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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.
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.
/. gets this kind of miracle technology often, most of the stuff has also an "Achilles heel" that prevents real worlds deployment.
This might be an exception (hopefully), but until you can get one off NewEgg people stay cool and cautious.
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!
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
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 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?
No, you had to move to Japan 5 years ago :P
This sig will self destruct in 5 seconds.
Ok, second time I've had to do this; but, clearly the articles are pooorly written and do not describe the technology well, if at all.
It's a lithium-air battery in a carbon matrix. One electrode is lithium metal, one electrode is carbon. The oxygen, supplied by air and entering through the porous carbon electrode, reacts with the lithium to create lithium oxide. When the battery is recharged, the oxygen is liberated, returned to the atmosphere, and the lithium ions are returned to (plated on) the lithium metal electrode.
No CO2.
The output is electricity during discharge and oxygen during charging.
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.