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Nanostructured Li-ion Batteries for Electric Cars
schliz writes "Researchers at the Delft University of Technology are developing nanostructured batteries that are expected to deliver more usage between charges, and shorter charge/discharge times, to mobile consumers within the next five years. The batteries will improve electric and hybrid vehicles, researchers say."
Battery technology will experience a sort of Moore's Law with the demand for hybrid and all-electric vehicles. This is just one of the first stories.
I'm always a bit skeptical of such items till I understand how likely it is to cause a fire in my garage while I'm sleeping or when accelerating away from a stop light. New tech is great, but means not a lot till tested in the real world.
With battery technology, the higher the density, the higher the chances of uncontrolled energy release. When it's safe and fairly cheap, then I'll be really interested.
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now can have smaller mobile phones! :)
Will this patent monopoly on the new tech be used to kill it, just like NiMH batteries were prevented from powering cars by the car and oil corporations?
--
make install -not war
Doesn't that mean the battery life has gone down? I thought that was a bad thing. Can someone please explain?
batteries that are expected to deliver more usage between charges, and shorter charge/discharge times
I believe Sony has perfected the battery with the absolute fastest discharge time. I don't see how this can compete.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Lead Acid batteries?
They have good energy density and can deliver considerable voltage for their size, and we've been using them for a very long time. It seems to me that perhaps someone should try researching different formulas for the acid and the chemistry of the plates.
Sure, they're heavy and there's always the danger of a rupture but they are good at doing what batteries are supposed to do, storing and releasing electricity.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
the link just goes the the computerworld homepage...
and doing a search on their site for the word "battery" yeilds no results...
and upon trying to click it again the site appears to have gone down...
and here I actually wanted to RTFA
-- Sex is the antonym of pringles. Once you pop it's time to stop.
i hope that these nice batteries could be available to buy retail or something like that. I have been wanting to build an electric roadster but access to good batteries is the problem.
Balderdash!
Lead Acid Batteries must always be stored in a charged state. If the battery is left in a discharged state, a condition known as Sulfation occurs which makes charging the battery again difficult.
"Never try to tell everything you know. It may take too short a time."
Yep. I'll believe there are advances in hybrids happening when you can actually go to a dealer in the US and buy a plugin hybrid without having to mod it yourself.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Effectively it is about a 35AH battery with a total energy delivery of 12V * 35AH = 420WH. The equivalent LiIon batteries would weigh, I guess, around 4kg with packaging. As a result, lead acid batteries are unsuited to any automotive use except those where they can substitute for ballast, such as boats and powered wheelchairs where the batteries help lower the centre of gravity.
Quite a lot of research has gone into the lead/peroxide cycle, especially given the constant desire to make them smaller and more reliable. It hasn't been hugely successful. You can have high discharge rates and long life at the expense of much more weight and much higher cost, but the nature of the cycle itself (the production and destruction of large amounts of lead peroxide) makes it hard to design a system that can handle many charge/discharge cycles without very large and heavy storage arrays.
Pining for the fjords
It's a not too well known fact that, in the beginning, a lot of things *were* actually powered by electricity, *before* something else took it over. That something else wasn't necessarily better then the batteries they'd replace, but, sadly, history is full of examples where a less good alternative wins over the market (betamax vs VHS, anyone?). Somtimes electricity did win (it replaced gas for lightening homes/streets) but sometimes, alas, it didn't.
The same was true for cars. Many would think cars were always powered by diesel/petrol, but nothing is further from the truth. In fact, there were many fuels used to drive cars when they were first developped, and electricity-driven cars were actually a rather considerable percentage of cars. But then petrol came and took it over for reasons that are unclear (it has been speculated that it might had something to do with the sound, strangely enough; it made for a more impressing 'look at me, here I am!' - not unimportant to the late-victorian elite of that time. Heck, even today half of the gadgets are bought to show off (blu-ray, HD-DVD, anyone?). In that time, battery- or oildriven cars were in fact ahead of the petrol ones, but that rapidly changed the more popular the petrol-using cars became. In a few decades, the rest was all but gone.
