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The man who brought us the lithium-ion battery has an idea for a new one

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Re: The man who brought us the lithium-ion battery has an idea for a new one

#81

Post by justizin »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #78
justizin wrote: post #34

> "Goodenough in his lab at the University of Austin." There is no University of Austin, it's the University of Texas at Austin, or "UT Austin" - same as there is no "University of Berkeley", but instead, "Cal". ;)

University of Austin sounds like a Portlandia-like parody of hippies and alt-culture types putting up classes in old abandoned buildings and alleyways and living in fear of being found out by UT security.

You could always throw back to "Road Trip" with Tom Greene:

  "Austin, not Boston"
;)

Re: The man who brought us the lithium-ion battery has an idea for a new one

#82

Post by mox1 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #4

What I'm worried about is the waste of lithium and other battery/accumulator metals. In theory, people should turn electronic devices and batteries to recycling facilities, but a large part of the population ignores the rules and throws their gadgets into the trash when broken... I wonder if someday we will find a way to "separate" trash on atomar level (i.e. put arbitrary stuff in on one side, get raw atoms on the o…

In the United States when you buy a new lead-acid car battery, they will charge you $10-$15 extra unless you turn in your old one (this is referred to as a "core charge"). The infrastructure already exists at parts stores to recycle these type of batteries, I'm sure it could be extended to li-ion ones as well, If they made their way into cars on a large scale.

Re: The man who brought us the lithium-ion battery has an idea for a new one

#83

Post by Apofis »

anigbrowl wrote: post #2

tl;dr the path he has chosen involves one of the toughest problems in battery science, which is how to make an anode out of pure lithium or sodium metal. If it can be done, the resulting battery would have 60% more energy than current lithium-ion cells. That would instantly catapult electric cars into a new head-to-head race with combustion. Over the years, numerous scientists have tried and failed—it was lithium met…

Yeah, the headline was almost an afterthought. I guess he isn't really talking and they needed something to give people a reason to click and read. Gave me enough reason to read about him though, and I definitely don't regret it.

Re: The man who brought us the lithium-ion battery has an idea for a new one

#84

Post by aikah »

Gravityloss wrote: post #12
mschuster91 wrote: post #4

What I'm worried about is the waste of lithium and other battery/accumulator metals. In theory, people should turn electronic devices and batteries to recycling facilities, but a large part of the population ignores the rules and throws their gadgets into the trash when broken... I wonder if someday we will find a way to "separate" trash on atomar level (i.e. put arbitrary stuff in on one side, get raw atoms on the o…

One solution is to collect a payment when you buy a new gadget, then you get it back when you return it for recycling. At the moment recycling technology can already grind stuff into small particles and float it in salts of different densities to separate it. That doesn't go to atomic level of course... I think it's a fundamental outcome of the laws of entropy that separating always takes a lot more energy than mixin…

> One solution is to collect a payment when you buy a new gadget, then you get it back when you return it for recycling.

that's an excellent idea.

Re: The man who brought us the lithium-ion battery has an idea for a new one

#85

Post by windsurfer »

X-Istence wrote: post #80
giarc wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a Penn and Teller skit where they go to people's home's and ask about curb side recycling. They ask the home owners if they'd be willing to have a x colour bin for y. They continue on and on and on until the home owners have 15 bins out front their house. Although most of the home owners agree to have that many bins, I think their point was to say, we can't have a rainbow of bins out front our homes.

My family in The Netherlands has 3 bins. Paper, plastic and other waste, and greens (compost). They also get charged per pickup, so it is in your best interest to separate as much out as possible/flatten it, and make as little waste as possible in the first place.

Ottawa has four: Paper, plastic and glass, compost, and other waste. We also have days for yard clippings, christmas trees, and old mattresses, as well as "give away" days for when something isn't garbage.

Re: The man who brought us the lithium-ion battery has an idea for a new one

#86

Post by cauterized »

giarc wrote: post #64
cauterized wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I live, at least, I'd have to make a special trip between 9-5 on a weekday to a battery recycling facility. And when I'm free on a weekday I'm not spending that time schlepping batteries across town. If they included batteries in curbside recycling pickup, you'd get the same high rates you do with paper, plastic, glass, and metal.

