Slashdot Mirror
World's First Battery Fueled By Air
Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports on the revolutionary 'STAIR' (St Andrews Air) battery could now pave the way for a new generation of electric cars, laptops and mobile phones. The cells are charged in a traditional way but as power is used an open mesh section of battery draws in oxygen from the surrounding air that reacts with a porous carbon component inside the battery, which creates more energy and helps to continually 'charge' the cell as it is being discharged. The battery has a greater storage capacity than other similar-sized cells and can emit power up to 10 times longer. 'The key is to use oxygen in the air as a re-agent, rather than carry the necessary chemicals around inside the battery,' says Professor Peter Bruce of the Chemistry Department at the University of St Andrews. 'Our target is to get a five to ten fold increase in storage capacity, which is beyond the horizon of current lithium batteries.'"
Would there be any danger of using this in a confined space? Any clue on how much oxygen this thing is churning through?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Sometimes things sound too good to be true. Risk-free money smuggling from Nigeria. Enormous genitals from a few pills. Whiter teeth using only household chemicals. Articulate and clean presidential candidate who seems like he can fix anything.
Extending the life of batteries using the air sounds like a great thing. But what is the hidden problem that we are overlooking here? Will the chemical reaction of the battery and oxygen deplete the batteries faster than standard LIon? Are the batteries heavier? Output less power? Require usage patterns that aren't typical for normal users?
It just sounds too good to be true.
Kind of suprised at the jokes so far... I know that every 2 days we get some kind of "world changing" discovery/invention, but this one has very serious and amazing implications for nerds. Imagine charging your laptop once a week. Seriously.. if you could take your phone out with you on vacation and not worry about a charger. Theres a million serious uses for this, and I just really pray its not vaporware. ..well I guess I kind of do pray its vaporware?
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
Tremendously good idea. And perhaps in a hundred years when the world runs on these batteries, those shares of thin air that I bought from Wall Street might be worth millions once oxygen is in short supply.
We have zinc-air elements for decades now, but they are not rechargeable.
Zinc-air batteries have been in use for a long, long time. These were especially popular in miniature hearing aids.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
After the improvements, get the following data together:
1) Energy density - including ventilation
2) Physical expansion during charge/discharge.
3) Degradation with each cycle - i.e. how many recharges before capacity is reduced xx%.
4) Performance over temperature range (-20C to say 60C)
5) Durability of the material.
The list goes on and on. It sounds like a nice lab experiment at this time.
If it's sucking in O2, what's the output?
Considering there's carbon in there my guess will be something along the lines of CO2 or CO.
Will this be better than burning fuel?
Then again, maybe it's not meant to be an environmental friendly solution, but more of an awesome-battery solution.
Certainly not the first air based battery. Zinc air and Aluminum air batteries exist. Both were evaluated for use in electric cars with zinc-air being the most favorable. Problem is that it's not rechargeable. The idea, as it was developed, was that you would "burn" your zinc fuel load (creating zinc oxide), then exchange the zinc oxide paste for a new load of zinc fuel. The zinc would be recycled via electrolysis for re-use. Clearly this plan is somewhat convoluted, and not worth persuing if high density rechargeable Li-ion batteries are available.
Seems to me one could kill two birds with one stone by using a catalyst that breaks down CO2 for the O energy. Clean the greenhouse gasses out of the air and help power the battery. But, then again, I'm no chemist.
If you go down to your local 24-hour CVS MegaStore, peer at the hearing-aid battery end cap display, you'll see about 24 different kinds of "hearing air-cells". Cells where you remove a little cover over some breathing air holes to activate them.
Air-reacting cells have been around a long time.