If that hadn't happend, it is obvious we would be FAR ahead of our current state of developement where batteries and electricity-storage is concerned (just like petrol-injection has come a long way since the 19thy century). Just imagine the state of technology now on the same scale as petrol has improved, and all what we invent now (including the nano-tubes) would probably have been developed ages ago. It would have led to efficiencies and yields we can only dream of today. And also imagine the impact it would have had on other areas; a lot less - or none at all - CO2 from cars (and maybe the petrol-industry as a whole would not have reached the peak it has today) and all the problems associated with that would not exist (maybe even les wars)! (Arguably, one would - maybe - have had a environmental problems with acids and such, from the batteries; in that respect, vegetable oil would have been best, perhaps.)
It's funny (well...) to think how one little thing in our history can lead to such huge (and possibly devastating) consequences for humanity more then a century later.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Fuel, whether it's in electrical or chemical form it is still fuel. A car does not become "greener" if it uses electricity. At the moment the likelihood that the electricity was produced by environmentally friendly means (IE not oil, not dams which destroy vast eco systems, not wind farms which kill birds) are very slim.
Currently the most efficient way to store and transfer energy for vehicles is chemical fuel of some sort that can be used in an internal combustion engine. There are diesel cars that get more MPG than hybrid cars. So why are we jumping on electricity when it is more expensive to produce (it would be cheaper for a power plant to produce hydrogen and deliver it to a petrol station than deliver the same electricity to your car) and carries with it a longer charge time (not to mention all the idle time discharging issues and being totally unusable below -15C). Then there's the issue of all the new infrastructure that needs to be put in for electric cars.
By all means develop better batteries, but please don't advertise them as replacement for liquid combustible fuel.
They did win the 3 last World Solar Challenges and recently a Solar boat race. I guess they think the battery capacity of 5 kWh allowed in the challenges asks for lighter batteries. They have been underestimated before
e
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http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Solar_Challeng
http://www.3me.tudelft.nl/live/pagina.jsp?id=74ad
Ernst
Personally, I am betting that the UltraCacpacitors will kill the batteries. Two that I am intrigued with are EEStor and MIT. EEStor is horribly sketchy, but backed by KliensPerkins (a major silicon valley VC). They have a long history of backing some major players. In addition, MIT's work appears headed in the right direction. The advantage of all this, is that this would allow home owners to recharge their cars at night and then use these cars either for driving OR for powering the home. This would give us the electrical storage capacity that we need for handling alternative power.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
In about 5 years we will have easy cyborgization sets, holographic tv, batteries that run your laptop for week between charges, fuel cells, 80 core processors, actually good hybrid/electric vehicles, good speech recognition engines, solar cells with 90% efficiency, solar cells with $5/square meter, and flying cars. Oh I forgot, also vista will be after sp2, and running stable and smooth on then normal computers. But It will be always currentYear()+5 :/
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
...[electricity] produced by environmentally friendly means (IE not oil, not dams which destroy vast eco systems, not wind farms which kill birds) ...nor, say, solar cells, because most are sealed and won't allow poor spiders to nest in them?!?Watch out, your computer screen is surrounded by something called reality. Common-sense may come in handy should you chose to visit it sometime.
The Impact on the environment is in processing/refining materials to get to the desired end product.
Recycle all of the silicon you want. You're still making a heck of an impact turning raw materials into a purified silicon wafer. Same goes with any highly processed item. Energy into fabrication of materials = harm to the environment in general... I think this is what he meant by impact from the specialized metals in these caps.
I agree partly, i give you that extracting the raw materials can be very harmful, but the energy required shouldn't be harmful. Still, we've thrown so much material away now, should we still be short on materials ? I think much money is to be made by 'harvesting' landfills.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Nanoscale Lithium battery technology leads me to think A123 cells. The cell from this startup are already on the market, powering handheld screwdrivers and model airplanes. They use a patented LiFePo4 reaction(or was there some sulfur in it too, dunno) and their process is much more ideal for automotive transport than NiMH(not enough energy density) or LiPo(Lithium polymer, it's what's making laptops go up in flames the last few years). LiPo has the highest energy density, but is very unsafe when punctured in a crash(or when overcharged): all energy in them will release in a short time, possibly causing fire as the decomposing polymer inside escapes as a flammable gas. The other drawback is that they have a very short lifespan: Max 500 charge-cycles (better count on 100-200) or 3 years (cells degenerate even when not in use). Thus far LiPo cells are prohibitively expensive, and no hybrid owner would like to fork over a few K every year for new batteries.
