Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stanford researchers make rechargeable batteries that store 6x more charge

news.stanford.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 67 posts

Re: Stanford researchers make rechargeable batteries that store 6x more charge

#21

Post by molticrystal »

While it was interesting at first, by peppering inaccuracies or at best oversimplifications, it makes me doubt the veracity of the rest of the content. For example:

>Non-rechargeable batteries have no such luck. Once drained, their chemistry cannot be restored.

Rechargeable batteries have limited cycles due to problems, mainly solidification or breakdown of electrolytes that prevent restoration, but there are others like mechanical effects.

Most "Non-rechargeable batteries" can actually be restored as well in the same sense of those labeled as rechargeable ones, but usually have a much lower cycle count due to these effects. For example can usually get a few cycles from your alkaline batteries, as long as you are trickle charging them since they don't usually have good venting.

Re: Stanford researchers make rechargeable batteries that store 6x more charge

#23

Post by nine_k »

mianos wrote: post #17
ricardobeat wrote: post #14

If Lithium is dangerous, Chlorine is taking it up a notch. As far as I understand it basically sets anything it touches on fire, and at high concentrations is deadly within a few breaths.

It can combust when it comes in contact with many substances but much less so than lithium. It is a lot more toxic than the lithium salts in batteries.

Can't chlorine be easily neutralized by something... basic, like soda (the powder) or other cheap and safe carbonates? A small amount if them could even be a part of a battery's coat, to allow more time to safely react to a leak.

Re: Stanford researchers make rechargeable batteries that store 6x more charge

#24

Post by FabHK »

Robotbeat wrote: post #3

Yet again, the useless milliamp-hours per gram for one component of a cell instead of actual energy per unit mass for a whole cell. What is the Watt-hours per kilogram????

Need to multiply by the (average) voltage, and incorporate a fudge factor for the other components of the cell, I think.

(P = UI, where P is power in Watt, U voltage in Joule per Coulomb, I current in Coulomb per second. And what we seek is specific energy, ie energy per mass, in J/kg or Wh/kg.)

Re: Stanford researchers make rechargeable batteries that store 6x more charge

#26

Post by Sniffnoy »

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #19
nixass wrote: post #5

"new battery tech" and "fusion is 10 years away" - name better duo

We had a similar one yesterday: "Cancer treatment breakthrough". @dang wound up changing that one to a different article. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28342527 The thing about batteries and about cancer treatments is that there has been very meaningful progress over the years. In contrast, the fusion timetable seems to be getting worse. Now ITER is projected for "full fusion in 2035". So it's actually more th…

I mean, that's ITER. If fusion is ready soon it'll likely be via ARC. Commonwealth Fusion Systems is aiming for SPARC (demonstration reactor) in 2025, ARC (commercial reactor!) in 2030.

That's obviously an, um, ambitious goal, and we'll see whether that actually happens; but it's not like ITER is the only possibility. Which is good because even once ITER is turned on, it's hard to see the that direction ever producing anything commercially viable...

Re: Stanford researchers make rechargeable batteries that store 6x more charge

#27

Post by davedx »

kyriakos wrote: post #13
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #12

Dear battery technology claimant, Thank you for your submission of proposed new revolutionary battery technology. Your new technology claims to be superior to existing lithium-ion technology and is just around the corner from taking over the world. Unfortunately your technology will likely fail, because: [ ] it is impractical to manufacture at scale. [ ] it will be too expensive for users. [ ] it suffers from too few…

Definitely most cases are what you describe but doesn't being pessimistic about every announcement kill innovation in the long run?

Luckily, snarky comments by HN user Cthulhu_ do not generally tend to decrease investment by VC firms or Wall Street into potential new technology companies.

Re: Stanford researchers make rechargeable batteries that store 6x more charge

#28

Post by __s »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #12

Dear battery technology claimant, Thank you for your submission of proposed new revolutionary battery technology. Your new technology claims to be superior to existing lithium-ion technology and is just around the corner from taking over the world. Unfortunately your technology will likely fail, because: [ ] it is impractical to manufacture at scale. [ ] it will be too expensive for users. [ ] it suffers from too few…

You didn't x off any of the reasons. This list of common pitfalls is nice, but without marking which pitfalls apply you've added nothing to the conversation

The earliest instance of it _did_ offer this, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26353853

But it seems afterwards people have done the easy part, pasting the list, & not the hard part, reviewing the article closely enough to share with others what hard problems the tech still faces (of course, even that case received a "Yet another example of a glib response..." comment)

Re: Stanford researchers make rechargeable batteries that store 6x more charge

#29

Post by rsfern »

molticrystal wrote: post #21

While it was interesting at first, by peppering inaccuracies or at best oversimplifications, it makes me doubt the veracity of the rest of the content. For example: >Non-rechargeable batteries have no such luck. Once drained, their chemistry cannot be restored. Rechargeable batteries have limited cycles due to problems, mainly solidification or breakdown of electrolytes that prevent restoration, but there are others…

Par for the course for a uni press release, unfortunately. Not picking on Stanford at all, it just seems to be a common theme

Unfortunately the paper is not open access and I don’t think there’s a preprint, but from my quick read it seems pretty competently executed. (I’m a materials scientist but not a battery researcher.)

The cool thing about this paper IMO is that they’ve found a way to make rechargeable an established battery concept that’s known for high energy density. It also seems like maybe the cathode degradation over time could be better than in conventional solid state Li-ion tech, but I’m not really sure

Re: Stanford researchers make rechargeable batteries that store 6x more charge

#30

Post by twoslide »

__s wrote: post #28
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #12

Dear battery technology claimant, Thank you for your submission of proposed new revolutionary battery technology. Your new technology claims to be superior to existing lithium-ion technology and is just around the corner from taking over the world. Unfortunately your technology will likely fail, because: [ ] it is impractical to manufacture at scale. [ ] it will be too expensive for users. [ ] it suffers from too few…

You didn't x off any of the reasons. This list of common pitfalls is nice, but without marking which pitfalls apply you've added nothing to the conversation The earliest instance of it _did_ offer this, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26353853 But it seems afterwards people have done the easy part, pasting the list, & not the hard part, reviewing the article closely enough to share with others what hard problems…

The press release is naturally all positive spin, but hints at:

[X] it suffers from too few recharge cycles.

They mention 200 cycles, whereas 1000+ is common for li-ion.

Post reply on HN