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Toshiba To Launch "Super Charge" Batteries
ozgood writes in to let us know about Toshiba's announcement that it has developed a new type of rechargeable battery dubbed the Super Charge ion Battery, or SCiB. Toshiba claims the new battery will mainly target the industrial market, though they hint the technology may eventually find a home in electric vehicles. The SCiB can recharge to 90% of total capacity in under five minutes, and has a life span of over 10 years. "Toshiba also says the battery has excellent safety with the new negative electrode material having a high level of thermal stability and a high flash point. The battery is also said to be structurally resistant to internal short-circuiting and thermal runaway."
Awesome, I would get one of these. I hate sitting in an airport recharging my laptop battery for eons at a time. 10 minutes to get 90% of the charge back eh? I want one now! ::jumps up and down::... Now if only my cell phone could do this too... and my Digital camera, and camcorder too... I like how they point out that it has more safety features too. Although, I am wondering if we will still see these batteries exploding at the most inopportune time... like a presentation on how awesome it is...?
-- Josh
"Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me!" - Pete Conrad
And if you leave them charging for too long, they explode. Looks like Sony has a rival...
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
performance characteristics remind me of ultracapacitor technology. Makes me wonder how the two technologies will compete, price-wise.
In Soviet Russia jokes are formulaic and decidedly non-humorous.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/11/toshiba-launching-scib-batteries-in-march-5-min-charge-10-year
According to this article, hybrid cars will be the first use for these batteries.
As long as the energy density is comparable to current Lithium-ion batteries, then this will be some pretty cool tech.
If these are large batteries with many AH, how big of a power supply would you need to charge 90% of the battery in ten minutes?
TFA says "The SCiB batteries can recharge with as much as 50 amperes of current", which puts a limit on how fast you can charge it. If the capacity is, say, 10 Ah, then you would need 120 A current to charge it in five minutes.
What about storage density?? That's the big question.
Storage density is not as relevant, when you can recharge in 5 minutes.
If you're traveling somewhere you won't be able to recharge, then use an older, higher capacity battery. Otherwise, who cares if you're recharging every 2 hours (or whatever) if it only takes 5 minutes to do so?
... that I can live in fear for 10 years that one of these bad boys might set my crotch on fire!
So I have to stop every 2 hours for 5 minutes of charging? That's going to be a fun cross-country drive.
The article makes reference to amperage, but without voltage that value is basically meaningless. Now if they were talking wattage then we would know exactly how much power these batteries produce (and consume during charging).
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
Did you READ what I wrote? If you're doing something where you can't get to a recharging station/electrical outlet, use a REGULAR BATTERY.
I would think one of the first uses for this type of thing would be for contractor grade cordless powertools. With current battery tech any heavily used battery lasts less than 2 years with the kind of abuse construction guys give em. Of course you're going to need one heck of an extra alternator to charge em that quickly, more likely a separate generator.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
But the PP point is that these are going to be applied to hybrid vehicles. It would do us no good to have to stop every 2 hours of driving to charge for 5 mins. Your case works well for conventional Li-on battery uses. Their point is about proposed rapid charging for future uses. In their case, yeah, storage makes a large difference
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
This sounds like A123/LiFePO4 batteries with a different name.
The Toshiba press release (http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2007_12/pr1101.htm) has specs for the battery. The attached graphs (http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2007_12/1101/SCiB.pdf) show the gravimetric energy density to be greater than that of the NiMH batteries used for hybrid vehicles but less than that of lithium-ion batteries used for mobile devices, which explains why they are aiming this at the industrial market rather than laptops.
My cell phone charges at 1A at 5V - that's a fairly hefty load for a cheap, minuscule wall wart. To get it to recharge in 10 min would take - well - anyone care to lug around a 12-gauge extension cord to deliver the 10A it would take to deliver that much power?
Alternatively, you could make your power cord really short - build the charger to plug directly into the wall without a cord. But it would still be big.
What next - I'll be asking for a 408V 1000A 3-phase industrial drop to recharge my electric car in an hour!
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
You've obviously never traveled with a wife and kids.
Disclaimer: IAAEVE (I am an electric vehicle engineer), so my analysis is biased toward vehicle applications.
