Lead Acid + UltraCap = Perfection?

[safe]

Lead Acid + UltraCap = Perfection?

http://www.evworld.com/news.cfm?newsid=17237&url=

Australian-developed UltraBattery Completes 100,000 Miles of Testing

SYNOPSIS: CSIRO has developed a revolutionary 'UltraBattery' for use in hybrid petrol/electrical vehicles that combines supercapacitor and conventional lead acid battery technology into a single unit. It is able to deliver the benefits of both technologies and with much lower cost and longer life than a conventional battery

A test vehicle using the UltraBattery has just completed 100,000 miles (160,000km) of testing in the UK and vehicles using the technology are expected to be in dealers' showrooms within two years.

The combination of supercapacitor and battery is attractive for hybrid vehicles because the capacitor is able to deliver power at high levels in short bursts for acceleration and to receive high levels of power input, such as that produced by regenerative breaking. However capacitors are very poor at storing electrical energy over long periods. Batteries, in contrast are excellent for long term storage but do not like being rapidly charged or discharged.

However, there are cost, space and weight penalties from using both technologies and complex electronics needed to manage the flow of electrical energy into and out of supercapacitor and the battery add considerably to the cost.

The UltraBattery eliminates the need for all the control electronics required to manage electrical energy flows in a dual capacitor/battery system because energy flows are determined at a 'chemical' level by the internal construction of the unit.

"It is as though the positive plate as been split into two: one half lead [the battery] and one half carbon [the capacitor] and that is what the first of our patents relates to," David Lamb, leader of low emissions transport research at CSIRO told iTWire. "The second patent relates to how you make this into a battery in the factory."

Remember the saying:

"An Ultracapacitor a Day helps keep the Peukerts away."

 

[monster]

sounds good. but why did they chose SLA over other chemistries?

 

[Ypedal]

I still think LiFePo4 will make this SLA/cap combo obsolete.

In a car with large capacity, sla is fine, and this setup would be better than sla alone.. but this combo won't work for an ebike without it's own issues.

 

[Link]

Hardly perfection. Energy is energy. It's still getting it's power from the battery. True, they can deliver high power for short bursts, but now the battery is going to have to supply both the motor AND the supercap. I don't see how an ultracap is going to help when we drain our batts at the 2-3C rate. There's no getting around that, other than bigger batteries. On top of that, since supercaps store far less energy than even SLAs, by adding one makes the volumetric energy density of SLAs even worse than it already is.

I recall a very elaborate discussion of why supercaps were nothing more than audio jewelry for audio systems, and a lot of that applies here. The only real difference being that they were feeding speakers, we were feeding motors. It took a long time to find and by accident, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to find it again. Point is, this is hardly an ideal solution.

IMO, the EEStore modules (if anything ever comes of that) will make this completely obsolete. In fact, I might go so far as to say that lithium chemistries already have.

 

[TylerDurden]

Lead sux... especially for cars.

The only decent rationale for lead I've heard, is from ES member mr-exon, for a very small vehicle: a pocket-bike.

:?

 

[Link]

The only decent rationale for lead I've heard, is from ES member mr-exon, for a very small vehicle: a pocket-bike.

I would think that would be one of the best places for better chemistries. Limited space, and a recreational vehicle. You don't want to have to stop in the middle of all your fun and have to recharge.

Of course, if the rationale is that the battery would cost more than the vehicle, then yeah, lead would be better.

 

[safe]

True, they can deliver high power for short bursts, but now the battery is going to have to supply both the motor AND the supercap. I don't see how an ultracap is going to help when we drain our batts at the 2-3C rate. There's no getting around that, other than bigger batteries.

I don't think you guys read the article very carefully...

What they have done is build the "concept" of a capacitor into the lead acid battery itself. By adding this extra feature INSIDE the internal chemistry of the battery (possibly alternating battery cell and capacitor layers) you eliminate the Peukert Effect up to an unspecified level.

