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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
Or is just hot air?
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
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.
Now we just need to create a battery that recharges using CO2. That would be the invention of the century.
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.
for billions of years, for billions of generations, strange archaic anaerobacteria and primitive algae slaved their entire lives, heck, their entire species, to make your atmosphere one fifth oxygen
all so you could one day watch the family guy on hulu.com at a starbucks in pasadena
doesn't seem just
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Seems like every new thing is going to be commercially available in 5 years. Why can't we have the future now? Do I have to move to Japan?
-- Boycott Shell
This coverage at The Register says they are lithium-oxygen batteries. The porous carbon matrix is for containing the chemicals and allowing the oxygen in during running and out during recharging.
Well, normal cars already do run on oxygen, just like you and I (that's why you have to change your air filter once in a while!) so this wouldn't make that any worse - as far as I know, extra CO2 rather than a shortage of oxygen is our problem, which it doesn't seem this would solve.
I wouldn't feel too guilty about using it in a laptop or flashlight though.
will finally be attained when we can harness all of the hot air being blown our way by these researchers.
"Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad." [Ecclesiastes 7:3]
So if you put a couple of those together with a couple of geeks in an enclosed space for a hack-a-thon.... I wonder how long they'll last.
So the batteries oxidize lithium or some lithium compound as they discharge, and release the oxygen when charged.
Does this mean that the batteries actually increase, significantly, in weight as they discharge? And if so, is power to weight/energy to weight ratio considered while charged or discharged?
creates more energy
Two problems here:
1. you can't create energy
2. reacting oxygen with some carbon substance is called combustion and while it does indeed burn, it doesn't make a battery
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.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell
This thing is sort of half way to being a fuel cell, the air flows in, but the fuel and reaction products also stay in.
I wonder if one's laptop gets significantly heavier with one of these batteries as the fuel is oxidized since the reaction products include both the weight of the fuel and of the oxygen used to burn it..
"Man, I've been working all day and this laptop feels like it weighs a ton" " It does!"
...
These take in oxygen when they run and give off oxygen when they recharge. The only issues, then, are the energy to make the batteries and the energy to recharge them. That comes from somewhere, and likely much of it is from burning fossil fuels. At least it'd be at central fossil fuel plants with scrubbers and carbon sequestration, which can't be done properly in a car.
I hope you fucking hippies can still boast about how green your car is when the entire population of earth dies gasping for the oxygen your batteries stole. God damn you.
(readers who don't understand humor and wish to rebut me at length may form a queue to the left).
The point of this battery is that when you charge it, the oxygen is emitted again.
There is next to no information in the first article... this one is much more informative:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/19/lithium_oxygen_stair_battery/
The concept (taking one of the reagents from air) is not new. There were zinc-air batteries for decades, and they are widely used. They have one of the highest energy densities of all types of commercially available batteries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc-air_battery
Seems like four years ago somebody even figured out how to make them electrically rechargeable (before that, the usual method of recharge was to replace the zinc plates and remove oxide waste, which was facilitated by cell design).
http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=164903727
However, if those new batteries use carbon instead of zinc, they might have a higher theoretical upper bound on energy density. It looks like they're using graphite-lithium intercalate for the negative electrode (a standard thing), and the positive electrode is essentially a combined catalyst/adsorbent for Li2O2 which forms during electricity generation.
CnLi ---> Li+ + Cn + e
2Li+ + 2e + O2 --cat.-> Li2O2
Note that the first article is rather bogus: O2 does not "recharge" the battery, it is only a reagent.
I'm not familiar with the cost breakdown for the components of Li-ion batteries, but lithium seems like a major contributor, so this might not be much cheaper than the traditional Li-ion.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
You seriously underestimate the amount of oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere. Even massive forest fires do not change the global concentration of oxygen enough for anyone to notice.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
Since when is reagent hyphenated?
Conservation of angular momentum makes the world go round.
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.
No, if it was kdawson he would be ranting about how Microsoft is ruining the vibrator industry.
"But this one goes to 11!"
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.
In chemistry, we have these cool things called catalysts.
See, a catalyst is used in a reaction, but is not used up in a reaction - it just provides structure for the reacting molecules to bond more easily.
See, in this case, the carbon is providing structure - acting as a catalyst - for the Lithium to bond with Oxygen on the fly, instead of having to be pre-bonded and stored prior to use, which is how all other lithium batteries work.
Think of it as a normal lithium battery, but with half the chemicals pulled straight out of the air. This allows it to be significantly more compact, increasing capacity. Since the battery is able to draw in air, it also allows it to be passively charged as it is discharging, greatly increasing charge time over traditional lithium.
Remember, the carbon here is structure.
Also, just because you only know of one or two reaction doesn't in any way suggest there aren't hundreds or thousands more. Carbon bonds easily, and also releases easily. You could say it is very easy going (which is why it is so common for life). Oxygen is one of the most bond-happy atoms out there. I wouldn't be surprised if there were millions of different types of reactions involving carbon and oxygen.
This, however, is a lithium-oxygen reaction.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
what? first air powered battery? does no one remember the zinc air batteries developed approximately around the time lithium ion/lithium polymer batteries were in development?
News to me too. Oxygen and photosynthesis With respect to oxygen and photosynthesis, there are two important concepts. * Plant and cyanobacterial (blue-green algae) cells also use oxygen for cellular respiration, although they have a net output of oxygen since much more is produced during photosynthesis. * Oxygen is a product of the light-driven water-oxidation reaction catalyzed by photosystem II; it is not generated by the fixation of carbon dioxide. Consequently, the source of oxygen during photosynthesis is water, not carbon dioxide.
It is unwise to ascribe motive
No. Lead acid batteries do not use air in their chemical reaction during either charging or discharging. The vents are to release hydrogen and oxygen inadvertently creating during charging through electrolysis. This is an undesired side effect and modern batteries are designed to reduce it as much as possible.
Our target is to get a five to ten fold increase in storage capacity, which is beyond the horizon of current lithium batteries.
In order, the annoying factors of current lithium batteries IMO;
1. The cost.
2. Lifetime (i.e. how many times you can recharge it.)
3. Weight.
4. Size.
5. Speed of charge.
The fact that they don't say this would be cheaper, or cycle better makes me think that it probably won't be cheaper, or cycle better.
Smaller and lighter is nice, but size isn't really the problem.
However, with carbon dioxide there is a way. It requires special organic catalysts and uses a two-stage photon process to provide the energy. It's called photosynthesis, and it's what plants do in sunlight.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Sometimes things sound too good to be true.....Whiter teeth using only household chemicals
Swish daily with hydrogen peroxide for 2 weeks. (the flavor won't be so bad by the end of the term, buck up)
After the first 2 weeks of daily swishing, swish 2 or 3 times a week ongoing.
Over about 3-4 months, your smile will whiten noticably, and your foul Mt. Dew breath will tame out.
A standard mix of hydrogen peroxide (like you use on cuts, don't go to your Chemistry supply store) will cost you under $1 for a bottle that will last a long time.
But yes, the rest of your stuff is bunk. :)
"It runs on air!"
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
While that's mostly true, the process does work in reverse. Unfortunately, it doesn't work 100% efficiently (what does) compared to the "forward" direction, which is why overcharging of even "maintenance-free" batteries results in a reduction of their flued level.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And the Green party thought automobiles were bad for the economy... :D
I guess we'll still have air scoops on the electric performance car of the future. Or else [http://www.riceboypage.com/]
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.