Batteries stink
by
olman
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
What strikes me as funny about all this is that it would be more efficient to run a tiny engine instead of using a battery. Engines have to deal with friction, which leads to waste heat. Batteries do generate a little heat, but that's it. In other words, it's not that the micro-engines are so great, it's that the batteries are so bad. Lithium-ion batteries are more user-friendly and a little bit more efficient than nickel-cadmium-batteries, but not by that much. Zinc-oxygen batteries are a real innovation, if only due to the fact that air's free. I'm not complaining, my hearing aid runs more than twice as long as with conventional batteries, but the Zinc-air battery prices are highway robbery.
Until we learn to store electricity in a reasonable manner, wacky ideas like microengines will probably stay around. I didn't see much mention in the article about how to deal with the heat and friction of higher-rpm-than-conventional-gas-turbine, so we can safely assume this stuff is not going to appear next year in circuit city.
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What strikes me as funny about all this is that it would be more efficient to run a tiny engine instead of using a battery. Engines have to deal with friction, which leads to waste heat. Batteries do generate a little heat, but that's it. In other words, it's not that the micro-engines are so great, it's that the batteries are so bad. Lithium-ion batteries are more user-friendly and a little bit more efficient than nickel-cadmium-batteries, but not by that much. Zinc-oxygen batteries are a real innovation, if only due to the fact that air's free. I'm not complaining, my hearing aid runs more than twice as long as with conventional batteries, but the Zinc-air battery prices are highway robbery.
Until we learn to store electricity in a reasonable manner, wacky ideas like microengines will probably stay around. I didn't see much mention in the article about how to deal with the heat and friction of higher-rpm-than-conventional-gas-turbine, so we can safely assume this stuff is not going to appear next year in circuit city.