According to the specs on their own website, the energy density for their modules is about 50 watthours per kilogram (24V * 4.2Ah / 2.0kg). At 50 Wh/kg they're barely competing with lead-acid batteries, and competing quite poorly with Nickel-metal batteries, which are near 100 Wh/kg and have proven safety and durability in vehicle applications.
Modern Li-ion cells (the ones that aren't even remotely pushing the safety envelope) are over 200 Wh/kg.
In typical hybrid cars wouldn't the alternator be able to provide at least five minutes of charge during a two hour trip?
In a pure electric vehicle, five minutes of total braking should do the equivalent. Even on the highway you still hit the brakes every now and then.
I'm guessing that you could drive a little longer than just two hours with one of these.
i read about it in a blog once
It doesn't work that way; cars are limited by weight and space considerations. If it matches current Li-ion batteries, the max range will probably be 150-200 miles.
That last paragraph contained spoilers, so if you don't want spoilers go back and don't have read it.
I calculated the energy density from Toshiba's specs for a module containing multiple cells plus some charging electronics. This works out to about twice the figure for a deep-cycle lead-acid car battery.
From the numbers from the Toshiba news release, I calculated that the density is about 0.25 Mj/kg, which is a little bit higher than the NiMH batteries (0.22MJ/kg from wikipedia), but about half or less of lithium ion batteries (0.54-0.72 from wikipedia too). This is only an estimate.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
It's a good thing they didn't have to use anions: Super Charge Anion Battery just might not make as good an acronym.
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
No, you can't. The real story maybe something like this, 2 hours of driving, then find a place to charge, then power grid down due to high current.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
Ok, over and over again I see the same nonsense. "Lithium batteries burn because they contain lots of energy".
If this was the case a discharged battery would be safe, yet it contains just as much lithium as when it was charged, meaning it is still a fire hazard. The problem with lithium ion batteries is NOT their electrical energy density, it is the low activation energy of the chemicals they are made of.
To really put this in perspective, your cutlery and pots all contain A LOT of chemical potential energy. Burning iron in air releases vast quantities of it. Of course, because steel has a very good heat conductivity, and as the activation energy is high, you can't really set a piece of steel on fire at normal temperatures. If, on the other hand, you were to grind that iron into a fine powder, then you better make sure not to bring it close to sources of ignition as it will explode into a fireball.
Similarly, iron oxide doesn't burn in air because it is already oxidised, but if you mix it with aluminium powder, a strong reducing agent, then you got a Thermite mix which will burn at such a high temperature that it is little you can do but wait until it has completed. Even choking it doesn't work since it contains its own oxidiser.
The reason lithium ion batteries can catch fire is simply that lithium is easy to ignite. If the energy recoverable from a battery was directly related to how strongly it burns, then you would most certainly see batteries made from titanium or aluminium, and not lithium ( which releases a lot less energy when combusted than does many other metals ).
On long cross country trips, my partner and I switch drivers every two hours or so. And usually take the time to open up a new juice box or water, etc. Doesn't sound that inconvenient to me.
And let's do some math, shall we? Gasoline prices of $3/gal, with a car that gets 30 mpg (average consumer vehicle on the road is just under 20, thanks to old cars, SUVs, RVs, guzzling pickups, etc). That's ten cents per mile. An electric car with a range of 175mi that gets about 150Wh/mi (about average for the crop that's about to hit the market) capacity costs about 1.5 cents per mile. At 175mi, average speed of 65mph, that's 5 minutes of fuelling every 2.7 hours. Let's say 7 minutes for the overhead. This means just over 4 minutes of every hour driven is spent fuelling; gasoline cars have to fuel too, so let's say 3 additional minutes per hour is spent fuelling with an electric. During that hour of driving, covering 65 miles, the gasoline powered car cost $6.50, while the electric car cost $1. Net savings, $5.50. In short, you're saving $5.50 for 3 minutes of delay, which equates to the equivalent of saving of $110 per hour of extra time spent fuelling.
And you wouldn't choose this why?
Besides, I just love the look of the next gen crop of electrics. My favorite is the Aptera. I agree with one reporter's description: it looks like "Batman's girlfriend's car". And last they published specs, they hadn't seemed to have settled on a specific battery manufacturer yet. Which, to me, says there's a fair shot that these Toshiba batteries (or some of the other fast charging batteries soon hitting the market) may, if not in their first gen vehicles, land in their next gen vehicles.
