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Lithium-Sulfur Batteries Unveiled
mobilemag writes "Sion Power is showing off its new Lithium-Sulfur battery design this week at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC). SION believes that its new Lithium-Sulfur (Li-S) batteries are the answer to the power hungry devices on the market today."
its sulphur
That man tried to kill mah Daddy
Li-S could be easily packed into the tinniest devices
That means it'll be great for powering my tinny DVD, my tinny digital camera, in fact anything tinny and of far-Eastern manufacture.
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
What about heat? I know that isn't always a big deal with batteries, but if you've got a device like a laptop, it can become a huge issue. I can imagine these powering the PowerBook G6 or something.
Right, so much for 'news'. Call me when "still 3-5 years away" becomes "now available", then we'll give it a good look. As for fuel cells, they have been coming "Real Soon Now" (C) since... What? ... 2000 or so? Chances are we'll be stuck with Li-Ion batteries for quite a few years to come.
Hate me!
" Li-S is still 3-5 years away." Wow just in time for 4.6Ghz longhorn laptops!
This Sig is removed due to factual inaccuracy
How about instead of making better batteries, we make it so the electronics don't use as much electricity? I think working on effeciency would be better. If someone is more knowledgable about this subject, though, feel free to correct me.
blog & fiction: jd87
Well, these batteries might smell bad, but atleast they won't be depressed about it.
This is a special excite
This
It all comes down to how many mah (milliamp-hours) the battery can output, and the voltage/drain curve (not sure what the correct name for this is), and I don't see either of those things on this website. So until then, don't bother getting excited.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
More battery info here
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
It doesn't say anything about the cell sizes. (It does say "with a better power/weight ratio than anything on the market, Li-S could be easily packed into the tinniest devices"
The thing that's so attractive to me about NiMH's is they come in standard AAA and AA sizes. I make sure all my electronics take those (instead of say Lithimum Ion, which is usually proprietary), and then I can run everything on the same "fleet" of batteries.
I hope this tech follows suit. (I imagine it won't at first, but will eventually)
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Q. what would the battery industry give me if I developed a lightweight, portable, inexhaustible power supply?
A. A horse's head in my bed.
Unknown host pong.
The major reason we need these ultra-fast and hot Pentiums in our machines is crap, inefficient software. Look at Longhorn: it wants 2G of RAM and a two CPUs.
A friend of mine has a RiscOS box running a 100MHz ARM cpu. It is slicker than my Winshit PC with a 2GHz processor.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
We produce tons of sulfur waste every day simply because it's an abundant element to begin with. It may not smell nice when mixed with other things (as pure sulfur in its crytal form is nearly oderless), but it doesn't pose a significant health risk.
Heavy metals, petrolium distilates, and other exotic chemicals are still the greatest threat to landfill leaching.
All in all, with only 300 charges, I'll keep my fingers crossed they come up with something better.
For Crissakes people, if you own a car you're driving around with a Lead-Acid battery. Guess what type of acid it uses? Sulfuric. As in it has sulfur in it. Does your car smell like farts or rotten eggs? Not unless you're farting in it.
UPS systems also use AGM (absorbed glass mat) lead acid batteries. Don't smell any farts coming out of your UPS, do you?
Likewise, no, your laptop or PDA will not smell because of a battery containing sulfur. You'll have to keep blaming your flatulence on the dog.
That Longhorn will be able to run on a laptop more than 30 minutes!
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With gaming laptops weighing in at nearly 10lbs. and a battery life between 50 minutes and two hours, it seems they are less than portable.
Perhaps the Lithium-Sulfur batteries can provide a reasonable amount of time without adding weight--bringing portability back to laptops. Afterall, all of the wireless technologies are useless when you're tied to an AC outlet.
You missed the 2V thing. Storage is energy, and so measured in Joules or Watt-hours, not mAh, (or if you want, mAh at a given voltage).
Sulphur: 2*4.5 = 9 Wh
NiMH : 1.25*5 = 6.25 Wh
So sulphur is better, if not by that much.
the Ultralife rechargable batteries
have half (max 162 Wh/kg) the energy
density of the new Sion Lithium-Sulphur
cells (300 Wh/kg).
See:
Sion tech description
Ultralife batteries specs sheet
Okay, I have been working with Lithium Chemistries in batteries for 4 years now as a member of the UMR Solar Car Team (http://solar42.umr.edu).
First a few things about Lithium based batteries. When they say a cycle life of 300 or 500 cycles that means the 80% thresh hold. In other words at 300 or 500 cycles, the "lifetime" of the battery you will still see 80% capacity when all those cycles are through. That doesn't signify the end of the battery either, we have some LG Chemical Lithium Ions (176 Wh/kg) that are 4 years old and still doing well. The problem is that after 2 years the chemicals inside the battery start reacting and could theoretically internally short, causing a dead battery, fires, or the classic cell phone battery explosion, yes that can happen. For this reason we are going to be disposing of those batteries soon, they pose a chemical hazard, you should also do that after 2 years with your cell phone battery just incase.
In comparison to Nickels, Li batteries are much better 90-95% charge efficient (what you get out compared to what you put in). Nickels range from 60-75%. They are MUCH more energy dense (175 Wh/Kg - 500 Wh/Kg (theoretical limit I think)) while Nickels range in the 75 Wh/Kg range. And oh yeah Lithiums don't get hot, one crucial issue with Nickel based batteries is the end of charge temperature can hit 150+. Also cycle life is better Nickels can get about 200 cycles before they hit the 80% mark, and well that is only if you treat them very nicely. Lithiums are more forgiving with some missuse (just don't over volt them).
So all in all Lithium Chemistries are pretty much the best battery format out there now, and for a while too. Lithium is the most energy dense element after all. This is why everyone is switching over to them for just about any serious work. sure cycle life is low, nothing compared to a Lead Acid, but companies are working on that, hell 5 years ago a lithium cell that lasted 200 cycles was impressive now Kokam sells Lithiums with 500 cycles and still 80% life with a starting capacity of over 200 Wh/Kg, roughly 4 times as energy dense as a Lead Acid.
Thanks for reading if you made it this far.