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Batteries Continue To Suck
pvt_medic writes "As technology continues to grow, and we see more and more of a shift to portable electronic devices in our daily life, we are still constricted by one simple thing: Batteries. Newsweek has an interesting article about the lack of development in battery technology. 'Ironically, in our headlong rush to create sophisticated untethered computing, the most problematic technology turns out also to be the oldest: those nondescript metal cylinders that never seemed to be included with our Christmas toys.' And for those of you who would like an extensive overview about batteries, ExtremeTech.com has a nice overview."
dollar store alkalines.
Alkalines have high internal resistance, which makes them poor candidates for cameras and other high-current applications. Alkalines rule for transistor radios, etc, where you have miniscule current draw.
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A few years ago I got to meet with some folks from Eveready and a number of charge controller companies, and trust me, there's quite a bit of R&D that goes on.
For disposables, consider that we've gone from carbon-zinc to alkaline to lithium chemistries. In the case of Eveready, they have the L91 lithium AA, and it's pretty amazing in terms of power density and battery life (about 3X alkaline.) It's now about 10 years old.
Rechargables have gone from lead-acid to Nickel-Cadmium to Nickel Metal Hydride and also Lithium-Ion.
Keep in mind we're talking about a chemical device here that's storing larger and larger amounts of energy as times goes on. More energy = more potential for bad things to happen. Since it's chemical we're dealing with chemistry, materials science, and environmental factors (heat/cold, issues of outgassing, etc.) There's a lot more going on than a simple metal tube here.
A lot of the work that goes on is hidden -- it's hidden in the fact that the battery works for more than a few cycles. Many battery chemistries are very touchy when it comes to repeated cycling, for example, while others if not formulated (or charged) correctly would outgas or swell and explode. If any of you remember the good old days of carbon-zinc, it was routine to have things destroyed by leaking cells. That's one of the reasons the battery manufacturers actually offer warranties on the devices using them. (Think about that: It's like Exxon giving you a warranty on your engine if the gas harms it.)
While the future is probably fuel cells (I'd bet on methanol cells in particular, perhaps like Neah Power is working on) it'd be wrong to think that batteries aren't improving -- or that they won't be around for a long, long time.
Chemistry as an independant field of study is becoming obsolete. What doesn't fall into biology (namely organic chem) is going to fall into physics very soon. There's simply no need to seperate the two.
Buttsex.
1. If there was a chemical reaction that could produce energy on the nuclear level, it would disrupt nuclear processes - So whatever elements it happened between would transmute each other on contact. Look around. Do you see any natural element below the radioactive ones on the periodic table that is undergoing alchemical style (i.e. lead to gold style) transmutation to another element? No? Then there is a peak limit for how much power you can get out of any chemical battery, and it's lower than the weakest natural nuclear reactions observed. 2. The most electromotive elements are the reactive metals, like Potassium, Calcium, and Sodium at one end, and Florine and Clorine at the other. The reactive metals burn on contact with cold water, and the problems with handling the reactive gasses are legion. Batteries generally work with an anode and a cathode of two different mentals or metal compounds. Electrodes are generally made from metals in the middle of the electromotive range, like Pb, Cd, Cu, Ni, and even Hg, and their compounds. To get better energy storage per weight than zinc, nickel or cadmium just about always means working with something more reactive for at least one electrode. So "better" batteries are generally more environmentally damageing, or pose bigger health risks to humans working with them. 3. There is a metal with electromotility better than oxygen or clorine gas. It's called Gold. Unfortunately it is hard to get gold to react with chemicals, it's heavy, and it's just a touch expensive.
Who is John Cabal?
Try the local hobby shop, or look for one of these. You can easily charged old ni-cads or NiMh batteries in less than an hour using a 'peak detecting' charger like that. Overnite chargers run at .1C or less (C = battery amp hour capacity) and can be left on w/o overheating. The fast chargers blast 'em with 1 or 2C which works, as long as you cut it off when they are charged or they overhead and get damaged. The 'peak detecting' chargers can tell when the battery is full and automatically shuts off. Works great.
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Actually, the greatest (and most under rated) inventor in western history, Nikola Tesla, has already created it. For some unknown reason, J.P. Morgan refused to back it.
1) Energy in a given space has nothing to do with exploding. TNT doesnt explode without a detonator, Plutonium needs a critical mass and a neutron source, etc etc.
2) Since the original electricity is a trivial cost of batteries, the question is how much energy we can keep in the battery, not how much we use to get it there, so this is utterly irrelevant.
3) Vacuums apply to pressures, not energies. Have you seen the sun exploding lately because it's more energetic than the surrounding vacuum? (No, sorry, flares dont count.)
