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Recharge Batteries in 30 Secs

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the i'll-believe-it-when-i-see-it dept.

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?

20 of 423 comments (clear)

  1. Moore's Law? by coulbc · · Score: 5, Funny

    So, 7.5 seconds in 18 months?

    1. Re:Moore's Law? by robslimo · · Score: 5, Informative

      Hmm, they may have some competition on the speedy recharge front, Moore improvements yet?

      350 F, 2.5 V UltraCapacitors in D cell size from Maxwell Technologies.

    2. Re:Moore's Law? by robslimo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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).

  2. Bad News . . . by StefanJ · · Score: 5, Funny

    . . . they're only available in "A" and "B" cells.

    Stefan

  3. "NEC has developed organic radical batteries" by laetus · · Score: 5, Funny

    Somehow I get a picture in my mind of Japanese engineers studying how Berkeley hippies have the energy for university classes AND for protesting every cause under the sun. :)

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  4. Heat by Prince+Vegeta+SSJ4 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I saw no mention of the level of heat generated when charging a battery this fast. I haven't worked out any equations, but I was under the impression that there was a certain amount of heat generated per unit of time when charging / discharging batteries.

    1. Re:Heat by lcsjk · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  5. Good vs Bad by Dark+Lord+Seth · · Score: 5, Funny
    Good news, they won't (probably) cost more than the current NIMH batteries.

    The bad news is that they start to pulsate gamma radiation, require the sacrifice of an unborn child conceived during a full moon and each recharged battery causes an angel to lose his or her wings.

    Please, think of the angels!

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  6. Conversion ratio? by TheDigitalOne · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  7. Possibly some safety issues by PIPBoy3000 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    From the article:
    The battery can also discharge power in a short time, making it useful in applications requiring a large amount of power.

    One of the nice things about current batteries is that you can't get them to discharge very quickly. Shorting these out might cause excessive heat issues.
  8. fast discharge too... by Polo · · Score: 5, Funny

    So fast discharge is allowed as well...

    At first, I thought of quick-charging camera flashes. Maybe even video with flashes? But then I started thinking about railguns and emp devices...

  9. Picture by Fortress · · Score: 5, Informative

    You can see a picture of it here:

    http://www.nni.nikkei.co.jp/FR/TNKS/TNKSHM/newpr o/

  10. Yikes! by dpbsmith · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If we assume that these batteries have a capacity of 1000 mah, which seems like a reasonable figure since they say they can power an MP3 player for 80 hours, then charging it in 30 seconds implies that during the charging process it is accepting 120 watts.

    a) That's not going to be any tiny little wall transformer doing the charging.

    b)I sure hope they have the safety and quality assurance issues worked out, because if it doesn't shut off at the exact instant when the battery is fully charged, that 120 watts is going to go somewhere.

    It might not be much more dangerous than a firecracker but I suspect it could be pretty dramatic.

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  11. perhaps you assume too much by way2trivial · · Score: 5, Insightful
    it does not say it uses electricity to recharge.

    perhaps a 30 second recharge means, opening a cap, dumping the contents, and refilling it.. (no heat involved)

    note the words organic and resin

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    1. Re:perhaps you assume too much by bobbozzo · · Score: 5, Funny
      if it was electricity, wouldn't the creation of a recharger be trivial?

      Unless it needs liquid helium cooling! :p

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    2. Re:perhaps you assume too much by nrlightfoot · · Score: 5, Interesting

      liquid helium isn't a good coolant, becuase it's heat capacity is very low. Liquid nitrogen is a much better coolant, and it's also much cheaper. Besides, that battery might not even work at 77k, much less at 4k.

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    3. Re:perhaps you assume too much by rgmoore · · Score: 5, Informative
      if it was electricity, wouldn't the creation of a recharger be trivial?

      Not necessarily; there are some practical problems with this kind of charger. Consider that a typical AA NiMH battery has a charging capacity of about 2 Ah at a voltage of 1.2 V. That's 2 Ah * 3600 s/h * 1.2 V = 8640 J. To charge that in 30 seconds, you need 8640 J / 30 s = 288 W, and that's assuming no losses anywhere. If you want to recharge 4 batteries at a time, you'll need a charger that draws 10+ amps of 120 VAC. A single D battery can have a capacity of up to 11 Ah, so you'd need about 1600 W to recharge one in 30 s. That means that a dual battery charger would draw over 25 amps at 120 VAC. Since most wall sockets are only rated at 15 amps, you'd need a dedicated circut for your charger! It's not an insurmountable problem, but it would make this style of battery a bit less practical.

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  12. more info by vittal · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www2.electrochem.org/cgi-bin/abs?mtg=012&ab s=0186&type=pdf
    Abs. 186, IMLB 12 Meeting, (C) 2004 The Electrochemical Society, Inc.

    Organic Radical Battery:
    Transition-metal free Lithium-ion Battery

    Kentaro Nakahara, Jiro Iriyama, Shigeyuki Iwasa, Masahiro Suguro and Masaharu Satoh

    Fundamental & Environmental Research Laboratories
    NEC Corporation

  13. This would be... by vsack · · Score: 5, Funny

    A good compliment to my current laptop battery which, at 3 years of age, discharges in under 30 seconds.

  14. Not so hot. by Fzz · · Score: 5, Interesting
    1200mAh. 1.2V. OK, so P=VI and P=E/t, so E=VIt.
    Thus the battery holds about 1.2 * 3600 * 1.2 = about 5KJoules.

    90% charge efficient means 500Joules as heat.

    E = c * m * delta_T
    where c = specific heat capacity, m = mass, delta_T = temperature change.

    According to Sony, a AA battery is 30g. I don't know what the specific heat capacity of a battery is, but metals are between 0.1 and 0.9, and water is 4. Lets assume it's 1.0 J/gK.

    delta_T = E/c*m = 500/(1.0 * 30) = 16 celcius.

    That's about 30F for those of you who like odd units. Not such a big deal.

    Of course the 90% number is drawn out of the air.