Battery Development Off The Beaten Path

Roland Piquepaille writes "Let's face it. Our computing devices are going faster year after year. But our laptop batteries don't show the same performance improvement. They still work only for a few hours, just a little bit more than ten years ago. Several companies want to change this, according to this UPI report, 'Nanotechnology improving energy options.' For example, mPhase Technologies plans to introduce smart batteries based on millions of silicon nanotube electrodes. These nanobatteries, to be introduced before the end of 2005, will last longer than traditional ones and will be respectful of our environment. Meanwhile, Konarka Technologies wants to reduce the weight of batteries with its flexible solar-fueled nanobatteries. You'll find more details and pictures in this overview."

Comments

Re:Why not nuclear batteries?

[AKAImBatman]

Why is this marked as funny? I stated the same thing but with an explanation and diagrams of how it would work. Nuclear batteries (actually radioisotope batteries since there's no actual nuclear fission occurring) are a very real, very useful, and very ignored technology. RTGs are the first generation technology. SRGs (Stirling Radioisotope Generators) are second generation, and promise to be smaller, lighter, and more powerful.

Actually, they aren't.

[Moderation abuser]

This post was meant for battery power vehicles, but the tecnology applies to small devices as well. Battery technology is massively in advance of where they were 15 years ago. Viable battery powered vehicles are hear now. They're just still bloody expensive.

The current battery technologies are:

Lead acid: 200 year old technology. Give this a performance index of 1. It's cheap and simple.

NiCd: Heavy metals but good high current. Performance of 2x the lead acid. Performance 2.

NiMH: Getting rid of the heavy metals. Lighter as well. Performance of around 3x that of a lead acid battery.

LiON: Light, performance 5 x that of a lead acid battery.

They obviously get more expensive the more advanced they are. You can expect to get around 70-80miles out of a lead acid battery. Multiply that by the performance factors for the newer technologies.

New technologies, still up and coming. Used in small scale applications, mobile phones, laptops.
Li-Poly. Lighter and can handle more cycles than LiON but not much more power.

Lithium Sulphur batteries (Li-S) promise to more than double the capacity of LiON batteries, 10X that of a lead acid battery. That's a 700-800 mile range on a single charge, not even Diesel vehicles get that. I think these will do the job of killing petrol vehicles. Superior performance, superior range.

Basically. You don't discard the batteries when they wear out. Trade them in at 100,000 miles and get a "new" or refurbished set.

This *is* all nifty technology but still expensive due to manufacturing capacity.