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Making Safer Lithium-Ion Batteries
itwbennett writes "Exploding iPhones may be a thing of the past. Researchers at Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute have developed a new polymer, STOBA (that's self-terminated oligomers with hyper-branched architecture to you and me), that is added to the cathode material inside a lithium-ion battery to keep them from overheating. 'Fires or explosions in these batteries are caused by short circuits,' said Wu Hung-chun, a researcher at ITRI, explaining that even minor mishandling such as dropping the handset could result in damage causing a short circuit. 'The technology is ready for lithium-ion batteries used in electronic devices, mobile phones, laptops,' said Wu. And ITRI has started testing STOBA on electric car batteries."
From those exploding iphones !!
They may be safe from overheating and exploding, but what about general overheating and becoming fairly hot for no reason?
A few years ago, you could crack open the older Lithium batteries and extract a ribbon of pure Lithium, which of course was fun to douse in water and other stuff to make explosions and other shenanigans. I don't necessarily want safe.
I also want the old liquid mercury thermostats and thermometers... mercury is fun to play with as long as you don't eat it.
The rain was getting harder. It was now precisely 11:51 PM, and Mark was into his fifth beer. He was feeling pretty invincible but the night was young, and he intended to get wasted before it was all over. He had put in a rough week at work and he deserved it.
He lit another cigarette. He and his drinkin' buddies sat in their traditional circle, in Ian's apartment. The talk wandered from sex to work, back to sex, to basketball, finally settling on sex. Mark had eaten lunch at Taco Bell, and had drunk four cups of coffee between lunchtime and quitting. In addition, the beers were beginning to settle in. And now, at 11:51 PM, Mark had to take a shit. He stood up. "Shit break," he announced. It was customary among this group to make such an announcement.
Mark walked to the bathroom. As he locked the door behind him, thunder boomed. It was storming out there.
He pulled his pants down and sat on the toilet. Ian's bathroom was a mess. He counted five empty toilet paper rolls, two paperbacks, and yesterday's newspaper. His friends laughed about something. The lights flickered for a moment, and the pre-shit growl came from within. He could feel the product lined up inside him for disposal. Then, he began to push.
Plop. The first piece fell to the water. Then some movement, and Mark felt the main feature inside him, the mother lode. He grunted softly as he squeezed it out. It crackled past his sphincter, and splashed neatly into the bowl.
Then another one queued up, and came out. It was almost as big as its predecessor. Mark would have well-purged bowels tonight, he realized with a smirk. He heard thunder again, closer this time.
Another one? Jeez, he thought. When was my last shit? It ventured forth, Mark's muscles helping it out. It was the biggest one so far. The shit's passage through his anus, that rarest mix of pain and pleasure, was longer than any he could remember. Ahhhh...the stout log advanced with conviction. This was definitely going to be his finest creation; this was a huge one. Still grinning, he wondered if Ian had a camera.
He pushed. Peering between his legs, past his genitals, he saw that it had reached the water. This was like seeing the longest freight train ever. Damn, it was a wide one. And it was still attached! And there was more! He pushed more, harder. It kept coming. He couldn't even feel the end of this one yet; soon it was bending, folding on itself like a sundae topping. Mark stopped pushing and caught his breath. He was sweating; he realized that however long this piece of shit was, it wasn't nearly all the way out yet. He still couldn't feel the end.
He pushed, he strained, it kept coming. His intestines couldn't be that damn long, but this shit just wouldn't quit. In fact, he was feeling the diarrhoeal urgency of *having* to shit. He dutifully answered nature's call, and pushed harder. His efforts were rewarded with more shit. His sphincter was too strained to even pinch the loaf off. It was whole and complete.
He couldn't feel the end.
Fear now came to Mark. He flushed the toilet to make room for more. Even as the bowl refilled, the cramps rose up, and he pushed. Within seconds, the shit extended from his anus to bottom of the bowl. The harder he pushed, the more he had to shit. And it was getting worse. He scarcely had time to catch his breath; his face was quite red as he grunted and struggled to keep up. The shit seemed endless. He looked between his legs again, and gasped as he saw that the bowl was fully a quarter filled with his product, the water dangerously high. The tank wasn't even done filling, but he flushed again. Unfortunately, the plumbing was unable to handle the volume of feces, and the toilet backed up. Mark jumped when the cold water touched his buttocks.
It was now 11:57. Thunder roared outside as water and shit particles flowed onto the tile.
Mark's pants were bunched about his ankles, and he was in pain. The shit advanced relentlessly as he stumbled into the bathtub. He was almost panicking now, and
"Exploding iPhones may be a thing of the past. Researchers at Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute have developed a new polymer, " Exploding batteries have been a thing of the past for years already. This may as well say "Horse and buggies may now be a thing of the past due to the new honda civic comeing out this year"
"drop phone watch it overheat" is the latter-day version of the halt and catch fire "instruction" of days gone by.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
FUCK YOU, /.!!!!!!!!!11!!
filter food filter food too much repetition my dick is in your mouth slashdot
We looked at using these kinds of batteries for an engineering applicant for a client, so one of our engineers got a sample package of different sizes and shapes of batteries along with a handy CD of what you could and could not do with them. Unfortunately, the application involved possibly putting a battery on the end of an armature to power a light, something the disc explicitly warned against NOT doing -- it came with a nice set of exploding battery clips. Our client saw those and promptly refused to carry a cell phone in any piece of clothing attached to his body from there on it. I think his laptop no longer ever rested on his lap, either...
Step 1: Stop manufacturing them in China
Nearly all Li-Ion battery failures (going out with a boom, pop, or fizzle) are a result of inferior materials being substituted in the manufacturing process.
Li-Ion battery cells (the individual cells containing your delicious electrons - millions in a single manufactured cell, several of those in a single packaged battery) are expected to pop.