the A123 process is much more resilient wrt to abuse: you can run them down completely unlike LiPo or lead-acid, the stand overcharging much better, and if punctured they don't go up in flames. The company rates their cells as being able to deliver 2000 cycles, which is much more than lipo, NiMH, NiCad or Lead-acid.
And as far as I know, they have no ties to Delft University, but I have not read TFA yet...
They are here.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
Toshiba announced research on a technology for fast charging li-ions over two years ago. This was using nanotech materials for an improved anode (maybe cathode too), enabling fast charging (80% charge in one minute) and long life (99% capacity after 1,000 charges). A similar approach was also annouced, about the same time, by Altair Technologys in Reno. It's all about increasing the effective surface area of the anode, and perhaps making it from stronger stuff.
In traditional Li-ion cells, a big wear factor is that the anode can form a parasitic battery with the electrical contact, causing the terminal to eventually wear out, faster as you approach full cycling the battery. Heat is also a factor, in both terminals and the full cell... the higher internal resistance of the Li-ion vs. NiMH (or better still, NiCAD) limits peak power, and also increases the risk of damage or, particularly in quesitonably made cells, explosions.
Dramatic improvements in both of these are necessary to enable practical (in a commerical sense) pure electric vehicles (BEV). There's no conspiracy necessary... traditional NiMH cells are a problem for full electrics.. which the actual reason none of these cars have been successful. Not to mention the expense... the Toyota EV-RAV4, for example, cost $42,000 and gave you about 100 miles on a charge.. and that with Toyota still selling them at a loss (as they did in the early days of the Prius, too).
In a hybrid, the batteries are only partially cycled (my 2003 Prius runs the NiMH cells over 40% of their capacity range; Toyota extended this to about 60% on the models starting in 2004), and that keeps them very long lived. Natrually, better batteries make a better hybrid, but the fact my Toyota can only go about 2-3 miles on a full charge doesn't impact its general use; the issues around battery technology today make the BEV a small niche product.
But the energy density is just too low even full cycling NiMH to make a BEV with mass appeal... most people would demand at least 200-300 miles of range, charging times on-the-road similar to that of petrol fueling (not the minimum of 15-30 minutes you'll have with today's cells), and long life (full cycling NiMH, they're good for about 500-1000 charges).
Once you have a higher density cell that doesn't wear out and can be charged in under 5 minutes, full EVs will be practical enough for a mainstream automaker to POSSIBLY launch a full production car, not just an experiment. This is critical technology for improving hybrids as well, and keep in mind that all practical FCEVs will also be hybrids (fuel cells suck at peak power demands, they like to be slow and steady, so you need a battery or supercapacitor to enable the peaks).
-Dave Haynie
only matters when you're having to "fill up" mid-journey.
If you travel less than the "full charge" each day, you can top up overnight.
Let's assume an average cruising consumption of about 15kw for a small car. At 60mph with a 300 mile range, that's 75kwh. To charge those cells in 5 minutes, assuming an 80% efficiency, will need 75 * 12 * 1.25 =~ 1.1 Megawatts. At 440V, even with a 3-phase charger, that's over 1000 amps. At 11KV it's a more reasonable 100A, but the weight of the inverter gear and the shielded connector in the car is considerable and you are going to spend rather more than 5 minutes padlocking the interlocks and cross checking before and after charge. At 440V the main issue will be the weight of the cables. Three cores of around 400mm cross section each are rather heavy.
It's possible to imagine a world in which fuel stations supply exchange cells, but given the natural nervousness of most drivers when close to empty, it's unlikely to be practical or cost effective.
The model is wrong. You have to imagine a world in which car parks have charging stations that charge at reasonable rates, as do hotels and houses. You will need a general beefing up of the electricity distribution network, and you will need plenty of nuclear, solar and wind energy sources. And people will have to plan maybe a little further ahead than they do at present. Long trips will mandate an overnight stop. Probably a good thing as the only accidents I have ever had were after driving too long in a day.