So here's what you get:

No (or drastically reduced) Peukert Effect

Roughly the same weight as normal Lead Acid Batteries

Probably roughly the same price and lifespan

...so if you were to take my bike for example, if you could eliminate the Peukert Effect then you could get DOUBLE the performance.

So for my bike:

Starting Watt Hours Available - 1,368 wh

After Peukert Watt Hours - 616 wh (55% runtime loss)

Since lead is essentially an "infinite" material you could build millions of electric cars with this concept and they would get roughly DOUBLE the performance of standard Lead Acid batteries.

That's the "wow that's pretty cool" point of the idea.

...and you don't have to go to Bolivia and beg for Lithium any more than having to go anywhere else and beg for oil... lead is virtually infinite. :wink:

This process should be called:

Depeukertification

So when you go to buy batteries you might say:

"Have these batteries been depeukertified?"

(now just try to say that ten times fast) :lol:

 

[Battboy]

In 1897, Peukert discovered that Lead Acid batteries have a tendency to lose
overall power capacity when discharged at high rates of current. He devised
a calculation to determine the real power from a battery seen by an electric
system as an equation of the time of discharge, current and an exponent for
the current known as Peukerts Exponent. This exponent, always greater than
one, sums all electrical losses in a battery into one variable. This
variable has been used to determine a battery?s real capacity given real
situations. For the most part, this exponent ranges from 1.1 to 1.75. The
smaller this number, the more capacity we can anticipate out of the system.
Although this calculation is for determining capacity effects on Lead Acid,
I was able to interpolate a modest estimation of 1.08 for LiFeBatt?s LiFePO4
chemistry. This means we discharged a 3V/10Ah cell at 100A for 3.75 minutes
for a total of 9Ah of capacity, a 10% capacity loss at a 10C discharge rate.

When dealing with electric applications, power is determined by voltage
times the current. Battery capacity is always rated in Amp hours or the
combination of the current producible in a given time. If a designated power
is required to perform a task, then that power is broken into the Voltage
and Current. If the voltage drops, then more current is necessary to produce
the same power, and the total capacity of the system is reduced. Another big
advantage LiFePO4 has over Lead Acid, is its ability to maintain constant
voltage. As soon as power is being drawn from a cell, the cell voltage
drops. As the power is continuously drawn, the voltage continuously drops.
For LiFePO4, over 50A is needed to be drawn from our cells before a
noticeable drop in voltage occur. At currents less than 50A per cell, the
voltage holds steady for 70% of the total power. This means, for 7 Ah of
power, the voltage of the battery will maintain a constant level. This
constant level doesn?t seem profound, but what it means is steady power. In
comparison to Lead Acid cells with the same rated capacity, LiFePO4 cells
provide 50-250% more power.

Don Harmon

 

[safe]

Altered Internal Battery Design

The idea here is that you take the old Lead Acid battery design and alter it so that INSIDE the battery itself you insert something that operates "like" a capacitor. It's not about external circuitry to manage electricity flow.

Everyone needs to reread the article at the start of this thread.

While it's true that LiFePO4 is great stuff it also requires Lithium which is a rare element which Bolivia has a near monopoly over. If the world is seriously going to create a battery supply that is not dependent on some "gotcha" like Bolivia then Lead Acid improvements might be one way to offer a lower priced solution.

From what I can tell they design these improved Lead Acid batteries so that they reduce or eliminate the Peukert Effect. Even if they only managed to cut the effect by 75% it reawakens the idea of Lead Acid as a viable and ECONOMICAL battery option for the masses. (even the old Lead Acid design is competitive on price)

The price of Lithium is high. (and will only get worse as it's scarceness increases)

The price of Lead Acid is low. (so this new design might increase it's competitiveness)

Is this really my idea of "perfection"?

Probably not, but as a solution that might solve the worldwide problem of affordable batteries it might work. Cars would benefit the most because they can be made to carry more weight.

