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."

Comments

Fuel Cells...

[c_oflynn]

There is actually a real use of these, see http://www.ballard.com/tD.asp?pgid=700&dbid=0

Its pretty cool, because you always hear about fuel cells, but almost never see a commercial application.

Hopefully once they make it smaller...

Time to dig out an old favorite quote

[RalphBNumbers]

"Had batteries advanced at the pace of the computer processor, a double-A cell would contain more energy than a tactical nuke." - Paul Saffo

I suppose that would be somewhat hazardous wouldn't it.
At least a current day leaking battery will leave a nasty burn mark on my table, not burn thru the table and into the concrete floor underneath.

Radioactive decay batteries

[nurb432]

They could be built now, from radioactive waste, using the same really simple technology used aboard space missions..

Such a small amount of material per battery would make it safe, but would last years... ( not forever, but with teh way things are designed these days, at least long enough for the device to fall apart...)

What about toxicity?

[stefanlasiewski]

I commute by bicycle. Now that it is getting dark early, and I bike through heavy traffic, I have several bike lights:

- One 10-Watt halogen light with a lead-acid battery. It's lasted me for several years, but is starting to loose it's charge.
- 2-3 blinking lights which take any old AA & AAA batteries.

I'm getting sick of having to toss the discharged alkaline batteries all the time, and am looking for a replacement.

Since I'm comparing the prices of the different kinds of batteries and chargers, I'd also like to compare the different toxicity levels.

Are NiMH's safer then NiCADs or Alkalines?

Ironically, my lead-acid battery gets the most frowns, but it seems like it's actually one of the least toxic options. There are several places near me which recycle lead-acid batteries (They strip the batteries, neutralize the acid, and take the lead; all in-house).

Re:What about toxicity?

[CaptBubba]

NiMH's are better than NiCd's because they don't have large amounts of toxic Cadmium. They are also better than Alkalines because they can be reused so many times.

A good set of name brand batteries with an overnight charger will quickly pay for itself. The only problem with them is that they will run down on their own if you don't use them often, which is why I use alkalines for remote controls. So if you remember to swap the batteries every week or so, to make sure you have a fresh set in there you should be in good shape.

Whatever happened to those bike lights that would pull power from the rotating wheels? With the low current that LEDs require I would think such a system would work well.

Re:What about all the advances?

[mrbuttle]

Here's a recent press release about an alternative to chemical batteries. It's a storage capacitor made of porous carbon. Supposedly can store twice the charge of lead acid batteries, recharge in 1 minute and last indefinitely. Sounds relatively simple.

Batteries suck for a reason

[ljavelin]

Fuel cells suck ONLY because no one ever commercialized fuel cells 30 years ago.

Fuel cell technology should have been the next leap forward. But it's taken a long time because most investments in fuel cell has been centered around space applications... where light weight, high-performance electrical power is a requirement.

An incredible amount of fuel cell technology was developed in the 1960s and 1970s for space programs - and when you make money on space programs, the bean counters know that there is no reason (financially) to look at other potential markets. That was simply a sign of the times.

Unfortuantely, now most fuel cell expertise has been lost to the retirement of industry experts. Much of the "innovation" in recent years is merely a rehash of research done 30 or 40 years ago, but forgotten because no one back then had a vision for using fuel cells to replace (terrestrial) batteries.

I contend that many modern fuel cell related ideas and patents are really old ideas that have been rediscovered by a new set of researchers unfamiliar with the developments of the past.

It's like we just lost 30 years of ful cell development... too bad, because if the corporations that originally developed this technology had their shareholders in mind, they'd have a slightly longer vision and would be leaders in a new industry.

I think the key is..

