New Battery Technology

[dozentrio]

A coworker told me about this: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2008/january9/nanowire-010908.html

Apparently they have 10x the capacity of existing LiPo. I assume they mean for the same weight/size of battery. Neat! Too bad it'll probably be years before we see it. And $$

 

[Anonymous]

.

 

[John in CR]

Even if it does take a decade to reach consumers at reasonable prices, the beauty is that it does work and is on the way. Imagine what will be possible with just a 3X or 4X energy and power density over today's lithium batts, much less 10X. I've got a lot more faith in big advances in lithium than in the Eestor ceramic supercapacitor, which unfortunately has taken on the appearance of being only vaporware.

John

 

[vanilla ice]

What I wanna know is do we get 10x the C with the 10x capacity??

 

[tostino]

What I wanna know is do we get 10x the C with the 10x capacity??

I really wonder at that point if the extra C is necessary . Even if we get 10x the capacity, and keep the same 15-25c, the power output pr battery still goes up by 10x.

 

[vanilla ice]

Oh yeah huh. But it'd suck if the 10x capacity was the only boost, meaning C would be 1/10th at the new cap.

I remember seeing this news here when it first dropped.. still have a while longer to wait eh.

 

[docnjoj]

10XC output rate would turn my motor into a molten glob!
otherDoc

 

[John in CR]

I'd take 10x capacity at 1/10th the C rate right now. That would give me the same size and performance pack as I have now, but with 10x the range. I've got over a 30mi range at my energy hogging 35wh/mile. A 300 mile range would get me there and back to almost anywhere in this country without recharging. 0.5C-1C is more than enough for me for the large capacity packs I'd want.

John

 

[tostino]

I'd take 10x capacity at 1/10th the C rate right now. That would give me the same size and performance pack as I have now, but with 10x the range. I've got over a 30mi range at my energy hogging 35wh/mile. A 300 mile range would get me there and back to almost anywhere in this country without recharging. 0.5C-1C is more than enough for me for the large capacity packs I'd want.

John

Other than the charge time, i'd be okay with that too.

 

[John in CR]

I'd take 10x capacity at 1/10th the C rate right now. That would give me the same size and performance pack as I have now, but with 10x the range. I've got over a 30mi range at my energy hogging 35wh/mile. A 300 mile range would get me there and back to almost anywhere in this country without recharging. 0.5C-1C is more than enough for me for the large capacity packs I'd want.

John

Other than the charge time, i'd be okay with that too.

Eeek! I forgot about the minimum 5-10hrs charging would take. I'd still take it like a man, though it wouldn't be nearly as convenient.

John

 

[CNCAddict]

Discharge rating is not important on these future packs. Current lithium technology can do 40c with 80c bursts, so it would be quite easy to just parallel a few high discharge cells with some extremely large capacity low discharge current cells from the future. Then you can have the best of both worlds. I also wonder who needs such high power? Today's batteries already have a power density approaching rocket engines... RC helis routinely pull around 7-8hp from a 1.5Kg pack. That would be ~250hp in a 50kg "motorcycle" size battery.

 

[vanilla ice]

Other than the charge time, i'd be okay with that too.

Well you know I'd be way stoked even with the long charging and 1/10C! As anybody would be..

I also wonder who needs such high power? Today's batteries already have a power density approaching rocket engines... RC helis routinely pull around 7-8hp from a 1.5Kg pack. That would be ~250hp in a 50kg "motorcycle" size battery.

Not saying anything is NEEDED, just saying if the 10x cap comes with no loss of C.. that'd be really neato. Thats all. It wasn't made clear in the news, and this is a repost.. Thats why I brought up C, to get some new discussion going. May not be important to you, but I think it would make a difference for some rec users.. drag racing is fun. Even trials/ax/ta/tt and other short range vehicles may see benefit.

 

[DarthSensate]

This seem very exciting fro one reason to me: Silicon instead of Carbon nanowires.

I remember reading about 10x increase in storage in theory using carbon fiber nanowires a few years ago. But I have a growing concern of the use of carbon fiber as there seems to be a serious toxicity issue with degrading carbon fibers. The silicon based nanowires, I presume, would be devoid of this issue as they are obviously not organic.

Still requires lithium metal/ions though? Is that correct? Always a concern over mining and reclamation issues for "exotic" or heavy metals.

