Thread for new battery breakthrough PR releases

liveforphysics said:
spinningmagnets said:
Sounds great! Na-Ion batteries should be about the same size, but MUCH cheaper...also no "peak sodium"
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There never would be a peak lithium.
Lithium itself isn't and never will be a substantial part of the cost of lithium batts.
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Once you're having trouble getting it, you into "Peak Lithium." That discussion is already raging. Some say it's as phony as Global Warming. Others say it's as real as Climate Change. Ooohhh, left vs. right strikes again.

suma-halloween.jpg
 
Luke, I agree about how much lithium exists and is reachable, but there are a lot of diamonds that are reachable, and DeBeers tries very hard to limit the supply to keep the prices up. I do believe (as much as is possible) that Chinese business interests would like to use their massive buying ability to tie up a great deal of the lithium mining interests with long-term contracts.

This has led to mass-produced affordable LiPo batteries (good), but in the near future I am concerned that political stumbles may cause trade issues between China and the west. Wikipedia lists Lithium as the 25th most abundant element on the earths surface, and sodium is the 6th most abundant. Its not a bad thing, right?

The video says Japan must import almost all of the lithium it wants, and they are having worse conflicts with China than the US, so I actually believe Japanese engineers will move swiftly on this (Sanyo, Panasonic, Hitachi, Yuasa, Sony, NEC [Nissan Leaf]...)
 
Lithium supply an entirely non-issue matter that they try to pretend is an issue.

They don't even consider lithium as an expense in the batteries.

To make the 24kWh pack in a leaf, you require about ~36.4lbs of Lithium Carbonate. Lithium Carbonate is about ~$4,400/ton at the moment. That makes the cost of Lithium ~$80 in a ~$10,000-12,000 battery pack ($0.40-0.50/W-hr).


What I'm getting at, is as far as cost reduction in batteries goes, if the Lithium in them was all free, delivered by magic elves to your battery factory, it wouldn't even shave $0.01 off the $/Whr.

What you do with a move to Sodium, is increase your atomic radius by 1.28x, making the volume grow by 2.1x over Lithium, so your path to intercalate needs to be wider, suffer larger volume changes on insertion and extraction, and break your cathode and anode structures much more rapidly. This is why the best ones are at <70% capacity after 50 cycles.

I'm all about using more abundant cheaper resources, but this seems like a fix to a non-existent problem that brings it's own host of problems along with it.
 
I appreciate the posters in this forum.

What awesome info/analogies :) 8)

Tommy L sends... \\m//
 
Some numbers info from Slashdot...

Found a source [anl.gov]:
From page 34:
Materials
LiCoO2 0.62
Separator 0.14
Electrolyte 0.30
Anode 0.24
Materials subtotal 1.28
Overhead 0.15-0.25
Direct labor 0.18-0.24
Total manufacturing cost ~1.70
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sucrose powder is turned into hard carbon powder by heating it to up to 1,500 degrees celsius in an oxygen-free oven
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where Li-Ion is up to 1250C
 
If we needed to make our own batteries, there is lithium in the USA. It's true that global conflict could shut off supply of something. The Hindenberg couldn't get helium is just one example.

But we have some lithium, and as Luke points out, lithium cost is not the problem you might assume it would be. Like worrying about the cost of the tires on the truck that delivers your gas. Sure it does add up into the total, but the cost of the guys bidding up gasoline futures have the real effect on price. You never notice the transportation cost increase but you sure notice the increase from the market fluctuations.

Nothing wrong with Napo though, if it's more stable than lipo and we still get 50c. Obviously sodium is cheap in the form of salt, so that's good for insuring a supply in hard times. Now all we have to do is make our own batteries. :roll:
 
There is a US company making Sodium batteries and out of every formulation and configuration the best they have now is 500 cycle life. The company's founders says their batteries are for non moving applications.
 
I'm more concerned about cobalt, manganese, nickel :)

I bet you the Great Salt lake is chock full of lithium that has not been exploited. If there is big demand, Bolivia will get online and start producing. You could probably get lithium from the ocean as well.

