Slashdot Mirror
New Batteries Promise 2.5 Times Longer Uptime
DarrylM writes: "CBC News has this story about the opening of a factory for new rechargeable batteries. They are supposed to be capable of supplying a laptop with power for 12-16 hours. The batteries are manufactured by electrofuel Inc., and come in various sizes. They will also produce batteries for phones, and hope to eventually provide battery power for bikes and cars." Sounds promising -- more power, smaller package is always nice. I wonder what sort of power draw they're expecting from a laptop though; will low-power chips like the Crusoe extend those hours, or is a trend toward more efficient chips already taken optimistically into account?
This is a popular myth.
Check out http://www.repairfaq.org/ELE/F_NiCd_Memory.html and the full NiCd Battery Frequently Asked Questions file at http://www.repairfaq.org/ELE/F_NiCd_Battery.html before you flame me about this.
There is no memory effect; what is perceived as memory effect is a result of overcharging.
Second stage (going between the lines):
There are no consumer available chargers or computers that will charge properly; they all overcharge:
Final step (in english):
The life of your NiCad will drop quickly in any normal use in any available product with any available charger.
The 102 claimed it wanted 4 alkalines, for 6 volts. On these, the battery warning came on with 20 minuts or so left. On my NiCads, it was 20 seconds . . .
If I'd made the modification to house a 5th nicad, as many people did, to get the whole 6 volts, it probably would have been worse: by running at 5/6 voltage, the current draw as also 5/6 (for the cmos technology that that thing used). With the full 6v, I would have lost battery life and warning time.
hawk, who still occasionally uses the 102 (modern email at 300 baud can be interesting. . .
I've got a whole bunch of them (4 children meant $30 of batteries on Dec. 26 1999), and I"m afinding that when you try to recharge them, you have about a 5 in 6 chance of success--even on the first recharge. And of those 5, one may only take a partial charge. I'm starting to switch kids stuff over to NiMh.
It would be loud. Internal combustion engines are loud to begin with, but wankels are damn loud, mostly because there is no valve train on the exhaust side serving to muffle the sound.
The lack of a valve train also means the exhaust gases are very, very hot.
While the wankel isn't itself the cleanest burning design, it does tend to lend itself well to use with cleaner fuels, like hydrogen. Hydrogen tends to be a tricky fuel because it can be prone to igniting as soon as it hits the hot cylinder of a traditional piston engine. With a rotary, the intake portion of the engine stays cool, and the combustion takes place elsewhere, avoiding preignition.
Wankels also tend be very smooth when running at higher rpms.
Traditional fuel and lubrication systems tend to be very sensitive to being turned upside down. That means fuel injection and dry sump lubrication more than likely, and that tends to mean there will have to be a bit of pressure in both those systems.
Maintainance. Most current wankel designs I've seen burn lubricant because of the large swept area in the combustion chamber. Not only does that mean emissions, it also means you'll need to refill the lubricant.
I could see that engine built into a generator the size of a laptop battery, but I don't think it will ever actually fit in the laptop. It will probably be rather noisy, and I suspect it will be a specialized product. It would, for example, be perfect for satillite phones, backpackers, just about any electronics on a sailboat, and of course, it would make a great UPS.
Companies such as PolyPlus, PolyStor, Moltech, and other have been working on this for years. In theory the patten used by PolyPlus and Moltech have the highest theoretical energy density of any Li based battery. I can't find anything in the electrofuel release with technical merit.
Is this PR piece really worthy of publication on /. ?
Where did you find that? I looked around their web site, and couldn't find anything but PR puffery, utterly devoid of specs -- unless you had to register to get them. And I will generally not bother with registration unless I already know the products are worth looking at, so if I was looking for batteries to design into a product, chances are I would pass them by. There are too many competitors that put the crucial information up front for an engineer to bother with those that hide it.
If it is lead-acid, note that the Watt-Hour/Liter rating doesn't mean that much until you look at the Watt-Hour/kilogram -- lead-acid batteries are extremely dense.
