 1% vs gas, to 2%. Do I have th…

What makes electric cars viable isn't that batteries have anywhere near the energy density of gasoline, it's that if you use them, you get to replace half a ton of engine, transmission, alternator, fuel pump, emissions and exhaust with a This naturally makes battery improvements a huge win. If you double power density you can cut the weight of the battery by more than half for the same range, since not only do you ge…

That's a good point, I wonder what the adjusted energy density calculation compared to gas is when considering the amount of weight removed. Something like this:

new weight for energy density calculation = (total battery weight) - (ICE component weight) + (electric motor weight)

Re: Australia first to test new lithium-sulphur batteries

#20
post #12

Am I correct in assuming that a four-fold capacity in electric vehicles is coming? That will likely decimate oil dependency.

> That will likely decimate oil dependency

Until subsidies are increased...

Pet peeve of mine is how big business like to champion capitalism, but when they start failing they no longer like those rules and want government help to stay relevant and afloat.

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