 

[safe]

The Trouble with Lithium

http://climateerinvest.blogspot.com/2007/10/lithium-ion-batteries-and-bolivian.html

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

The current ardor for lithium-ion batteries has, given the material relative scarcity, some interesting economic and geopolitical consequences, not least of which is there is insufficient supply:

"Analysis shows that a world dependent on lithium for its vehicles could soon face even tighter resource constraints than we face today with oil," wrote [William] Tahil, pointing out that lithium-rich South America would become the new Middle East. "Concentration of supply would create new geopolitical tensions, not reduce them."

The biggest source of lithium – either as a carbonate or chloride – is the limited number of salt pans and salt lake deposits around the world, mostly in countries such as Chile and Argentina. The last and biggest untapped reserve of lithium salt, according to Tahil, is in the Bolivia salt pans.

"Bolivia is said to contain lithium reserves of 5.4 million tonnes or nearly 50 per cent of the global lithium metal reserve base, and an even higher percentage of the lithium salt reserves," he writes. And while attempts have been made to get at these reserves, "The current political situation in the country is acting as a strong disincentive for western mining companies to operate there."

The Trouble with Lithium

Implications of Future PHEV Production for Lithium Demand ...Lithium Production and Resources Global Production of Lithium containing minerals today is about 20,000 tonnes of contained Lithium metal. The two main mineral sources are:

Brine lakes and salt pans which produce the soluble salts Lithium Carbonate and Lithium Chloride.

A hard mineral called Spodumene, which is a silicate or glass of Lithium and Aluminium.

The main producers of Lithium minerals are Chile, the USA, Argentina, China, Australia and Russia.

I found myself thinking of Bolivia when I saw an ad for GM's Volt, scheduled for 2010. Here's what EETimes had to say yesterday:

The limiting factor facing hybrids as well as all-electric vehicles is the availability of battery cells, according to the Electric Drive Transportation Association's spokeswoman."The technology is coming along," she said. "Manufacturers are working on lithium-ion as well as nickel metal hydride cells."

Lithium ion provides higher energy density than nickel metal hydride, but its higher cost remains a stumbling block, said Steve Glaser, vice president of corporate affairs for Azure Dynamics Inc., a Toronto-based supplier of hybrid and electric components and powertrain systems for commercial vehicles.

Chevrolet expects to use lithium-ion batteries in its Volt hybrid, slated to debut in 2010. Toward that end, it is lining up lithium battery suppliers and most recently signed A123Systems (Watertown, Mass.).

Chevrolet is reportedly developing multiple versions of the Volt: One will combine a battery with an engine that runs on ethanol or gasoline; another will have a battery and hydrogen fuel cells.

 

[Battboy]

Are these re-conceived Lead Acid Batteries recyclable like LiFePO4 is ?

Don Harmon

 

[Toorbough ULL-Zeveigh]

The Trouble with Lithium

http://climateerinvest.blogspot.com/2007/10/lithium-ion-batteries-and-bolivian.html

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

The current ardor for lithium-ion batteries has, given the material relative scarcity, some interesting economic and geopolitical consequences, not least of which is there is insufficient supply:

The Trouble With Propoganda



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium
Lithium is widely distributed on Earth and is the 33rd most abundant element; however, it does not naturally occur in elemental form due to its high reactivity. Estimates for crustal content range from 20 to 70 ppm by weight.

'Widely distributed' means not particularly rare, especially given that it's in the top one-third of the most abundent elements within the earth's crust.
This is the scarce(city) tatic ramping up, now that big money investor types have bought up lithium commodities & driven up the price to maximize ROI.
This is the same tired old Malthusian doctrine of manipulation via the scarcity of resources that big oil has perfected.
Keeping the available supply in a perennial state of impending shortage for peak profit, which has been documented from Exxon internal memos.
Do you really believe you're the only one that knows how to work a spreadsheet to figure out where the curves intersect?

The most significant line in William Tahil's report was this footnote:
"The USA does not disclose how much lithium it produces"
You can bet it doesn't accurately disclose how much is has in reserve either, seeing that the report is based entirely on USGS figures.