While I'll argee with you that the crusoe chip suffers from a but of hype, and the presence of Linus does add a bit to the to the following of the transmeta chips, I can personally comment on the performance of the crusoe as I own one of the Fujitsu laptops (FMV-Biblo Loox S5/53W[ 533mhz crusoe / 10.8v 1800mAh Li-ION)
1. Comparing it to my Libretto 1010ss (Pentium 233MMX / 10.8V 1350 mAh Li-ION) Crusoe has about an hour+ (3.5 vs 2.5) advantage while running a larger display (1024x512 vs 640x480) with a much brighter back light and and a slight loss
(15min) when constantly running the internal wireless internet hardware. Nice but unimpressive.
2. The battery pack itself is smaller and lighter but this may be attributed to better battery technologies.
3. While being a 533mhz chip, it provides about the same performance as a PII 350. Very disappointing.
4. While my libretto runs uncomfortably hot (you don't want it on your lap) and my PII 350 toshiba dynabook 3380SS is hot enough to leave black marks on my desk from the rubber feet, the crusoe drive fujitsu never gets uncomfortable to the touch (NO FAN!) and the hottest running part is the back light.
While the performance is somewhat disappointing, the benefits in the human factor (a laptop I can actually use on my lap) are quite attractive. Not to mention the fact that the standard battery charges in 1 hour while using the the laptop and the large battery affords about 7.5 hours of use.
This post was enhanced by BEER technology! 'Karaoke' is Japanese for drunken loser. -Craig Kilborne
Now I'll have to take my laptop in for a smog check . . .
If you treat them right, they'll last years.
I had a battery pack for an R/C race car that lasted through hundreds of fully charged/fully discharged cycles, never developing a memory effect. And an R/C car puts a battery pack through hell.
Essentially it's a set of 6 C-cell NiCD's which are matched in terms of output curves (to summarize). To charge them, you basically dump about 10 times their rated output current into them. From complete discharge, they reach a full charge in about 10 or 15 minutes. NiCD's can take it, but you have to be real careful when charging-- modern chargers can detect when the current dropoff occurs during charging and immediately switch over to trickle. On mine, you have to watch the ammeter-- the charge current will rise slightly at the top and then fall off, which is when you should disconnect the battery. Any more "fast charge" beyond that and the cells heat up quickly and barf their internals through the vent holes.
Then you put it in your car and run it for 4 minutes at extremely high output. In fact if the pack isn't dead slightly after 4 minutes, you're not getting the most out of your batteries (for racing at least). That's the advantage of NiCD batteries: relatively constant output until WHAM it's dead, and the low internal resistance of NiCD means that you can almost short them out and they won't complain. Most other batteries just decline steadily from a full charge.
But they're not as good for low-draw devices that need to run for a long time, like electronics. So far Lithium Ion seems to be the best for that.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
I hope this isn't off-topic, but rather than a mini-Wankel fueled by hydrogen (combining the worst of both worlds... a noisy fuel-to-electricity system and a hard to handle fuel), why not a have fuel cell with butane as the fuel? It's liquid at room temperature, vaporizes easily, the technology to deliver it in compact, durable, disposable containers is fully developed (cigarette lighters), and has a respectable energy density.
e r/ 3403.html
At 26 kJ/cc, to get the amount of energy in these big batteries (160 W-hr), you'd need about 22cc of liquid butane. Figure a 30% efficiency for the reformer to remove the carbon, and that's 73cc, figure 80% efficiency for the fuel cell and that's about 91cc, or 3.1 fluid ounces of liquid butane. The heat from the reformer will help to vaporize the fuel and the rest can be dissipated though the case. Running low on fuel? Pop in another cartridge, or refill your laptop's tank from the handy coin-operated dispensers in every airport, located right near the Internet kiosks. One day soon, one day soon....
http://www.millennial.org/mail/talk/fmf-eng/hyp
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
Electric Fuel is a company which makes extremely long-lived disposable zinc-air battries. Currently it's only for cellphones (lasts for weeks) but they have plans for laptop batteries, too. Would you buy a battery that will last for two transatlantic flights plus a few days of normal work at you destination for something like $20-$40? Compare that to the price of the tickets.
It's disposable, but supposed to be pretty benign environmentally.
-
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
This is probably as dense as lithium-ion technology is going to get. Next, maybe small fuel cells. So far, though, fuel cells that actually work well need plumbing and pumps and tend to be at least vehicle-sized.