That last paragraph contained spoilers, so if you don't want spoilers go back and don't have read it.
Did you calculate the weight of the battery pack? A Tesla Roadster has about 900 pounds of batteries, with this battery, you my need 2000 pounds of batteries to reach same "miles per charge" value.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
I've been in meetings where I wished something like that would happen (whether mine or someone else's depends on which meeting)...
I knew there was a catch... now I don't have to RTFM!
Let's say I have a biodiesel powered, water cooled generator (so that I can use the excess heat to warm my house or water or ?) or a wind-turbine, or some other peaking power source providing most of my house juice, along with a bank of these batteries. Plus the ability to use the house pack to charge a hybrid electric family vehicle with say a sixty mile range before I have to kick in the car's bio-diesel driven engine. Or vice versa: the vehicle's bio-diesel engine can be used to charge both the electrical drive train for the vehicle when on the road, or the home battery stack when the vehicle is plugged into the home's grid. This seems to be the ultimate win/win for home power.
The economic question is, "do I have to have tens of thousands of dollars of batteries to make this work, or will the batteries be cost effective and available for consumer use?"
What think ye?
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
You can still go 75 mph. You just spend around an extra three minutes per hour and save $110 in that hour. Even if you factor in your wife, you're effectively each earning $55 an hour, tax-free. Do you and your wife each make $55 an hour, tax free, in your job? That'd be equivalent to a pre-tax income of, what, $90 an hour?
That last paragraph contained spoilers, so if you don't want spoilers go back and don't have read it.
If this type of technology were to really take off, it would quickly obsolete the need for traditional gas stations. Virtually any business that requires at least 5-10 minutes of your time and has their own parking could install charging meters. Assuming these batteries don't easily take on a memory for partial charging, widespread use of charging stations could mean you top off every time you park your vehicle if you want. Parking garages, parking meters, grocery stores, malls, etc. Besides long trips, I don't even think most consumers would feel constrained by only a 150 mile range if that were true.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/10/031015031752.htm
a researcher at the University of Missouri-Columbia discovered that the development of a plug-in fuel cell hybrid, with as little as 20 miles of range from rechargeable hydrogen, could cut the amount of gasoline consumed in the United States by more than 50 percent. In addition, this technology could be mass produced in the next five years.
"About 47 percent of all miles put on vehicles in a day are within the first 20 miles of travel," said Galen Suppes, associate professor of chemical engineering at MU. "Furthermore, about 50 percent of the vehicles travel 20 miles or less per day, and this 20 mile distance is usually in inner-city travel where fuel economy for conventional internal combustion engines is poor and emissions have their greatest adverse affects."
OK, if you have a 1 amp/hr battery that you want to charge in 5 minutes you have to provide
at least 12 amps of charging current (14 gauge wire). A laptop with a 5 amp/hr battery would require 60 Amps to
charge (That's 6 gauge wire needed!).
So, why not go all the way embed them all over along roads and streets? Do away with batteries entirely, except for very short stretches? All-terrain vehicles and others that need to drive in dirt roads could be hybrids.
The remaining question is: is it pronounced skeeb, skihb, skyb, seeb, sib, sighb, or throatwarbler mangrove?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
It would be far simpler to hook the perpetual motion machine straight to the wheels.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
I think what would make these super for cars is that they would appear able to handle any regenerative braking load placed on them. I don't believe you can say that about the current cells in use.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
re-calculate this with the headlights, windsheild wipers on. for fun try adding the radio into the mix. i'm not stopping every 30-45mins.
on my trip from home to college, i have a one hour stretch with no gas stations of any kind (this is on an interstate), good luck getting a charging station.
Gone!
Lets say that one drive a vehicle 10,000 miles a year and gets 25 mpg. So that is 400 gallons of gas a year or about $1200 a year. Now lets say that the cost of the electricity is only $200 so a savings of $1,000 a year. Ten years of use than would be $10,000. So if the automobile is only $10,000 more than a gasoline car than there would be no monetary incentive to purchase one. The cost of a used automobile would make the comparison even more difficult for the electric automobile. How much money would one have at the end of 10 years if one had $10,000 and invested it at 6%, and one withdrew $1,000 a year. It would be around $5,000. There are other cost I am sure as an electric car would not need coolant or oil. I think $100 a year would take care of that. It is going to take a lot more to get people to buy an electric automobile. I would think that gasoline would have to go to $10 a gallon to make people buy one and than the gasoline powered automobiles would be almost given away to get rid of them so still a lot of people would drive them till they fell apart.