Red herring, that's the sentiment I agree with in the comment by 'Bored Economist' from http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1182 of a year ago when William Tahil's report was released:
The supply issue as described here really is a red herring. Why? Because the baseline is no demand. Mr. Tahil's house of cards is built on a corner solution (nothing).

Also I place more stock in this analysis in Wayne Brown's comment because he lays out verifiable facts rather than subjective opinion & political spin.
Mr. Tahil, your article is in error. Your company does some very nice research & your paper well done but, it is in error, especially on page 12 where it states; “Existing LiIon/LiMP “Energy Batteries” for EVs require about 0.3kg of Lithium metal equivalent per kWh, in the form of Lithium Carbonate.” I show you very clearly above where Saft states that it only takes 76.92g or 0.07692kg of Lithium metal equivalent per kWh.

This "error" is suspiciously deliberate designed to shore up Mr. Tahil's conslusions.
Anyway, there are numerous comments by the author & he seems to sincerely believe his own spin.
So only 20 to 30 years supply of lithium then?
I should live so long, so I'm not particularly worried.




Lastly I just want to say that all the pictures of Bolivia's el presidente Juan Morales in the company of Hugo Chávez in an overt attempt to paint him as some sort of terrorista only serve to undermine any credibility of any presenter of the facts & is further evidence this is a scare tactic.
It's no different than Rumsfeld glad-handing & chumming around with Saddam Hussein, but nobody seems to condem him for the company he kept.

 

[Battboy]

Not to mention Lithium Batteries have a life-time of 5 to 10 times the life of an SLA Battery. Besides Lithium is "enviro-friendly" and can be re-cycled! How many more Lead Acid batteries do you want to throw away in your lifetime????

This whole argument about "scarcity" smells fishy to me!

Don Harmon

 

[Link]

I didn't read the article that carefully, you caught me :wink:. The link to the complete article was not working for me. I read it just now. I did catch the part about the capacitor being part of the battery the first time, though. I still think that it will only help for momentary spikes, due to the low energy density of supercaps. Also, I don't see mention ANYWHERE in the article of it reducing/eliminating Peukert effect. Just helping with accelerating/regen. You're still deriving the energy from the chemical reaction inside the battery, whether or not you have a built in supercap. As far as I can tell, this thing will reduce the voltage sag under temporary high current draws, and slightly increase the efficiency of regenerative braking.

Until I get my hands on one of these, I will remain skeptical.

 

[safe]

Light Sweet Crude vs Oil Shale

The argument about Lithium scarcity is a lot like the one about Oil Shale as the new oil resource. There's a near infinite supply of low grade oil shale that can be mined and processed and you could get oil from it, but the costs are so high that the idea becomes unworkable.

Lithium is only "easy" to mine in Bolvia where you can just go to a big dry salt lake and scoop it up. In the rest of the world Lithium is hidden in lower densities in places that are hard to gather. So it's NOT a "conspiracy theory" of people trying to scare others away from Lithium... it's just that some dreams have "gotchas" that if you ignore you will end up becoming a nightmare down the road.

Lead is a metal that is nearly infinite in supply. It weighs more than other metals, but is cheap, recyclable, and if they can iron out the Peukerts problem (the point of this thread) then it might be a solution that is practical for the masses. There's nothing that says the "high class" population wouldn't buy their expensive sports cars with Lithium, but then "Joe Six Pack" buys his truck which uses cheaper Lead batteries.

Lead might not be so dead after all...

 

[Toorbough ULL-Zeveigh]

All these straw man scare tactic arguments are just trying to disguise the fact that it all comes back to the same point

THE EARTH IS FINITE


Unfortunately capitalism is based on the faulty premise of unlimited growth.
Put it this way.
What if the earth's crust was smaller by exactly the size of Bolivia?
We would still dirve lithium powered cars.
And NiMh powered cars.
And Petrol powered truck & planes.
Who sez all our eggs have to be placed in one basket, that lithium is the only battery suitable for PHEV'S, that ethanol can only be produced from corn, etc., etc?
The ones who want to maintain their monopolistic control, that's who.
A single commodity makes it so much simpler to accomplish.

