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Li-Ion With 300% More Power, Minutes to Recharge
Battery Nut writes "Altair Nanotechnologies claims to have found a way to reduce Li-Ion recharge time to minutes, as well as increase battery power by 300%, according to this press release.
Seems they have received some good feedback by certain experts about thier work: "Two eminent experts in battery technology, Dr. K. M. Abraham and Dr. Vassilis G. Keramidas, have expressed strong support for Altair's work. "
So is it a new revolution in battery technology, or hopeful hype? Stay tuned, their quarterly conference call is Thursday Feb 24th at 11AM." Anyone else think snake oil?
Not everybody thinks so. Altair's stock has gone from $2 to $4+ this past week. It topped out at over $6 last Friday. Their average volume is at 6.6 Million. Yesterday, they doubled it.
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
A recharge time of 2 mins is about the same time it might take me to refill my car, So this makes it quite viable as an alternative 'fuel'.... However, the cables from the 'pump' would have to be hugely thick to carry that sort of power.
This bodes well for everything that runs on batteries that can take advantage of this.. with some exceptions like Lead Acid batteries of cars and such. Just think.... my iBook and Powerbook laptops last much longer on a fresh battery than a comparably equipped Intel Mobile Pentium based laptop or even more energy conservative chips... point being... the 5 hours my iBook can get could be well past 10 with intensive use and energry saving stuff set to a minimum. This will bode well for all. Now my PCs can run over 2-3 hours max of use when not using a DVD. Whoo hoo. Plus maybe now electric cars can get a full 300-500 miles of city driving or such, and hybrids will benefit as for smaller batteries with a similar range/capacity. Now if improvements in technology like this could spur other improvements to make life easier and more affordable for all.
Given the current state of battery life, I'm inclined to think this technology might bring along other trade-offs. Current Lithium batteries tend to lose their full charge capacity after using them for a while. If these batteries charge faster and retain more power, what's to stop them from losing that capacity just as quickly?
Personally, I'd be happy not having to replace a battery because it becomes useless after a while. They aren't cheap, and they lose their life too quickly. I guess 2 out of 3 wouldn't be bad, though.
The real problem with new fangled almost-magic batteries is going to be the liability from ISD (Instantanious Spontanious Discharge). I've seen a video of a test with a lab rat, and all I can say is you'll want to keep these things out of reach of rodents! (And that I'm glad I wasn't there to watch it in person!)
--MarkusQ
The only article I could get to said that the technology "will allow a tripling of battery life." That would seem to indicate that it will make the batteries last for three times as long rather than hold 3x more power at once. It would be nice to have a battery that held 3x the power, but a battery that needed replacing every ~3 years vice every year would be great as well.
Any one else interpret it the same way?
Cheers,the_crowbar
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Can't RTFA because it's /.ed, but it looks to me like they have increased the power capability by increasing the surface area within a given volume so that it can produce a larger current, much in the same way that the lungs can produce a large exchange of O2 and CO2 due to their large surface area.
This has nothing to do with capacity, which presumably is unchanged from more conventional technology.
Not a bad thing in itself of course, if it expands the market for which LiIon is suitable.
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How come I cannot find anything on the two guys mentioned above? Very very little that doesn't relate directly to the press release. I found a little on Dr. Kerimidas at http://www.valence.com/BoardMembers.asp but hardly anything on the other. If they are so eminent, why aren't there any papers? Citation?
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
The problem is the more densely used lithium is, the more dangerous it is. And normal LiIon batteries are really pushing the extremes of safety now.
Of course if your only other option is nuclear laptop batteries then maybe they're not so bad.
There are a lot of people who defend Moore's law is a particular case of a more general law, stating that science evolves on an exponential scale. So, we might end up calling this exponential growth Moore's law, even if Moore only observed that effect in transistor density. I'd not call it wrong.
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They carefully avoid the word "capacity" in the press release. This and the claim about faster charge makes me think that they somehow managed to reduce the internal resistance of the battery, but the capacity (measured in Ampere-hours) hasn't changed.
"3 times the power" probably means that the battery can yield 3 times higher current when discharged into a short circuit (before exploding). But the energy storage capacity is the same. I believe that battery technology is already pretty close to the theoretical limit here.
This new development may allow to replace NiCd batteries in very high current applications, which is good.