The sugar water concoction could be better or worse and is worth exploring though. It's interesting to watch this all develop.
 
Pretty pix, light info on the subject from Ntl Geo:

06-sillicon-battery-ingredients_58992_600x450.jpg


http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2012/09/pictures/120914-better-electric-car-battery/#/01-carbon-nanotubes-battery-ingredients_58987_600x450.jpg
 
There is a lot of focus on battery technology at the moment, and with good reason. Our gadgets continue to get thinner while we demand more time between charges. We also have to consider electric vehicles becoming more popular and eventually replacing conventional vehicles on our roads. They require much larger batteries which output more power while remaining as light as possible.

NEC has been focusing on improving electric vehicle batteries recently and has now managed to increase the capacity of high voltage, long life manganese lithium-ion batteries by 30% using a new cathode and anode design.

The Japanese company achieved this by partly replacing the lithium manganese oxide with nickel in the cathodes and then combining them with graphite anodes to offer an output voltage of 4.5V. Typical car batteries today only achieve 3.8V.

A fluorinated solvent was also required to stop the new electrode from decomposing the polycarbonate-based electrolyte quickly. Once added, NEC was able to achieve a recharge cycle of 500 charges while retaining 80% capacity in the battery. As this is only a prototype battery the number of cycles is sure to be improved upon before they reach production.

As for the increase in energy density, a typical electric vehicle lithium-ion battery today achieves 150Wh/kg, where as this new version achieves 200Wh/kg. That means the next generation of electric vehicles will be able to travel more miles between charges either by using these new batteries at an equivalent size to existing ones, or matching capacity and being smaller meaning less weight in the vehicle.

NEC is demonstrating the new battery technology at the PRIME 2012 conference being held this week in Hawaii. It’s unclear when the company expects to bring new batteries to market, but hopefully we’ll be seeing them used at some point next year.

http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/nec-increases-electric-vehicle-battery-capacity-30-percent-20121010/
 
Very interesting, thanks for the report.

A lot of companies have been trying to put out the mythical 4.2-4.5v nominal cell - this is the first one i've heard of that lasts more than a few cycles.

Panasonic does have some ~200whr/KG 18650 batteries, but the power output is really poor. If these could push out 2-5C, then they'd be awesome for EVs because you could then 'have your cake and eat it too'.

The real big upside is that you have less cells in series to deal with, so the BMSes can become less complicated as a result. How about 8 cells instead of 10 for a nominal voltage of 36v?

We'd need all new equipment though... :cry:
 
neptronix said:
A lot of companies have been trying to put out the mythical 4.2-4.5v nominal cell - this is the first one i've heard of that lasts more than a few cycles.
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The key is getting that elecrolyte to be stable at those voltages; present Li batteries have electrolyte that is stable down at LiFePO4 voltages or below, but not at LiCo/etc full-charge voltages, which is a main reason why they last a lot longer if you don't fully charge them and if you don't leave them in the charged state very long.
 
Hmmm :?

We always hear about "new high capacity li ion battery".. but they rarely specify the C rate at wich they are done.... :roll:

And that's what make the difference... unless you have a car with 100kWh of battery that can do 0.5C max....

Doc
 
There have been 4.5v and 5v chemistries known for a decade or so, and the problem is always the solvent oxidizing from the higher voltage, and the few solvents that don't oxidize cost $$$$.

Hopefully what NEC is saying, is they have found the first cheap solvent that works with higher voltage chemistries. Solvents are actually what holds back battery tech from a whole wide range of big improvement potential.
 
http://tkxny.en.alibaba.com/product/647395951-213931348/2_4V_15Ah_lithium_titanateli_ion_battery_cell.html?tracelog=cgsotherproduct1
 
3x the weight of my Turnigy nano-tech pack
 
Wow cool to see these in the wild. 9000 cycles :) Yeah not much of a practical chemistry at the moment.
 
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