In one of Mr. Tahil's comments at the aforementioned EVWorld article he complains that no one is working on alternative chemistires, that all the universities & research groups are persuing improving lithium based batteries, that all the eggs are already in one basket.
Do you want to know why that is so?
I've been following the lithium follies since 1980 when I purchased a half dozen engineering samples of the worlds first production run of AA size MoliCelsâ„¢ at 50 bucks apiece.
The reason everyone was in a race to produce the first rechargeable lithium battery & our lithium eggs are in one basket today is precisely because it was generally acknowledged & taught in schools, as it was to me, that lithium is a cheap & abundant substance.
So wha hoppen since then?
The guys with the money picked up the lithium scent just a couple of years ago & begun throwing their blanket of contol over the resource.
Bolivia's biggest threat to them is that they don't have control over that country, yet.
Not having control over 50% of the resource makes it difficult to establish an OPEC like cartel to fix the price on lithium.
Once they install one of their boys as presidente to sell out Bolivia & it's people on the cheap, all will be right with the world & Bolivia will be our trusted friend & trading partner.

I for one do not look forward to the hydrogen economy.
I can largely turn my back on petroleum, not completely but almost so that I am immune to its effects.
But I cannot turn my back on water which is already in process of becoming a traded commodity.
I just heard Alex Baldwin say exactly that on the news just now while skiing not far from here, so it's fairly obvious if even he can see that.
Once the water is privatized & in the hands of a rich few, then at that point we are all trapped in indentured servitude.
So I'm not worried about Bolivia at all.
The fact that these investors are getting their knickers in a twist over it is only good news to me.

 

[Battboy]

It's ALL good news to me too!

 

[TylerDurden]

Baldwin? Puleeze.

As long as the sun shines, freshwater will be abundant. No worries, there. (If we got no sun, freshwater is not the biggest nut to crack.)

If Bolivia and Chavez get rich, so be it.

If lithium gets cornered, other chemistries will become visible. You think A123, Konion, Molicel and Valence R&D are just sitting around a Lithium campfire and swapping war-stories?

 

[Link]

Burning lithium? Must be one bright-ass campfire.

 

[Toorbough ULL-Zeveigh]

Baldwin? Puleeze.

yes, exactly my point.






Water may be abundant but will you be able to afford the water if it's entirely in private hands?
I outta post a copy of my waterbill with an entry for a tax on rainfall runoff based on some complex slight of hand formula involving land area, average precip & some fudge factor percentage.
It works out to a miniscule amount, for now, but it only takes moving the percentage over a decimal point for a licence to print money.

Groundwork is already in place.


About the technolgy not standing still.
That reminds me I just want to add about Mr. Tahil's calculations re: the amount of lithium needed per kWh which forms the basis of his argument.
It has already been pointed out that he is (arguably) in error, but his figures are only getting further off the mark as energy density steadily improves.
I'm surprised everyone missed Bill Dube's incidental off-hand remark that this year the Killacycle is getting A123's new generation 'ultra' cells with twice the specific power.
http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2668&p=38291&hilit=dube#p38291


So peak lithium has already been pushed back twice as far from Mr. Tahil's prediction of a year ago with more to come.
Given the fact that we the consumer are at the bottom of the food chain & only get the cast off hand-me-down tech from the military means that they already have in use twice the capability of even these new A123's .
This makes sense based on the info that was released prior to the formation of A123 when nano-grass was initially demonstrated at MIT.
It was clearly spelled out at that time that nano-structure plates had the potential of an 8-fold increase in capacity over conventional plates.
That's why I was just a little dissappointed with the initial A123 offering of a density little better than par with NiMh.
Expect at least one more doubling in capacity over these ultras to come off the shelf.

