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Recharge Batteries in 30 Secs
An anonymous reader writes "NEC has developed organic radical batteries
which are recharged in 30 seconds. Good news, they won't (probably) cost more than the current NIMH batteries." Why is it that I'm not holding my breath to have this technology in a laptop?
...a use for those outlets in airplane bathrooms.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
The only problem is that even with the current technology it takes more than 1 minute to run those batteries down. Pretty much anyone using rechargeables has at least one extra set so that there's always a fresh pair to swap to when the ones you're using runs out. In that scenario even halfing the recharge time doesn't matter a bit.
Still this is a nice breakthrough, but what we really need are batteries that last even longer than current ones. Those will make a huge difference!
The company plans to convert existing production facilities into ones able to manufacture the new product. The company expects the price of the new battery to be about the same as nickel-hydrogen cells when mass production starts, since it does not contain any expensive materials.
NEC is also developing a recharger for the battery that can be used at home as well as working on a way to prevent excessive discharge of power from the cell.
so...the batteries will be cheap, but the recharger will be the moneymaker? Am i correct in my assumption.
The company will initially try to commercialize the technology for using the battery as an emergency power source for computers, according to sources at NEC.
I'm suprised the first thing they're shooting for is the UPS market. I would have thought a bigger market would have been standard-sized batteries (AA, AAA, etc)
The article itself mentions many other uses, including RC cars, digital cameras, etc...
Guess they know their market better than I do.
Unless they have a 100% conversion of source electricity to storage these batteries are going to have very limited capacities. Imagine how much heat a 1200mAh battery would give off if only 90% of the charge is actually stored and the rest goes to waste heat during that 30 second charge cycle.
Actually, being able to drain batteries very quickly is an advantage. Nickel-cadmium batteries are popular in R/C applications because of this. With a lower internal resistance, these batteries will be able to provide a massive jolt of power.
...
You're right. I should stop there to be funny, but since you mentioned it, the battery heat is due to the internal resistance of the battery. If it is low, the power (current squared times resistance) will be low. Note that the article ended with reference to being able to limit the current from the battery, and that makes me think the internal resistance is low, and therefore, low charge/discharge power for heating.
perhaps a 30 second recharge means, opening a cap, dumping the contents, and refilling it.. (no heat involved)
note the words organic and resin
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Article seems to speak nothing of the size of these things (I'm thinking BIG). Otherwise, since the marketing is looking at 'emergency' power, air batteries come to mind. Perhaps these things don't recharge very many times before dying a permanant death (less usefull than Nickel-Cadnium).
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
Well, just because you _can_ charge them in 30 seconds doesn't mean you _have to_.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
How big are these batteries compared to standard laptop cells? Would it be possible to expand in the other direction, by keeping the charge time around today's levels but greatly increasing the discharge time? I wouldn't mind charging my laptop for the usual 3 or 4 hours if I can use it for a day or more without having to plug in again.
Well, 30 seconds for a laptop might not be so reasonable, but how about ten minutes? It seems that if the technology is there for such an ultrafast recharge, it should be possible to slow it down (obviously only very special 120VAC outlets in the US will allow you to draw 70 amps). This would knock down our consumption to a much more reasonable 3.5 amps for ten minutes. Still quite a few watts, but not as unreasonable.
Also, laptop batteries have multiple cells. Perhaps they could be charged in series in an ordering such that adjacent batteries were not recharged in direct sequence, spreading the 'hot spots' out over time.
There seem to be a lot of ways to potentially slow down the recharge to make the technology more reasonable/scalable, while still having a relatively fast recharge. I'd love to be able to recharge my laptop in the ten minutes between classes, or go halfway in five. It would extend my percieved battery life incredibly. Getting to an outlet for a few minutes at a time is easy. An hour or two is more difficult, as lecture halls aren't wired.
I like the direction this is going...
Brian
Why not use UPS's with double the VA rating than the ones you currently have?
:-(
When he was building his new batteries with this technology, he accidentally burnt down his money tree
Get paid to code OSS
Not really. When politicians have a conflict of interest, that's the real world. When they engage in cronyism, that's where the problem comes in.
Can't you see [Bush]'s not fit for office?
Not really relevant. Your claim implied that only republicans are susceptible to the lure of oil money. Or perhaps have something against electric cars. Or something of that nature. I simply pointed out the incongruity of such a simplistic view.
In other words you have to recharge your recharger for an hour before you can charge your battery in 10 minutes...
Not that this is really a problem - since your recharger doesn't have to be mobile. I just liked the irony of how that sounds...
Look again. 2.5V, 3906 W/kg, 20A rated.
And look at this one, 2,600 Farads, 2.5V, 600A rated (not a D cell package though).