Over-charge them? Pop.
Drain them too fast? Pop.
Result? Slightly diminished capacity.
Over time, the capacity gets lower and lower.
The trick is they're isolated, and you don't get enough of them popping at once to cause a noticeable failure (flame, explosion, etc.).
But when you have shitty charging circuitry, shitty components measuring and regulating the current and voltage, and shitty material (like fucking paper) inside the thing, yeah, shit's gonna go up in flames.
Ni-MH is the superior fucking choice. But the self-discharge rate is too high for the plebes to accept. They've got ones that sacrifice capacity for a lower self-discharge rate (such as Sanyo's Eneloop design), but Li-Ion is firmly entrenched, unfortunately.
Apparently the polymer (as far as I can tell) undergoes a cross-linking reaction that acts to slow the movement of Lithium ions following puncture of the battery thus keeping the reaction relatively under control.
http://www.itri.org.tw/eng/Research/Focus-Area/focus-sub-area-category.asp?RootNodeId=0301&NodeId=03013&FieldCD=03200
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I'll post this preemptively since usually when battery fires are discussed some people insist this is unavoidable if you want a high energy density, but this is not true. Whether batteries can fail catastrophically or not is mainly down to two things:
a)Whether the energy released when a cell fails is sufficient to cause nearby fails to fail, thereby causing a cascade of failed cells.
b)Whether the materials the battery is made of can react violently with materials it is likely to come into contact with when it does fail.
For traditional Lithium ion batteries the answer to both these questions is yes. The temperature necessary to cause a cell to fail is easily within the range of what is generated when a nearby cell fails. Furthermore the lithium batteries and their electrolyte burn quite well upon contact with air, adding even more energy to the reaction.
There's however no principal reason why this has to be the case. As an example if the heat capacity and conductivity of the battery is good enough it is possible to design batteries so that the failure of one cell won't heat nearby cells enough to cause them to fail. Different chemistries also have different activation energies, as an example lithium iron phosphate batteries are much safer for this reason. It is also quite plausible that one might be able to create a battery from a chemistry that doesn't react violently with oxygen.
Many batteries that use a water-based electrolytes qualify for both these criteria. Water has a high heat capacity and doesn't burn in oxygen. Unfortunately such batteries have other drawbacks. In particular while water itself won't burn it is susceptible to electrolysis at typical battery voltages, producing flammable hydrogen.
Ugh, exploding iPhones again... And yet another misunderstanding about what's going on.
iPhones do not use lithium ion batteries. They use lithium polymer batteries.
The additive is usually in the separator that keeps the lithium and cathode apart (which you want to do). When the battery overheats the separator breaks down and disables the battery, this has been used where I work for over 20+ years, and is in no way new tech. Putting the same thing in the cathode is like putting a guard rail on the very edge of a cliff instead of 15-20 ft from a cliff, it may stop small shorts that slowly develop in the battery, but a major short, or hole in the separator will melt down and become quite dangerous before the cathode is even involved. Plus, how hot before this effect happens? Cathode is heat treated at over 650F, I sure hope it doesnt take that much to trigger this new substance.
Im ok..
A huge amount of money is being spent around the world on alternate energy and environmentally friendly transportation. I think all this money is being wasted because there is clear evidence that we are swimming in an ocean of clean energy, lots and lots of it. And here is why.
Physicists believe that two particles in relative inertial motion stay in motion for no reason at all, as if by magic. The truth is that every effect must have a cause. An analysis of the causality of motion leads to the inevitable conclusion that we are swimming in energy, in an immense lattice of wall-to-wall energetic particles, to be precise.
Soon, we will figure out how to tap into the lattice for energy production and transportation. It will be an age of practically unlimited free energy and extremely fast transportation. Vehicles will have no need for wheels, will go almost anywhere and negotiate right angle turns without slowing down. Floating cities, earth to Mars in hours, New York to Beijing in minutes... That's the future of energy and travel.
The Problem With Motion
My name is Louis Savain and I approve this message. LOL.
This problem should be irrelevant soon with the lithium polymer batteries. The explosions are caused by the leaking organic solvents necessary for lithium ion transport. In lithium polymer batters, the ions move along solid ethylene glycol polymers and do not require any solvents. So, basically lithium polymer batteries are the greatest things ever, except we can't manufacture them cheaply yet.
In the rc car world, the two major types of batteries in use are lipo (lithium polymer) and nimh. Nimh has less energy density, self discharge, and requires some rest after discharge still to retain full capacity when charged. I run nimh due to reasons I won't go into, but I have my eye on lifepo4, or lithium iron phosphate. They are not only more robust than traditional li cells, they go off in much the same fashion as the batteries mentioned in the article. The disadvantage to them, and why they aren't 'the thing' in rc cars is that they have a voltage disadvantage. Given the strict regulation of motors in spec class racing, a voltage disadvantage is a huge issue. In other applications, where you could pick whatever voltage and number of cells to use, these batteries are awesome. In rc, their voltage makes you pick arranging them in series at a voltage level that is a disadvantage or adding another cell and making yourself have a huge advantage -- ie, their acceptance isn't based on technical merit but existing standards in racing.
Anyone else read Wu Hung-chun as "Wang-Chung"?
shout the loudest your own bber The wind appeared are a few good become like they most people into a
they suck the shit out of the ass of other faggots and let other faggots fuck them in the ass and suck their own shit off the dicks of other faggots.
they spread disease and are a drain on society.
Segways have had this for years
The iPhone's hardware is composed of awesomeness, but the software is made of anti-awesomeness. If the containment shield between them fails, they will annihilate each other, and the iPhone will go up in flames all on its own.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
"And ITRI has started testing STOBA on electric car batteries." Is there such a thing as a NON-electric car battery? :-)