On that model with a more reasonable 10-hour charge, the necessary charging rate is about 9KW - still a heavy cable, but with a socket about the size and complexity of the sort used for portable machines in factories and for boat shorepower.
Just don't try to use your wind turbine. In our location, to run my small car on its current, fairly low usage cycle, I would need a 6M diameter turbine on a 40M pylon, and I suspect the neighbours would object.
Pining for the fjords
Lithium doesn't really pack *much* more energy density (in terms of volume), but does do it with less weight. That's terrific.
But while lithiums handle deep discharge much better than lead-acid batteries, they're still not as good as NiCad or NiMh. They're also a lot more expensive. And, probably the best argument against them... look at the fires that happen when laptop (or even CELL PHONE) lithium cells are damaged or shorted. Now, imagine a car packing a thousand times more getting in an accident... Sure, you'll say, they can put over-current protection on them. But the batteries in laptops have the same protection, you have to think of *damaged* batteries.
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Every time I read about improvements in traction batteries I get angry at the way they missed their opportunity. If they had just kept manufacturing the EV-1 and selling it to the long waiting list of buyers, they could be riding the wave of improving battery technology.
Probably 80% of the cars I see on the road during that drive are commuting less than a hundred miles round trip.
To date, I've seen exactly one EV-1 on the road.
It was about five years ago that I saw my first Prius on the road. It was two years ago that I bought mine. I used to honk and wave to the other Priuses I saw. Now I can't even count the number I see on my commute.
If GM had developed the Prius in 2001, they probably would have cancelled them and crushed them in 2002 for "lack of demand."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I have to disagree with your leading statement. The energy density of lithium-ion batteries today is adequate for making practical electric cars. Of course more is always better, and I'm optimistic that it can be improved further -- but energy density is no longer the big sticking point that it was.
The little two-seat Tesla Roadster with a 250-mile range has been demonstrated, and multiple companies are now working on more practical four-door cars which can have a 200-mile driving range. This doesn't require any breakthroughs, and it will get you "to the next town" with very few exceptions.
The critical areas that need improvement are cost and service life. Tesla Motors are projecting a life span of five years or 100,000 miles for their carefully managed battery pack. That's much better than the two years you stated. I think with the research that is ongoing, service life will further improve over the next several years. (And GM are betting on this happening to make their Chevy Volt concept workable.)
I think the requirement that cars be "refueled quickly" is overstated. The longer the range becomes, the less you need to refuel or recharge it quickly. With a dependable 200-mile driving range between charges, and the ability to recharge overnight at home, most people won't need to stop at a charging station mid-trip all that often. If you can get the range up to about 500 miles, then rapid charging would become moot for the great majority of people. (At least speaking for myself, I don't think I've ever driven more than 300 miles in a day's time, and I wouldn't want to drive more than 500 in a day if I could possibly avoid it.)
I have looked into flywheel storage technology. It looked promising several years ago, but battery technology advanced faster and has left flywheels behind. Notable problems you have with flywheels are: energy density, energy losses while the flywheel is spinning idle, and safety concerns about its failure modes.
Indeed.
Nothing... unless you live near a mine or a smelter.
http://www.semissourian.com/story/1195543.html
Enivornmentally freindly? I guess so if it's not in your backyard.
The actual stored energy in Lithium is currently 20 TIMES greater by your own link.
Don't confuse power density with energy density. Power density is how fast you can discharge and almost a non-issue with any technology.
Energy density is how much actual energy you have stored and is the key factor, that ultracaps are behind on by an order of magnitude (20 times currently).
If all the theoretical projections make it into practice ultracaps will only halfway catch up with lithiums garden variety lithiums that exist today.
Pipe dream until that happens.
Every time a discussion on batteries comes up, someone brings up ultracapacitors as the savior wonder technology. Then they use power and energy densities interchangeably.