Real problem with batteries: inorganic chemistry hasn't made any huge progress lately.
Solution: capacitors. GM is planning to use them instead of car batteries in the relatively near future.
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According to the How Much Is Inside article on batteries, Duracell D-cell batteries costing $3.69 powered a flashlight for 116 hours, while some unknown brand costing 48 cents lasted 40 hours. This means Duracells cost 3.2 cents/hour and the other brand costed 1.2 cents/hour.
Who would have thought batteries could last that long, or that the brand would make such a difference?
This one is the Shimano NX-30, and it will power a 6 watt front headlight.
Maybe not as bright as your old 10-Watt, and sure, there is a little drag, but it's not bad, and you get to stop charging your bike lights for good. And $60 for the functionality of a battery *and* a front hub is a good deal.
spreer
Actually, the battery is now believed to be much, much older.
t hi an_battery.php
http://www.iranchamber.com/history/articles/par
Having just attended a Canadian Forces Naval briefing on this very topic, I'm glad you asked :).
Naval subs use massive "wet" batteries, something akin to what your car uses, except exceptionally massive, typically filling two large-ish rooms. They are exceptionally heavy.
Note that diesel-electric submarines are only rated to run for aat most two weeks between charges. They have to surface to run their diesel engines in order to recharge their batteries, as the diesel engines need clean air for the combustion, and need to be able to vent their exhaust gasses.
This is a disadvantage over nuclear submarines, which can stay down for months at a time. The benifit of them, however, is that diesel-electric subs are quite a bit more silent than their nuclear counterparts :).
Yaz.
It means it can be recharged an "infinate" number of times. Ie charging and draining the capacitor does not cause it to wear out, like most rechargable batteries do.
Outlets in the US are 120 volts DC. FYI. And your lightbulb example is hogwash. Lightbulbs will burn out no matter what. It has to do with the resistance in the filament which causes them to glow in the first place. Think of it like a dam, when you flip the switch on, the current suddenly meets resistance at the weakest points of the bulb, where the filament attaches. Occassionally it will superheat and boom, light bulb goes dead.
/. which is why you used them. But, regardless, if A is a square and B is a square that doesn't mean C is a square.
Here, go read up on how light bulbs and flourescent lights work.
Now if you're through making wild accusations, perhaps you can explain what precisely operating systems and printers have in common with batteries. I'm not even going to attempt to argue with you on those points on
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The advances are there but people aren't willing to pay for them. Err, rather, the manufacturers don't offer the advanced batteries because they don't believe that people will pay for them.
Most laptops use Li-Ion - a technology that brings the term "suck" to the title of this article. Li-Ion sucks. Not the other technologies out there. They aren't offfered.
NiMH is a decidedly better technology. Matsushita (who, BTW, is currently in arbitration with Ovonic Battery over a patent dispute) has brought the new Toyota Prius battery up to some astounding levels of power and energy density. And the batteries are proven to last for the vehicles lifetime - not this puny 500 cycles like Li-Ion that we get with laptop batteries. Didja ever wonder why your laptop's 2-year warranty didn't include the battery?
Because margins are already too thin. They can't afford real battery technology. We'll have true wireless only when the electronics downsize their power requirements.
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What happened to the super capacitors? You know, caps with such a high energy density that they could be used to replace batteries in many applications.
Nonsense.
1 Farad = 1 Amp at 1 Volt for 1 Second
As anyone who knows capacitors can tell you, a farad is a huge unit. To put things in perspective, common, everyday capacitors often have capacitances measured in picofarads (a picofarad is one-thousandth of one-billionth of a farad).
Now, how much capacitance would it take to equal a single AA battery?
A typical AA battery might be rated at 2200mAH at 1.5V. It doesn't actually keep that voltage up the entire time, but let's just pretend that it does.
2200mAH = 2.2AH = 7920As
So, a typical AA battery delivers 7,920 amp-seconds at 1.5V. An equivalent capacitor would need to have a capacitance of around 11,880 farads. That's to equal ONE AA battery. No such capacitor exists, and even if one did, it would be absurdly dangerous to handle.
The strength of a capacitor is its ability to deliver its power very, very quickly. That's why a big capacitor would be so dangerous -- imagine discharging all of the power in a AA battery in a ten-thousand of a second. The strength of a battery, on the other hand, is its ability to deliver (relatively) unbelievable amounts of power, but it can only do so over much longer periods of time.
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The real issue is voltages. Every type of chemical cell has a particular voltage it produces. It's easy to get a multiple of that voltage, but very hard to get any other voltage. Most of the new technologies produce voltages that don't match standard batteries, which means that, unless you have a custom device or a device designed for a range of voltages, you can't use anything new.
