Toshiba's One-Minute-Recharge Li-ion Batteries

TheGuano writes "No idea if this is related to Altair's six-minute-charge Li-ions,, but Toshiba has just announced a similar Li-ion that recharges to 80% capacity in one minute, while losing only 1% total capacity after 1000 cycles. It's set to debut in 2006 for use in hybrid cars (my current Toshiba Satellite doesn't get very far on battery power, but it's a beautiful shade of blue), but 'should' make its way to other, hopefully smaller devices eventually."

Comments

Different recharging techniques.

[sanityspeech]

To answer the submitter's implied question (i.e. No idea if this is related to Altair's six-minute-charge Li-ions...) I would have to say that it is unlikely that both are using the same technology.

From the New Scientist article:

Altair's patented modification is ... achieved using a carefully controlled sequence of evaporative steps when making the lithium titanate [nano]crystals.

From the press release by Toshiba:

A breakthrough technology applied to the negative electrode uses new nano-particles to prevent organic liquid electrolytes from reducing during battery recharging. The nano-particles quickly absorb and store vast amount of lithium ions, without causing any deterioration in the electrode.

It would be futile for Toshiba to try to mimic Altair, since the New Scientist article also states:

...The firm is keeping the chemistry that allows it to do this pretty close to its chest for commercial reasons. But the patent (US 6689716) reveals that the increased surface area is achieved using a carefully controlled sequence of evaporative steps when making the lithium titanate crystals.

Hybrid car charging is going to be exciting

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Let's say you want to charge a 48V 500AH battery from 50% charged in 5 minutes.... That's going to want approx 3000A * 48V = 144kW of juice. At, say, 70% mechanical to electrical efficiency that's 206kW == 275 horse power.... and still leave some for the air conditioner and turning the wheels. Hmmm.

Maybe this technology will allow the battery size to be reduced in hybrids. That would definitely cut some cost out of hybrids and make them more pocket friendly.

There go the circuit breakers

[JoeBuck]

If you can put the same power into your battery in one minute that your laptop sucks out in two hours, it follows that, for that one minute, your battery sucks 120x the power. So, if your laptop uses 100W or power, you need 12 kW for a minute to recharge it. It's going to take a special circuit to deliver that power (100 amps at 120V).

Re:There go the circuit breakers

[wramsdel]

The extended-life battery for my laptop is 7.4V, 7800 mAH, discharge rate not stated. That implies that its capacity is 57.72WH. Given that I can run my laptop for ~4 hours on this battery, I think it's safe to say that my laptop does not consume 100W.

If I wanted (or were able) to charge this battery in one minute, it would require 468 amps at 7.4V, or 28.86A at 120V. Charge it in two minutes (ignoring all system losses and heat issues) and you've solved the 120V issue. You're still trying to push 234A at 7.4V, though, which would be a problem. At 10 minutes charge time, especially if you were able to integrate the charger with the battery pack, I can see how it might be feasible.

Re:one minute discharge

[ciroknight]

If you read the article, you'd see that the battery looses 1% of life after 1000 charge cycles. So you can see they already last quite a bit longer than typical Li-Ion batteries.

When can I expect one of these beasts in my iPod!!??

Re:one minute discharge

[dougmc]

But this ignores loss in capacity that may occur to do other factors, primarily exposure to heat.

To be more precise, Li-ion and Li-poly batteries lost most of their capacity in about two years, no matter how much use they get. (This assumes that they're not abused, of course. Abuse ruins them much faster.)

NiCd and NiMH cells, on the other hand, last longer, especially if not being charged and discharged a lot.

Re:So how much heat do these give off?

[Viceice]

You're not getting it. Just because the battery is capable of absorbing 80% of it's total capacity in a minute doesnit mean it must.

The real benefit here is from having a battery that is very efficient at absorbing energy in a situation where energy comes inconsistantly in intermittent intervels.

See, hybried cars charge the car battries when

1) The gas engine is running at such a situation where part of the power is used to run the car and part of it to charge it.

2) When the car is breaking.

So, when both situations occur isn'ty all that predictable and depends on the drivers driving style, meaning that the battery cannot get it's charge in a slow and steady stream but in occasional big gulps.

The problem with the big gulp today is that if the gulp is big enough and the battery can't take it, energy is going to waste. So this new battery solves that problem by giving the battery the ability to drink up energy faster then the car can generate it.

And if the reverse is true and the battery can discharge as fast, imagine what it can do for acceleration.

Re:chewbacca's flux capacitor

[gnuman99]

Drive train? What? Electic cars have motors in the wheels. Well, at least true electric cars. The motors and bearings are sealed. The maintenance is virtually nothing.

Electric motors bring true 4x4 power to cars. Don't know how that can be done? Look here about Variable Speed Drives http://www.psnh.com/Business/SmallBusiness/Motor.a sp

Now about recharging, well, true, it will be hell of a lot of current on the battery cells. But that does NOT mean a lot of current in the input. If you want to recharge a 100Ah 24V battery, that's about 24*100=2.4kWh and recharge in 1 minute, you need to provide

• 6000A @ 24V
• 1200A @ 120V
• 300A @ 480V
• 30A @ 5kV

ASIDE: Motor effiency is >>95%, not some 70% crap. Even if you have have physical gears, you get >90% efficiency for the entire drive train. http://www.tech-m4.com/eng/tm4transport/moto_centr almotor/

The answer is high voltage input and it can be done. Especially in the US/Canada where power is distributed at high votage (ie. no need to worry about melting transmission lines).

Anyway, the battery cannot be recharged this way because the wires feeding the battery would melt, although more research in superconductors could fix this problem.