LifeBatt & others need to look over their shoulder.
A123 Q x R

 

[safe]

peak lithium

From the practicality of mining Lithium there really is a "peak lithium" just like there is "peak oil". Just because there is an abundant supply of oil shale doesn't mean that you can process it economically enough to make oil an abundant resource again because of it. (you can't save the "cheap oil age" with oil shale)

We have to rememeber that we haven't even started with changing anything yet. The world does not presently have a high demand for Lithium, but we are discussing:

"What if there was a large demand for Lithium?"

...it's then that the worldwide reserves of metals matters. The most abundant of the three chemistries is lead, followed by nickel and then lithium.

:lol: Funny?

Isn't it funny that the DESIREABILITY of the metal seems to fit into exact relation to how much of it there is on the planet? It's scarcity or abundance happens to coincide with it's usefulness in battery making.

It's too bad it's not the other way around...

Wouldn't it be great if lithium were the most easily extracted metal and then nickel and lead? Then the decision making process would be a "no brainer" you could just standardize on lithium and be done with it.

Maybe someone will find an economical way to process lower grade lithium resources and then it might be possible to "expand the pie" so that everyone can get a piece of it. Until the control of the resource is out of the hands of some very untrustworthy people (Bolivia, like much of latin america is prone to dictatorships like Chavez) we have to expect that getting lithium when the resource is scarce will be a problem.

I'm optimistic that things like lead can be made to work more efficiently. Just being able to eliminate the Peukert Effect roughly DOUBLES the usefulness of the old trusted battery and it might be "just enough" of an advance to make a viable battery.

Let's not be "idealists", but "optimists"... to be optimistic means being realistic, but to also exploit all the possible advantages. Being an "idealist" means that you get stuck on an idea and try to force it through despite everything that your senses try to tell you.

You might have a situation where the low priced economy car runs on lead and the top of the line sports - luxury car runs on lithium. It's a great way to declare your "social standing" I can just hear the conversation now:

Girl 1: "Oh did you hear that Jane is dating this guy from North Bingham? I hear that he drives a car that uses lead batteries."

Girl 2: "Jane deserves so much better than that, why I heard that Katy is dating a guy that got one of those new Lithium Sports Cars... now that's the kind of guy that Jane needs to find."

Girl 1: "Yeah, I just won't date a guy that drives lead. "

 

[Battboy]

Quote: LifeBatt & others need to look over their shoulder.
A123 Q x R

There is plenty of room for all new battery technologies including re-visiting Lead Acid in light of continued research & development. This is all good toward moving us away from fossil fuels and reducing greenhouse gasses. The trick now is to get up & running with enough production to meet the growing demand. No time to be looking over your shoulder!

Best,

Don Harmon

 

[eP]

... This variable has been used to determine a battery?s real capacity given real
situations. For the most part, this exponent ranges from 1.1 to 1.75. The
smaller this number, the more capacity we can anticipate out of the system.
Although this calculation is for determining capacity effects on Lead Acid,
I was able to interpolate a modest estimation of 1.08 for LiFeBatt?s LiFePO4
chemistry. This means we discharged a 3V/10Ah cell at 100A for 3.75 minutes
for a total of 9Ah of capacity, a 10% capacity loss at a 10C discharge rate.
...
This constant level doesn?t seem profound, but what it means is steady power. In
comparison to Lead Acid cells with the same rated capacity, LiFePO4 cells
provide 50-250% more power.

Don Harmon

3.75 minutes @100A is equal to 6.25Ah, so you get 37.5% capacity loss at 10C discharge rate instead your wrongly optimistic 10% loss.

 

[Battboy]

Calcs are good.

100^1.08 * 3.75 / 60

Convert minutes to hours.

Don Harmon

 

[Patrick]

Err, no, it really is:

100 amps x (3.75/60 = .0625) hours = 6.25 amp hours.

I don't know where you got the exponent of 1.08, or why you applied it that way.
It would be cool if you could post discharge curves for the cells at various rates.