This all sounds like BS to me. Our lab is part of a nation-wide program to develop new battery technologies and I have no idea why they claim lattice strain as the main cause for eletrode fatigue... The problem with ANY battery is that ions have to move as the battery is charged/discharged. These ions are all lithium in lithium-ion batteries (AKA lithium rocking chair or rocker batteries). The material between the electrode compartments has to be a insulator able to transport Li+ reliably. Since liquids in batteries are not such a good thing they use various gel mixtures for this medium (and the rate of ion diffusion is inversly related to viscosity). Every charge/discharge cycle more an more ions get stuck and hence lower the capacity of the battery over time.
The "problem" electrode as far as I know is actually the graphite (like the stuff in pencils) end which get's reduced and forms a lithium salt. When you hook up battery the graphite re-oxidizes, sending the electrons through the circuit and Li+ through the insulating medium. Most "nanomaterials" focus on increasing the surface area of this electrode to allow for more efficient (and rapid) charge storage/discharge. At the other electrode is some (probably cystalline) inorganic oxidant which does break down over time. My guess is that they just found some new inorganic electrode material that is slightly better and they, like EVERY other lab, are claiming they've "solved" the Li-ion battery problem. I've seen way too many talks from people claiming essentially the same thing to put my grains of salt away just yet.
But hey, I'm not on the nanobattery (did you barf?) project and am by no means an expert, so someone please correct me if I'm wrong... FYI "nano" makes me want to puke too. Every week there is some jack-ass giving a talk about "nanomaterials" that are MICROns in size and characterized with MICROscopy. In chemistry land (where I live) a nanometer might as well be a mile (except electrons tunnel more frequently) 'cause atoms are really freaking tiny and that's what we've been using to build our materials for over 200 years : )
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
What kills Li-on is heat, current li-on are good at flat power output, but no good for high current like portable electric drills, in any event charging is worked out in "C"
e.g. a 2000 mAh cell charged at 2 ampere for 1 hour is charged at 1C, charge at 0.5 amperes and it's 0.25C
Li-on typically, irrespective of capacity, are constant current constant voltage charging, and 80% of the charging is done in the first hour, with up to two more hours to top off the remaining 20%
They don't say recharging to 80%, they say recharging, but we'll play in their favour and assume it's 80% charging they are talking about.
60 minutes normal charging time over 3 minutes claimed charging time = 60/3=20
one twentieth the time, add real world electrochemisty and physics and rule of thumb lets say 25 x the charging current is required, pushing that current is going to take some serious charging voltage, which will totally screw every li-on battery chemistry and more importantly li-on safety circuits won't allow those sorts of volatges.
Quite apart from the voltage aspect, charging currents of the order of 25 times greater than present = LOTS of heat and MUCH heavier duty kit (150 watt dell cmains brick replaced with a 3.5 Kw 3 phase charger) and heat = lithium death.
No, I think if there is any truth at all in this article is will apply only to a very specialised and small capacity cell, not a laptop sized device.
my 2c etc
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You wont find what you're looking for because it doesn't exist, nor was it ever claimed. I RTFPR, and easily understood is said:
..."
"These new materials allow rechargeable batteries to be manufactured that have three times the power of existing Lithium Ion batteries at the same price
There is no claim of increase in power density here, only a claim that it can be made at 1/3 the cost.
Cheaper, yes, but super battery this makes not.
One of the big reasons you're getting fantastic battery life is that your batteries are new. As laptop batteries age, they lose an enormous amount of their storage capacity. It's even worse if you leave a laptop plugged in most of the time. Laptop "battery conditioning" circuitry seems to greatly reduce the life of batteries, no matter what kind of laptop you have. I've got these Dell Latitudes at work that come with two batteries. Because we have crappy power here, I always leave one plugged in and only swap the other one in when I'm on the road (they hold charge really well though, so leaving it out for a month is not a problem). After a year the battery I left in the laptop all of the time has about 1/3 of the runtime of the one I only swapped in occasionally. This is not unique to Dells either, every laptop brand I've ever used (going back to Powerbook 170s and the like) has the same problem. If you leave the batteries in all of the time the laptop will kill them.
I read the internet for the articles.
My friend quotes some guy from Lockheed who is an LiIon battery engineer (I think) and says that LiIon batteries should be charged all the time because they have a set number of charge cycles (around 100?). i.e. do not let them drop below 70%, if you do it counts as charge a cycle. But your post contradicts this other methodology.
I have a Dell and I used to run the battery down all the way, and it has lasted for around 3 years. Several months ago I started to have the unit plugged in all the time with the battery installed. Now the battery is dead, but I cannot say for sure if it was due to me cycling the battery or of the recent change in usage pattern.
Can anyone with more qualifications comment?