 

[grindz145]

Still crossing my fingers on EEStor. If they fail, then I am super interested in this. Is EEstor bogus? Not to hijack...

 

[swbluto]

Still crossing my fingers on EEStor. If they fail, then I am super interested in this. Is EEstor bogus? Not to hijack...

Don't know. It has a history of being secretive and continuously extending deadlines while making fantastic promises, but it seems to be making moves that I imagine only the most well-thought out scammer would make. The chance of bogus-ness seems to be large, but so does the chance of the attempt at least being honest. On a less suspicious note, it just seems to be a company that's trying to bring its product to market and there's just always a few things to improve, plan and correct...

I periodically keep my eyes on http://www.theeestory.com to get an upto-date idea of what's happening with eestor.

 

[AussieJester]

too.

Eeek! I forgot about the minimum 5-10hrs charging would take. I'd still take it like a man, though it wouldn't be nearly as convenient.

John

Wouldnt be that big of a deal if you have 300mile range now would it? You sleep 7-8 hours a night charge then, i doubt your going to use 300mile worth of charged lipo a day now are you LoL

KiM

 

[ToughRowToHoe]

This is not a repost of prior information. The researchers have made considerable progress. They just published their information. 200 cycles at 10 times the capacity means roughly half the cost and five times the distance while still meeting a 100,000 mile warranty for BEVs.

 

[DarthSensate]

Screw it. My next bike will use a Large Array of Redundant Beta-Voltaics, LARBV, or Direct Energy Conversion Cells, LARDECC.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20091212/sc_livescience/tinynuclearbatteriestopowermicrodevices

Nuclear powered ebike for FTW!

And! ... I'm going to paint it with this glop and scare the locals:
http://www.betavoltaic.co.uk/litroenergy.html

Seriously... The betavoltaics don't put out enough energy to run an ebike motor, let alone a cell phone, yet. The article mentions that the technology may be more suitable as a charging source for existing battery packs. So you may be able to plug a pack in to your bike to auto-recharge your bike. If the packs ever can be energy dense enough to provide 10-20amps for an ebike, The big concern would be "how do you turn it off" or "why does my bike rack keep melting"?

Fun stuff. :>

 

[DarthSensate]

Possible candidate for post-lithium technology: Silicon-Air based chemistry:

http://www.eetimes.com/news/design/...cleID=221901117&cid=RSSfeed_eetimes_designRSS

Currently only a Primary battery prototype that has been successfully tested for pretty lengthy run time, which is very promising. Seems to be a variation on Zinc-air, or metal-air chemistry, I'm just hoping for the non-toxic aspect of this chemistry.

Is anyone here familiar with the Silicon-based SLA type batteries? Supposedly there are scooters out there using them instead of traditional SLA's. They are supposed to have a higher energy density and a bit lower weight. http://www.e-max-scooter.com/technology/index.php

 

[DarthSensate]

Yet another "promising" chemistry/technology:

Lithium-Sulfide cathode:
Current design has REALLY poor cycle MTBF though.

http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/24758/?ref=rss

the team created a battery with an initial discharge of 630 watt-hours per kilogram of active ingredients. This represents an approximately 80 percent increase in the energy density over commercially available lithium-ion batteries,

BatteryType Wh/kg
Lead-acid 41
Alkaline long-life 110
Carbon-zinc 36
NiMH 95
NiCad 39
Lithium-ion 128 (95-140 for various flavors of Lithium chemistry)

 

[maydaverave]

This seem very exciting fro one reason to me: Silicon instead of Carbon nanowires.

I remember reading about 10x increase in storage in theory using carbon fiber nanowires a few years ago. But I have a growing concern of the use of carbon fiber as there seems to be a serious toxicity issue with degrading carbon fibers. The silicon based nanowires, I presume, would be devoid of this issue as they are obviously not organic.

Still requires lithium metal/ions though? Is that correct? Always a concern over mining and reclamation issues for "exotic" or heavy metals.

It's a light metal, basically a sea salt, and it isn't necessary to mine it.

 

[LockH]

Beravoltaics in the news again. "Betavoltaics: Water-Based Nuclear Battery Developed"
http://www.science20.com/news_articles/betavoltaics_waterbased_nuclear_battery_developed-144993

Yes folks. Nuclear ebikes in the offing...