[Epistax]

A battery that knows whether or not it is in use. Perhaps it would be possible for another voltage to trigger the chemical compounds in the first place, that is, when there is no voltage across it, the chemicals are relatively inert. A while ago I read (possibly on slashdot?) of a substance which is a liquid when any current is going through it, and a jelly-solid when it isn't.
Now the downside to this avenue is that each battery would have a battery (likely internal). However this wouldn't have to be nearly as big-- by design, make a very low current required to start/stop the chemical process in the larger battery, which is now free to be much more caustic in nature. Now the battery may still explode from mal-use, then again a passive fuse element could also be added which makes sure the battery permanently becomes in it's inactive state.

I'm not saying we know how to do half of this, it's just one option we can persue. Another option is fundamentally chance the amount of electricity anything handheld uses. This would be happening right now, but every time we make something more efficient, we make it faster so that it's consumption is more or less equal (usually more).

Re:I wonder if...

[ComputerSlicer23]

Actually, you are correct, the RMS of american power, is around 120, but peaks at 170 (the RMS means Root Mean Squared, so it's an average, in this case of a sign wave of the power, so 120 isn't the highest point). The bulb is rated for 120v (which is why a bulb will last essentially forever if you turn it on and leave it on, the average voltage is what the bulb is rated for). If you turn a bulb on at a peak, it has issues and blows. It's not like a light a bulb blows because it's too hot when you first turn it on. It clearly ran when you turned it off. You'd think the heat is what would ruin bulb. Never has been that I've seen, it was alway the initial surge of power. I knew I'd get the details wrong, and some clever slashdotter would point it out.

The instructors was somewhat insane, but what he said makes sense. He's also a considered a leading authority on Extra-Terrestrials. For as insane as he was, they classified a bunch of basic research he did into application of nuclear physics. You also couldn't find a problem in the book he couldn't solve. He was really smart about his physics, and it's applications. He taught all of the electronics classes.

It's also backed up by my emperical evidence of picking up the light bulbs that are 130v instead of 120v last longer in fixtures over the last 5 or 6 years. They aren't any more expensive then the bulbs you pick up a Walmart.

Kirby

Batteries *have* gotten better ...

[dougmc]

Batteries may not have kept up with Moore's law (and it's not like we'd expect them to) but they have definately gotten better over the last few decades.

The non-rechargable batteries gotten much better, going from the Zinc cells to the modern alkalines -- the capacity has gone up greatly (a factor of 10 or so?) And then there's the non rechargable lithium cells that can hold MUCH more (and costs more too, of course.)

Also, and perhaps even more importantly, the rechargable cells have gotten much better recently. Maybe fifteen years ago, you'd buy 500 mAh AA NiCd cells ... now most people buy 1800 mAh NiMH cells, and for a few dollars more, you can get 2100 mAh AA NiMH cells.

(Quick aside, NiCd vs. NiMH: NiMH have more capacity, but usually cannot deliver as much current in a very short period. NiMH cells do not suffer from voltage depression (often mistakenly called `memory'). NiMH cells are not as environmentally unfreindly as NiCd. NiMH cells usually don't last quite as long as NiCd cells. But for the most part, for most applications, NiMH and NiCd cells can be used interchangably.)

And more recently, Li-Ion and Li-Poly cells have really come of age. These cells often have energy densities and power densities several times greater than what NiCd and NiMH cells have. Li-Ion cells were extremely fragile and could not handle abuse at all, but the new Li-Poly cells are overcoming many of these shortcomings.

Ten years, electric R/C planes were very rare. Now, thanks mostly due to the improvements in batteries, they're found all over the place, and they can perform just as well as the glow and gas powered planes in many cases. All three types of batteries (NiCd, NiMH and Li-Ion/Li-Poly) have improved greatly recently, and all three are quite popular with pilots today.

(Li-Poly especially looks incredibly promising for the future -- today, some planes with motors powered by them can often fly a full hour on a single charge, and things are getting better all the time.)