Actually, there is one place where battery technology has seen incredible advanced, and that is power tools. Ten years ago, a cordless ("powerless") drill was basically a toy, because it didn't produce enough torque, and the batteries would run out quickly. These days, people just don't use drills with cords, because the battery-powered ones are just as good, and cords are inconvenient. Of course, these use battery packs in the 10-15V range, which is sufficiently wide to handle a lot of variation, and is achieved with several cells, so the number of cells can be varied to change the voltage.
One AA (or AAA) battery is 1.5V; a single lithium cell is ~3V, and lithium ion and polymer are 3.6V. So you can make a newfangled rechargable which is perfect for devices that take 7 AAA batteries, and you can get pair-of-AA-battery lithium disposables, that's about it for new batteries of the sort that you don't get for Christmas.
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/capacitor.htm
Actually, the "memory effect" thing is a myth. What really happens with multi-cell nicad packs is one or more of the cells runs down to 0 volts before the rest do and subsequently gets "anti-charged" by the other batteries in the pack. The reverse voltage damages that particular cell, reducing its capacity. A multi-cell pack only gives full voltage for as long as the weakest cell in the pack can. The weird thing about the "battery memory" thing is that the recommended means of avoiding problems (full discharge before recharging) is more likely to result in cell damage. Then again, the difference between that and the opposite (recharge frequently without discharging) is practically nil: nicads are just crap.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Note that you can also charge such subs while in dock, by running cabling to a charge port (no kidding!).
Obviously, you need to pick and choose what types of missions you use such subs for. As I mentioned, they aren't for long-duration underwater missions. They serve a different purpose than nuclear subs serve.
And BTW, the Canadian Forces routinely detects the US Los Angles-class nuclear subs while they're supposedly running in "quiet" mode :).
Yaz.
Yes, reactors are noisy relative to batteries. They have hot fluids being pumped around in heat exchangers and driving generating turbines.
Maybe I've just grown overly cautious in my old age, but if it can be charged quickly, it must capable of discharging quickly, no? Energy-storage devices of reasonable density that can discharge very quickly make me nervous about bad things happening. Maybe not on the order of your gas tank "discharging" suddenly, but certainly the possibility of heating conductors enough to start a fire.
Some Raleighs used to be sold with a generator built into the front hub. They were more efficient than generators that rubbed on the sidewall, they lasted longer, and they didn't fail when the tires were snowy or wet.
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...How about we stop expecting portable electronics to be as powerful as non-portable electronics?...No, and by that I mean zero, laptops need a DVD-R. Almost no laptops need any 3D accelerator.
OK, even if I agreed that all of those things are not necessary in portable electronics, there's one thing that's totally critical in portable electronics and also a huge power drain: wireless communications. Trust me, it's not the camera in the cell phone that's wasting your battery, it's the transmitting.
The "killer feature" of laptops isn't a built-in DVD-R or a 3-D accelerator. It's 802.11 - and that uses a lot of power.
this is a deltaV (greek delta, triangle, i can't type) charger (rate of change in voltage). the other type of intelligent charger is deltaT (temp.) dV work on the principle that when a battery is at full charge there is a 'blip' in the (voltage-time) graph which you can detect with some simple digital logic. not only can these chargers charge fast, they *have* to else this point is not as obvious and they're more likely to miss it (bad!) dT work by sensing the sharper rise in temperature after a battery is full.. not as clever imho but a good backup. just thought someone might find that interesting, if not n/m :p
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However, carbon nanostructures are perhaps the most promising areas of energy storage research. When someone finds out how to do with nanotubes what people have been doing with nanofilaments, then we're going to have hydrogen storage approaching half the energy density of gasoline, at which point fuel cell transportation becomes much more attractive. (And considerably safer than gasoline storage, although such nanotube H2 storage can be very easily engineered into a powerful bomb beyond anything you can do with gasoline.
Anyway, I also like the Lithium polymer stuff and am sure that will be the next big advance that the consumer sees.
I've got a minor in physics, I understand the basics of electricity.
When was the last time you actually saw a bulb blow while it was running? I've never seen it happen in all might life on an incandesent light bulb. Ever. It is something about turning the bulb on, he claimed it had to do with where on the sine wave you are when it's turned on, and how many hours it had been run. I didn't have enough material science to argue with him. It's what my college instructor told me, I took in on faith, all his demonstrations of weird properties worked just fine. As some says further down in the thread, it could be done just as I said it could, however, it'd be highly ineffecient powerwise.
