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Batteries Becoming Limiting Step For Portable Toys
grqb writes "Reuters is reporting that strong growth for portable devices such as laptop computers, game and music players, PDAs and mobile phones is expected to pressure battery manufacturers to improve their products, which are quickly becoming the limiting step in portable technology development. The lithium-ion battery technology that is commonly used hasn't changed in several years. The race is on to find battery technologies that are lighter and have increased life, but major breakthroughs don't seem to be on the horizon other than the lithium polymer battery, which can squeeze roughly 10-20% more life than lithium-ion. Micro fuel cells that run off of methanol are touted to be the next major wave for portable power, although logistics and price still make these fuel cells long shots, which is why Nokia recently dropped development of this technology."
I thought DRMs and other proprietory license BS is holding the market back.
The Solution: Nuclear Batteries
The market is practically screaming for a battery that doesn't run down in a short period of time. At the very least, nuclear radioisotope technology could be used to create batteries that have longer lives and recharge themselves. If the full potential of this technology were used, then our devices could be powered for YEARS without replacing the battery. Potentially, the battery could even outlast the device!
I realize a lot of people have concerns over the safety of nuclear batteries. But before you run off half-cocked, consider a few points:
1. They use the radiation for power. As a result, the batteries would be designed to capture as much of it as possible. In the case of Alpha and Beta radiation, that can easily reach 100% even if power isn't realized for all of the radiation.
2. You're probably sitting on a highly unstable, very dangerous bomb right now. See that Lithium-Ion battery in your phone? It just happens to be a powerful explosive.
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They have been the limiting step ever since devices started using batteries.
I wouldn't care if my laptop battery only lasts 3 hours if I can recharge it in 5 minutes.
PDAs and mobile phones is expected to pressure battery manufacturers to improve their products
Battery manufacturers are expected to pressure PDAs and mobile phones fanboys to stop producing inefficient and power-hungry products.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Seriously, Batteries have been the limiting factor in toys since I was a kid, and that's a /long time/. Remote control cars were and still are a joke, and handhelds are just as bad. "Good" mp3 players measure their battery life in hours, not days and even my cell phone can't hold a charge for the entire weekend, and all it is is a battery with a phone attached.
"Becoming?"
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We're already having problems with enough PE being stored in batteries for them to explode occasionally... Is everyone certain that MORE energy being stuffed into chemically based batteries for toys that children play with is a good idea? I mean, there comes a point where selling something 'new' increases its danger level a bit higher than we're willing to go, right?
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I've been using Lithium Polymer batteries for quite some time on my electric remote control airplanes. They are amazingly light weight, pack a lot of energy and can handle enormous current loads. My airplanes draw up to 10 Amps of steady current from my 7.4V 1500 mAh batteries, although typical flights use much less, about 12 to 14 minutes per charge of constant flying.
The downsides to LiPoly are the same as LiIon. They are expensive and don't have an operational lifetime that is very long. They wear out just sitting on the shelf. I anticipate having to replace my airplane batteries every year or so. LiPoly batteries also take a long time to completely charge. Filling an empty 1500 mAh battery takes almost one and a half hours at 1.5 A charging current. Also if a LiPoly is every discharged below a certain voltage, the cells are ruined.
Its the Energizer lobby you have to watch out for. They keep going, and going, ...
My other car is a Popemobile
These offer long life at the expense of low power. They are good for pacemakers and things in inaccessible environments where the wattage requirements aren't high but the replacement cost is huge. They are not suitable for consumer electronics stuff.
A radioactive source with sufficient power to run a laptop would require significant cooling, especially when the laptop was shut off. For an idea of what it would be like, think of the RTG devices that we attach to space probes in the outer solar system. (Or that are scattered across the former Soviet Union.) Those things usually generate several hundred watts.
All the belly aching around here... Sheesh. We're working on it, ok? The DOE, DARPA, Office of Naval Research, Air Force, etc etc etc are handing out money for battery projects and I assure you that the next new battery technology will NOT be serendipitous, rather it will be the result of years of (frustrating) research building on discoveries dating all the way back to wet towels and copper discs.
Battery technology is slow to develope because it is not easy to pack a bunch of electrons in a tiny space wedged up against a huge electron sync and then ask them to not only sit there and like it, but to merrily hop back up the hill after being discharged, then sit around on the electrode until we ask for them again. You can't just stuff them in a box - they repel each other. They are happiest when they can delocalize over a network of big positively charged nuclei, but the problem with electrons is happy = low potential = low half cell potential = the need for many cells = big form factors... You get the idea.
Now take all that and add to it Nature's silly idea of charge balancing. When electrons flow they create a chrage imbalance that must be exactly balanced by positive charges. Now positive charges don't grow on trees like electrons, they tend to be HUGE by comparison and they like to swim. Now batteries with liquid electrolytes just aren't pratical so we have to use various glassy polymers and "gels" (or dry cell or whatever) that are fabulous ion conductors, but crappy electron conductors. It took years of research to find a medium that lithium ions could flow through without getting stuck right away and what we ended up with isn't even that great...
Battery technology will have to move in one of two directions and be coupled with dramatic cuts in power consumption by portable devices. First, fuel cells. These are great because you harvest electrons from REDOX reactions rather than stuffing them into lithium intercalated graphite or whatever hideously unstable electrode configuration is demanded by the charged state. Of course they can't be recharged and right now they suck because, and where have I heard this before, the best ion conductors (which you still need for fuel cell batteries) only perform well at a balmy 80% humidity and (and I'm not 100% sure on this) about 50 deg. C... The other option is "nanotechnology" (hang on, have to smack myself for using a buzzword) which could allow us to tuck thin films or tiny spheres or scrolls or whatever into very small spaces. This is important because it allows us to use very small half cell potentials to produce large open circuit voltages by wiring up thousands of teeny-tiny cells in our "nanobattery" (smack, smack) arrays.
So either go out and invent safe nuclear batteries or tiny hamsters that can fit on tiny hampster wheels that can fit inside my iPod and go weeks without hamster food, or accept the fact that battery technology is a real bugger... I mean we (scientists) aren't that lazy; some problems are just harder than others to solve. Why can't we get all over the electrical engineers to make lower power consumption devices? Can we harp on Taiwan for not trying hard enough to bring OLEDs to market? Maybe we should just build robots that turn us into batteries...
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
When I was growing up, all devices used one of four types of batteries. If you were going to take your portable music streaming device camping with you, you might go to one of roughly 100,000,000 battery retailers and buy some extras. This, with 1980s level technology!
Then, they decided to make a different, wonky-sized battery for every device. So the game boy, Palm, cell, and iPod all need different wall warts to charge their different batteries, and making these 'portable' devices portable on the road is a major PITA.
We should take a clue from the past and use standarized sized batteries. Whenever I can I buy devices that use standardized batteries, and I charge them, and whoa, it works. I don't have to pay for millions of chargers. If I need high performance batteries for my camera, I shell the $ for them, but if I'm going for a long bike trip, I put the good batteries in my bike light.
Apperantly Joe-sixpack-2005 is not smart enough to read the 'batteries included' label that Joe-sixpack-1980 had no problems with.