In short, I don't agree with Michael Rogers at all -- there's all kind of developments being made in batteries. It's just that they're not happening fast enough for him :)

(Semi-relevant aside: I have a TRS-80 Model 100 laptop computer. It's powered by 4 AA batteries, and it lasts a very long time. Perhaps the problem isn't the batteries -- maybe it's the laptop makers who use CPUs that use so much power!)

Re:Monster caps are great,

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Reminds me of the stories my Uncle would tell of his days fooling around with Tank batteries. Tanks have enormous cells, 1 meter cubed, that store insane amounts of current. In the field they don't need to bring an arc welder. They just tie the frame to the ass end of the battery, and lug a jumper cable to where they want to weld.

Of course our million dollar tanks, at least at this time, were equipped with cheezy aluminum tools. One a buddy of my uncle was tightening the lugs on a battery and crossed both terminals. The tool literally melted and burned in a flash.

Re:I wonder if...

[lepton noodle]

130V bulbs last dramatically longer because their filaments run much cooler than 120V bulbs (they have larger and thicker filaments, hence a greater surface area to dissipate heat). This is great for longevity, but it comes at a heavy price in efficiency. The lower filament temperature shifts the bulbs emission spectrum towards the infrared (Planck's Law) reducing the amount of visible light produced. This reduction in efficiency will require more electricity to produce a given amount of light. When all is said and done it takes far fewer resources to make higher temperature bulbs that are more efficient than to keep one long life bulb chugging along. Of course, if resource/energy efficiency is a concern halogen and fluourescent bulbs are far better than any conventional incandescent.

There are also other techniques to increase the longevity of regular bulbs. Since the most likely time for bulb failure occurs at switch on, using a switch that only activates at a zero-crossing of the voltage waveform minimizes the turn-on stress. The inrush current to a cold bulb can be on the order of 10x the running current (an incandescent filament is an extremely non-ohmic load because its resistance varies dramatically with temperature). It's this high current that causes high stress on the filament (the motor effect can cause the filament to twist violently). From what I've read, this technique is often used on navigational beacon lights (these lights also use over-rated bulbs to gain lifetime at the expense of efficiency).

Another technique to minimize turn-on stress is keep the bulb running 'warm', that is to pass enough current to keep the filament at a temperature just below that needed to produce visible light. The relatively high temperature raises the resistance of filament, thus dramatically reducing inrush current. According to some theatre techs that I know, this technique is extensively used in theatre and television where a light failure could ruin a show.

Re:What do the submarines use?

[Yaztromo]

Actually the noise from the reactor of a modern, quality nuclear sub is less than you might think. Most of the noise problems from subs come from the sub itself, the shape, the screws, or both. The US Los Angeles subs and the new Virgina subs are amazingly quiet, despite being nuclear.

I just saw one of the Los Angeles class subs. They are indeed impressive machines.

I'm not trying to slight the US's nuclear subs. They're obviously not rusty old junk buckets making a racket that any old fishing trawler can pick-up. They're exceedingly advanced machines.

However, if you run a decibel test between a Los Angeles class sub and one of the Canadian Forces Victoria class diesel electric subs, the Victoria class scores better. They have their own issues, of course (the Victoria class subs needing a whole lot of work to make them seaworthy for one thing :P)

Yaz.

Re:so then

[AKAImBatman]

Don't laugh but nuclear batteries are also feasible mass production artifacts, just no one would want them because they would fuck up the env, so bad idea.

Indeed. In fact, there are quite a few ways of generating nuclear power without building a full blown reactor. The coolest part is that your battery life would be determined by the half-life the the material used as a power source. If they could find a heavy element with a realistic life-span of about 3 years (the average life of a computer), then we'd have a winner on our hands. Plus, the actual amount of radioactive material would be tremendously small (think ounces per hundreds of people). If the waste became a concern, a standard battery slot could be developed so that batteries with longer lives could be manufactured. Those 10+ year batteries could simply be moved from computer to computer over the years.

The real problem is that people freak when you use the words "nuclear" or "radioactive". Maybe we should call them "magic" batteries?