Toner, batteries, light bulbs and razors in a capitalism economy, it is in the best interest of a small cartel of people to control the cost and the quality of product. Just as the OPEC nations can. Because it makes the most sense for the consumer of the product to get the longest lasting (if they have the same efficiency), the cheapest toner (that has the same quality), and people buy the blades for the cheap razors they bought.
The reason it generally works out, is that the consumer is relatively uninformed, and doesn't think things thru, and/or can't vote with their money because it's a cartel, there are no options. A small group of companies work this area pretty hard. Companies do in fact make cheaper toner then HP or Lexmark. Last I knew, Lexmark was legally challenging people under the DMCA and patent law.
Oil cartels tightly control the supply of Oil to keep prices high. The RIAA was found guilty of price fixing. Microsoft was found guilty of anti-competitive practices, including using OEM's as leverage to keep people out, and have historically just bought any product they couldn't beat.
Just because it is in the best intersest of the consumer to produce more Oil. Just becaue it was in the interest of the consumer not to have the RIAA price fix. Just because it was in the interest of the consumer for Microsoft to compete fairly doesn't mean that is precisely what happens. The interest of the consumer isn't what businesses in a capitalistic society are all about.
If a battery producer could theoretically create a set of batteries that had 100 times the power in them, that cost them the same to produce, it wouldn't be in their own best to sell them. If the battery industry was a cartel (I don't know that it is), it wouldn't get released. It is not in the interest of the company to do so, so it doesn't get done.
The claim that a company would willing release a product that would cut profits by 100 times is insane. Sure they'd own all of the market, in smaller market. That's not smart business. Now, if they tried to charge 100 times the price, they couldn't batteries have a sweet spot in terms of price that the price needs to be between $2-$20 for a pack of batteries at a local grocery store.
Lets say they make batteries that will last 100 times longer, and be priced at times times as high, and cost the same to make. Lets say the current industy is worth $10Bil a year. You'll take a $10Bil/year industry, and now turn it into $1Bil/year industry. Oh, did I mention that your fixed costs are the same, so your profits go down faster then linearly. So your profits will be divided by at least 10. If I told my boss I had a great advancement on technology, but as a side affect it would shrink the market by 10 times, he'd fire me, or more likely, he'd pay me all the money I ever wanted to never tell anyone that.
Tell some VC guy, you have a way to make a battery that will last his entire life, and he'll tell you, he won't fund you to make batteries to compete with Duracell, because you
When you switch one on, the tungsten filament is still cold, and - like most metals - the resistance of the filament is lower at lower temperatures.
This is what causes a major surge in amperage, and this is what actually 'breaks' the filament. The cold period lasts only a split second, but this is enough to fry a weak spot in the filament.
The weak spots are formed during 'normal' use, since it is virtually impossible to create a wire with even with along its entire length. A part that is only marginally thinner than the rest, will have higher resistance and hence voltage drop and power dissipation than the rest of the wire. This higher temperature will cause the tungsten to evaporate faster, and condense slower, on the already weak part of the filament - causing the weakness to get weaker until in eventually poops out under start-up conditions.
The funny thing is: some ordinary bulbs can run for decades continously, but don't even think of switching them off and on after that!
That bit about NiCd batteries having "memory" but not NiMH? Not true. Yeah, they got the crystalization part right, but they ignored the usual cause. Too many people (manufacturers and users) used dumb chargers and overcharged the batteries causing them to release hydrogen and oxygen. The resulting charge/discharge curve led people to think this was the memory effect, when it really wasn't.
Battery chargers today are much more sensitive to the charge state of a battery and as a result they're much less likely to overcharge a battery.
According to the GE manual on NiCd batteries, there really is a "memory effect" on NiCd batteries, but it relates to their use on board spacecraft in orbit where charge and discharge cycles are very regular. This effect is slightly different from that which results from overcharging the pack. Most people don't charge and discharge their battery packs so regularly.
In the case of the batteries in orbit, the full capacity can be restored by one or two irregular charge/discharge cycles. However in the case where you overcharge the batteries, you actually lose capacity in the battery.
By the way, overcharging a NiCd battery is less damaging than overcharing a NiMH battery. The former can recover some of it's capacity by exposure to air to recover the hydrogen and oxygen gasses it released, but the latter generally doesn't.
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They do have one advantage. NiMH will last through more charge and discharge cycles than Lithium Ion. Li-Ion needs much more precise control of charging current to prevent frying the battery.
I've seen reports lately of batteries blowing up.
Nokia: Other Batteries Explode
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While you make a good point that battery technology has failed to make the leaps that other technologies (like disk drive technology, for example) have, the issue remains, increasing energy density may cause explosions (batteries blow - literally), other technologies in comparison don't have similar failure modes (few, if any, disk drives cause serious injuries).