Aptera does look fun. And their venture-capital firm is the same as my current employer's, so it's also fun to cheer them on. (However, it's also the same firm originally behind New.net, so, umm.) Production in late 2008? We'll see!
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
ditch stock in Shell, exxon, ...
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Let's see, 150 Wh/mi * 175 miles = 26250Wh.
26250Wh filled in 5 minutes, 26250Wh / (5 min /60 (min/hr)) = 315000W. This number is pretty impressive. It's at the scale of a Mini hydro.
Assume 1% of energy become heat inside the battery during the charging, that will be a 3150W heater in your battery.
Do you smell something smoking?
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
If I could replace my 80Kg of domestic batteries with their effective 1440 watt hours of discharge for long life, with 80kg of these giving 4000 WH, I would be able to run twice as long with the same real safety margin, and I would get twice the life. (10 years rather than 5 for lightly discharged lead acid.) I would also be able to replace my alternator with one of twice the capacity, which would have two benefits; I would only have to run the engine for half as long for the same charge, and the engine would be under heavier load (most marine engines die from running too long at low load, not overload.)
Given the current installed cost of a marine generator, if these things meet their promise boat owners will be fighting one another for them.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Energy consumption of all of those devices, in comparison to the drive motor, is the watt-hour equivalent of chicken feed. Seriously. Your driving style will make a FAR bigger difference to the range than any normal accessory load.
It would do us no good to have to stop every 2 hours of driving to charge for 5 mins.
Given that the current advice in the UK is to stop for at least 15 minutes every 2 hours (instead of zoning out/nodding off and getting rather too cosy with the crash barrier), it could do us rather a lot of good.
That's *with* accessories on. What sort of world are you from where windshield wipers and headlights use about four times the amount of power that the engine does? After all, that's what changing the calculated 2.7 hours into 30-45 minutes equates to.
That last paragraph contained spoilers, so if you don't want spoilers go back and don't have read it.
According to this whitepaper, typical desktop PSU efficiency is 60-70%. While it makes sense that laptop transformers would operate at a little bit higher efficiency, I think it's safe to assume they're in the same ballpark. So let's call laptop transformers about 80% efficient. Now that 500 watts required to charge the battery is going to need 625 going into the transformer, with 125 watts of waste heat.
But now let's consider the efficiency of the battery itself - at nominal charge speed for lithium ion batteries they get an efficiency of about 90% and at 5 times nominal they get an efficiency of 85% (see this paper. If this battery's profile is anything like a lithium ion battery, let's say it gets 90% efficiency, then we'll need 555 watts going into the battery, and thus about 700 watts going into the transformer, with 150 watts of waste heat from the transformer and 50 watts of waste from the battery. These are all ballpark figures and my math may be questionable... but the takeaway is still there: dealing with the waste heat from this charging process will be a MAJOR issue.
http://www.break.com/index/car-battery-hack.html
Here's some energy density specifications for various Li rechargable batteries -- about 150-200 WHr/kg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Specifications_and_design So we should conclude that it's a no-show at 50 WHr/kg for the mobile market OTOH, a primary advantage of the new technology is safety, at least according to what's presented in this video http://dodevice.com/toshiba-scib-wont-explode-neither-catch-fire-video/ It takes quite a crushing without getting close to combustion temperatures.
"So Can I Blowup?"
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
I can see the Super Explosion and Super Class Suit Action head lines...
----
http://www.internet.gen.tr
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
> So I have to stop every 2 hours for 5 minutes of charging? That's going to be a fun cross-country drive.
If you don't stop every 2 hours for a break when you're driving, you're a moron.
I'm a perfectionist but I'm trying to cut back.
Fast charging means fast discharging (internal resistance limits both). Fast discharging means more "vent with flame" events (or worse).
And people thought Li-ion was temperamental...