There is a Penn and Teller skit where they go to people's home's and ask about curb side recycling. They ask the home owners if they'd be willing to have a x colour bin for y. They continue on and on and on until the home owners have 15 bins out front their house. Although most of the home owners agree to have that many bins, I think their point was to say, we can't have a rainbow of bins out front our homes.

Then take them with the plastic/metal/glass, which needs to be sorted anyway, and sort out the batteries when you do the rest. IIRC the first 90% of the sorting is done by density anyway, and I'm sure that technique would be pretty effective at separating batteries (very dense) from milk cartons, tin cans, and takeout containers (less so).

Re: The man who brought us the lithium-ion battery has an idea for a new one

#87

Post by wodenokoto »

giarc wrote: post #64
cauterized wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I live, at least, I'd have to make a special trip between 9-5 on a weekday to a battery recycling facility. And when I'm free on a weekday I'm not spending that time schlepping batteries across town. If they included batteries in curbside recycling pickup, you'd get the same high rates you do with paper, plastic, glass, and metal.

There is a Penn and Teller skit where they go to people's home's and ask about curb side recycling. They ask the home owners if they'd be willing to have a x colour bin for y. They continue on and on and on until the home owners have 15 bins out front their house. Although most of the home owners agree to have that many bins, I think their point was to say, we can't have a rainbow of bins out front our homes.

in denmark you just put a clear plastic bag of batteries on top of your bin. You really don't accumulate enough batteries to justify a whole bin for each house.

Re: The man who brought us the lithium-ion battery has an idea for a new one

#88

Post by tripzilch »

X-Istence wrote: post #80
giarc wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a Penn and Teller skit where they go to people's home's and ask about curb side recycling. They ask the home owners if they'd be willing to have a x colour bin for y. They continue on and on and on until the home owners have 15 bins out front their house. Although most of the home owners agree to have that many bins, I think their point was to say, we can't have a rainbow of bins out front our homes.

My family in The Netherlands has 3 bins. Paper, plastic and other waste, and greens (compost). They also get charged per pickup, so it is in your best interest to separate as much out as possible/flatten it, and make as little waste as possible in the first place.

In NL, this is different per municipality, btw. Although I have heard that where I live, garbage is not separated, it would cost more energy for the separate (garbage pickup, etc) transport chains than it would cost to separate it at the dump site.

Also, regarding batteries, almost all supermarkets (which are generally within walking distance in NL) have a disposal bin for batteries.

Re: The man who brought us the lithium-ion battery has an idea for a new one

#89

Post by JDiculous »

patrickk wrote: post #70
JDiculous wrote: post #48

Wish society would incentivize more smart people to tackle these important problems rather than go into finance, management consulting, working at the next hot tech startup, etc.

How would this work in practice? Maybe some form of corporate patronage, like Facebook and Stripe did in this story, and giving the inventor a generous slice of the returns from the invention (I can imagine several downsides to this too, of course): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9003791

The problem is that investments in the future and public goods will always be unfunded in a free market capitalist economy due mainly to the free-rider problem. Fixing it would have to involve the government (or a government-like entity) subsidizing these projects. Of course care would have to be taken to make sure this money is properly allocated, the incentives are properly aligned, etc.

Re: The man who brought us the lithium-ion battery has an idea for a new one

#90

Post by mikeyouse »

mikeyouse wrote: post #17
ars wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 7% extra efficiency per year means electric cars will have twice the capacity in 10 years...and then double up again in 10 more years...and so on. An example of the dangers of extrapolating. CPU speeds kept going up - until they didn't. Battery tech is not going to keep going up 7% each year. Although perhaps his 60% improvement will show exactly at the right time to effectively be 7% better than the previous year.

CPU speeds stopped increasing because the market stopped focusing on CPU speed (coincidentally to this discussion, the change was largely to reduce power demands). Transistor count has kept plugging right along; http://i.imgur.com/FvVrnn4.png

Surprised by the negative reaction.. More technically, processor speeds required far more electricity to increase clockspeed which required much more energy to disappate in the form of fans and heatsinks.
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