Costco sells 6 packs of 1.25v AA size Panasonic Ni-Cad batteries. Nothing special right? No. These are 1100mAh high-capacity batteries! In case you don't know... That puts it at the same power point as Alkaline batteries, and since they are Ni-Cad, they're incredibly light. These store more power, are lighter, and can be rechared more times than any other rechargeables I've ever seen! We certainly don't need NEW battery technology, we need manufactures to use the CURRENT technology.
By now you should be reading the mAh rating on your laptop or handheld battery and just think how many 1100mAh AA batteries could fit in that area... I bet you'd get at least 2x the life and the battery would be lighter and cheaper!
This story from more than a year ago already mentions this technology. Apparently it's Lithium based.
I stumbled across this link today; micro engines to replace batteries. :-)
quote:
An important asset of the internal combustion engine is the high energy density of liquid hydrocarbon fuels - approximately 30 times greater than that of the best batteries.
and
The "mini"-rotary has a generating radius of 5.5mm and a depth of 3.63mm, which gives the engine a displacement of 77.5mm3, or about 1/64th the displacement of the smallest commercially available rotary engine. A second-generation "mini"-rotary engine has been fabricated and tested, and it has produced approximately 0.5W at 3000rpm.
Imagine an engine scaled at battery size. What can I say? Power to the people!
Q: How does a Unix guru have sex? A: unzip;strip;touch;finger;mount;fsck;more;yes;umount;sleep
Some of the batteries I've seen are about as wide/long as a laptop and about 1" thick and those last about 12 hours as well. They cost about 150% of a normal lithium battery so have a good cost/benifit ratio, especially for airplanes where the battery size doesn't matter all that much.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
How long can you run a laptop if you hook it to a lead car battery with a voltage converter of some sort? And how does the portability of this setup compare to the solution suggested by this company?
It's not really a story, it's a slightly re-written press release. Sad to see that the CBC seems to be following US corporate media in this kind of lameness.
There's a link to the electrofuel web site, but it doesn't help much.
hey, then we could use it to directly spin the hard drive . . .
Not to mention they are really picky. If you're talking about 049s (as I think you are) those little 2 stroke engines need a lot of TLC just to get started, and then you have to be really careful with them or you'll just kill them right out. You're right about the noise though, those suckers are just as loud and a lot shriller than you average car, especially considering most people don't put any sort of exaust system on them (they need all the power they can get).
The only think I can see this used for is as something you can plug into the side if your laptop if you are traveling through the congo or something and want to carry a compact power source.
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
I read the internet for the articles.
Valence are another company that make Li-polymer batteries - the link is their FAQ, which is good, especially the graph halfway down.
This is just a puff PR piece. The basic trick is that it's a BIG honkin' external battery (2.5-3 pounds, more than some laptops), shaped so it "matches the footprint of most portable computers."
While their site doesn't say for sure, this sounds like a recent trend, using a lithium ion battery with some polymer technique to make solid leak-proof batteries in extremely irregular shapes, like plastic. It is a cool thing, and can help designers squeeze extra use out of a device's space, but I don't see what these guys have added other than making it the size of a laptop.
They aren't claiming better energy densities than other lithium ion batteries, they just compare their battery's life (watt hours) against "ordinary" (presumably old nicad) laptop (presumably internal) batteries.
Maybe not a bad product, but this is a marketing effort, not a scientific breakthrough.
--
For example, I own a Crusoe-powered picturebook which has a battery life of about 2 - 2.5 hours with a standard battery. The older picturebook with PII/400 had about 1 - 1.5 hours life if I'm not mistaken.
So the net result is a gain in battery life due to use of the Crusoe, but it's still not that long a time. Because the picturebook, including standard battery, weighs only 1 kg.
So the advantages of using a low-power chip can also be used for lightness/smallness instead of long use.
This product was announced last June/July in "Laptop" magazine. Couldn't buy one then. Can you buy one now?
-- Butlerian Jihad NOW!
This might be a goer in certain applications (a portable drill, particularly if combined with a small high-current battery or capacitor, for instance), but I can't see it replacing a laptop battery. A micro-sized fuel cell might be a different story, though :)
Go you big red fire engine!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Seriously, if the Great Linus didn't work at Transmeta, would anyone on /. even care about Crusoe?
Free Hans!