Range Voting: preference intensity matters
At 50 Wh/kg they're barely competing with lead-acid batteries, and competing quite poorly with Nickel-metal batteries, which are near 100 Wh/kg
In many situations half the range is an easy trade for a 5-minute charge. Imagine an all-electric that 'just' recharges whenever you park somewhere. Standard fare at restaurants, grocery stores, and shopping centers. Maybe a bluetooth transponder handles the billing for you, maybe it's in a post-Fusion age when free-power is like free-WiFi today.
I'm not disagreeing with you that it may be inferior for today's usage model, but most people are just used to a model, not wed to it.
Heck, a long distance trip isn't even a problem so long as the battery outlasts your bladder.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Why not also make standard battery form factors as well? Double-A, Triple-A, 9V, C, D, etc..
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
These have about 50Wh/kg compared to around 150Wh/kg for lithium Ions. If they could get that up by a factor of 10 to 500Wh/kg they would make it practical to make an electric car.
Time to trot out this old horse again.
It turns out that gasoline is amazingly good as a fuel. When you pump it into your car, it's relatively safe. Safe enough that greasemonkeys with little-to-no education or training, hell, even the general public, can do it without much risk of explosion. But the flow rate and energy density of gasoline is such that you're moving about 3 MW of power during the fueling session.
That's the output of an electrical substation. This is not toy levels of power. If you were to try to do that with electricity, you'd need to have the equivalent of 2000 15A home circuits (think two thousand 1500 W hair blowers). If you had a 99.9% energy transfer efficiency (we think of efficient power supplies to be at the 80-85% level, so 99.9% is insanely good), that means 0.1% of 3 MW, or 3 kW of heat would need to be dissipated. Most of the energy loss would happen at the station-to-car contacts, with much of the rest in the cables. Let's be conservative and say only 1/3 of the loss is at the contacts, that's 1kW. 1kW for 5-10 minutes into anything that isn't big or actively cooled or both would get hot. Very, very hot. (Your CPU probably dissipates something in the range of 1/10th this much power.) You couldn't put your hand on it to make or break the contact, for example.
Also, the necessary levels of current will produce substantial electric and magnetic fields. Sure, cables can be well designed and shielded with both magnetic and electrical shielding, but remember that this needs to be something that a person can hold and lift and apply to their car, somehow, so weight is a consideration, too. Personally, I don't like the idea of standing next to electrical substations for any longer than necessary -- having my hand on a cable that is moving 3 MW is something I want to seriously avoid. This is not toy levels of power. Making and breaking contacts at 3 MW is non-trivial. So how about doing it inductively? I'm not standing anywhere near those fields. People are shy about being near their operating microwave ovens. That's (usually) 600 W of E/B fields that are pretty well shielded. We're talking about 4 orders of magnitude more power during refilling.
There are two realistic options. (1) Extend charging time by an order of magnitude or two. This precludes the filling-station model that we already have immense infrastructure for. (2) Instead of recharging, swap batteries for a fresh set which can be recharged at the station at a more leisurely (and less dangerous) pace.
The fundamental problem here is that gasoline is a really good fuel. It has a very high specific energy density (energy per unit volume), allowing us to become accustomed to and dependent upon the idea that refilling is a relatively quick event. Until we can change that perception, refilling all-electric cars is going to be a very difficult engineering task that borders on impossibility. So five-to-ten minute recharge times for these new batteries isn't that relevant for all-electric cars.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Are these batteries explosion resistant ie can you drive a nail though a cell and have it fail in a safe manner like the cells by A123 or will they explode like a firework like the trash sony sells? This is needed of they are to be used in an electric car.
is there some technical reason why my AA batteries cannot be lithium-ion? or am i just getting ripped off?
Yes, but that presupposes the use of the current delivery mechanism as the prototype for refueling (recharging). Why make that assumption? Its a new machine with new requirements. Why not simply permit the vehicle to drive up over a set of contacts that spring up (or some such), make electrical contact in a completely mechanized manner, wait while the batteries are recharged, and then drive away again. A new delivery system for a new vehicle. Humans don't have to handle or come into contact with it at all. Even better, the whole operation could be transacted from the comfort of the driver's seat. No need to even get out of the car on a frosty cold morning.
(BTW-- when this gets implemented, I get 10%)
It is about distance between stops not speed of travel. 90 an hour isn't that high an income these days. Kids getting out of school make 1/2 that, in the right field.