Power densities (KW/Kg) for electric cars are all but irrelevant for current technologies. All power density reflects is how fast you can discharge. For any battery containing sufficient energy density, there will be adequate power density. Any time you see power density being highlighted it is a red herring attempt to distract from the fact that energy density is poor (batteries or ultracaps).
Energy densities (KWh/Kg) are critical, this is how much stored energy you have and will determine range, and this is where even the best ultra capacitor are an order of magnitude behind. Your 40lb hybrid battery becomes a 400lb ultracapacitor to store the same energy. Hardly practical. Or that 200lb battery for a pure electic car, becomes a 2000lb ultracap.
Now there have been long on talk theoretical claims (EEstor) of catching up on the energy density, but NOTHING has been shown. Until someone delivers something with an almost order of magnitude increase in energy density, ultracaps are simply not suitable for driving electric cars.
It would be great if this could be delivered, but so far, I will believe when I see it, seems to be the best response.
I think research in this area is valuable, but I wouldn't sink my money into investing in hype. Pay attention to the energy density and ignore the power density.
... is the mechanical.
"Nano" to me implies that there are some really teensy-tiny structures in these batteries/capacitors.
What are their mechanical parameters? How rugged are they? Can they withstand travelling over a
washboard/cobblestone street? Can they survive various axes of impact and at what combined speeds?
What happens when the car is hit? by another car? by a tractor-trailer?
What kinds of things do the firefighters approaching the scene have to worry about? With a conventional
lead-acid battery in the front under the hood (most of the time; some vehicles have them in the rear
or under the back seat), a firefighter can readily snip the leads with a long pair of really heavy duty
wire cutters that they carry for that purpose on most response vehicles. But what would they have to do
when approaching a heavily damaged hybrid battery/supercap car? Is it possible that one wrong move could
potentially (a semi-intentional pun) cause a supercap to suddenly discharge to the vehicle frame and
shock the occupants and/or rescuers? What kind of hazardous material issues are created by a damaged
nanobattery or supercap? Do they react dangerously with water and/or firefighting foam? Do they emit
dangerous vapors either by themselves or upon contact with water or foam?
*ALL* of these issues need to be addressed - i.e., carefully design-reviewed and TESTED before we can
even start to think about deploying recharging stations. Believe me, there are a lot of FF/EMTs who are
not real thrilled about groping around in some of the current generation of electric/hybrid vehicles
with 300-600VDC buses.
Please understand that I'm not dissing the concept - I think the progress made to date in the fundamental
technology is fantastic, and it's great to see that there are still a lot of interesting ideas out there
that can be investigated further, and I hope they do it. But, the users of the technology need to keep
the big picture in mind, for everyone's sake.
No; you misread the article. It said that current commercial DLC's were at 6Wh/kg; then it went on to say that the technology in the paper offered 60Wh/kg, which is 1/2 LION, not 1/20th. Also 300,000 charge cycles. You just needed to read one paragraph further. I encourage you to do so.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I have heard theoretical claims like this before. EEstor who was supposed to supply complete ultra cap systems to power electric cars last year. They still haven't offered so much as a single cell for testing. Not even a small one off.
In theory, theory and practice are the same, in practice they aren't.
Realize they are talking about a theoretical order of magnitude improvement in energy density. I would love it if true, but often such things never see the light of day when rubber meets the road.
Nowhere has anyone yet to demonstrate a capacitor anywhere close in energy density to a garden variety lithium battery. I will certainly take notice if/when they do. As will the world. Capacitors with battery like energy density is a world changing event (once affordable).
There have been zero demonstration of the real world viability of these theoretical calculations. I suspect nothing will happen anytime soon, despite hype to the contrary, but I would be quite happy to be proved wrong.
In the next 5 years. It's always in the Next 5 Years. I should live so long.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I saw a post on ViewATron.com about this that looked like a protest. Gas guzzeler mercenaries are finding lots of jobs these days - I think the oil companies are scared.
Why not recharge them wirelessly while driving?
Firefly Energy is building foam-core lead-acid batteries that claims to have energy densities as high as current generation NiMH batteries at much less weight and at 1/10th the cost.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Has anyone noticed that Altairnano has already done this and their battery will last 20 years! http://www.altairnano.com/markets_amps.html