Silicon As the New Lithium

hduff writes "While lithium-ion batteries offer better performance than lead-acid or ni-cad batteries, the supply of lithium is limited and the batteries can pose problems. Researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute are building a better battery with easily obtainable sand and air."

Comments

What about copper?

[phantomcircuit]

Don't you need a lot of copper to actualyl do anything useful with a battery?

Is'nt the world reserve of copper basically mined out?

Re:What about copper?

[rolfwind]

If you are talking about wiring, aluminum is reasonably plentiful and conductiveand was used in the past.

Re:What about copper?

[somersault]

Just use gold instead!

But really, we have a lot of otherwise useful metals being punted around in the form of money at the moment. We should use digital money and put the metal stuff to better use.

Re:What about copper?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the past?

How about now?

Most overhead lines are made out of aluminum already. It's always been lighter, it's been cheaper for a long time, and it performs very well. Silver, copper, and gold are the best when it comes to pure metals, but aluminum is frequently passable.

Re:What about copper?

[ultranova]

Just use iron. It's not like the wiring is all that long.

Re:What about copper?

[Wonko the Sane]

There's so little gold in the entire world that even if we spun all of it unto wires the contribution would be negligible.

Re:What about copper?

[worip]

Never mind copper, what about lithium? Lithium is about as abundant as Nickel in the earth's crust: From Lithium's wikipedia entry ->

At 20 mg lithium per kg of Earth's crust, lithium is the 25th most abundant element. Nickel and lead have the about the same abundance

Not apparently a crisis, although it might be more expensive to mine due to the use of electrolysis.

Re:What about copper?

[kestasjk]

A wire shortage.. People can work up a fear about just about anything I think.

http://xkcd.com/605/

Re:What about copper?

[Mr. Freeman]

You are aware that iron rusts like a bitch, right?

There's also a lot more to worry about than electrical conductivity. You're passing a DC current through this which means you will have oxidation where this metal meets other metals if you aren't very careful.

This is why aluminum wiring in houses is a problem. The aluminum wiring is fine by itself, but if you try to use copper in the same house then you'll end up starting a fire in short order. In houses that DO have both Al and Cu in the walls, electricians have to install special junctions that allow the two to meet without literally corroding each other.

As for using iron in a car: this is going to be used in a wet condition, probably also with road salts (which increases conductivity), with electrical current. Your wires won't last more than a month if you're lucky.

Re:What about copper?

[amilo100]

Then use steel...

Re:What about copper?

[FatdogHaiku]

Aluminum is OK as a transmission medium, but it's not too good in end use applications. Turns out aluminum has a property called "cold flow", when you put it under pressure (like a screw or clamp terminal) the metal literally moves away and creates a loose connection which causes heat and often fire.

Next, greatly varying expansion/contraction properties make aluminum still more likely to work loose when terminated to a dissimilar metal like a lug or screw of brass, steel, etc..

Lastly, all aluminum has a coat of oxide that has high electrical resistance, and it reforms very quickly when it is cleaned off. Proper cleaning and antioxidant paste are critical to avoid failures in such home applications as the line dropping from the service weather head to the meter socket of a dwelling (a common application).

Once the circuits are in the walls of a dwelling you do not want aluminum because of the fire danger. While it has been used for mobile home wiring in the past during times of high copper prices, it is currently hard to insure one of those homes. If you DO have aluminum wire inside your walls you should be checking the torque (but don't over tighten) of every connection at six month intervals... forever...

To sum up, you only want aluminum where you can easily inspect and adjust any connections on a regular basis.

Re:What about copper?

[Wonko the Sane]

Aluminum is the third most abundent element on the planet and makes up 8% of the earth's crust, which is enough to ensure that we will never run out of the metal for electrical or structural uses.

We just need an ample supply of energy in order to refine it.

Re:What about copper?

[drinkypoo]

Once the circuits are in the walls of a dwelling you do not want aluminum because of the fire danger. While it has been used for mobile home wiring in the past during times of high copper prices, it is currently hard to insure one of those homes. If you DO have aluminum wire inside your walls you should be checking the torque (but don't over tighten) of every connection at six month intervals... forever...

No, you retrofit it with copper ENDS (which attach with conductive epoxy) which don't have this problem. Guess what? We no longer use wires poked into holes in automotive applications anyway; all connectors are terminated somehow.

Re:What about copper?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

There was a (temporary) setup along those lines at one point.

For Uranium isotope separation, they needed some large electromagnets. Unfortunately, WW2 was weighing rather heavily on the copper supply. Instead, they borrowed 13,000 tons of silver from the treasury.

Re:What about copper?

[phoenix321]

And steel rusts like a bitch in training.

We could use stainless steel, but that would be more expensive than pure copper, I think.

Re:What about copper?

[maxume]

No?

I grew up a few hundred miles from a mine that shut down because other mines were more economical. As the price goes up, that sort of mine can start operating again (if they can convince people in the area to put up with the environmental impact).

Re:What about copper?

[phoenix321]

Lithium in mineable concentration is pretty rare as it is and highly priced because of Lithium-Ion batteries - that's why everyone is searching for another battery type in the first place.

Re:What about copper?

[drinkypoo]

This is why aluminum wiring in houses is a problem. The aluminum wiring is fine by itself, but if you try to use copper in the same house then you'll end up starting a fire in short order. In houses that DO have both Al and Cu in the walls, electricians have to install special junctions that allow the two to meet without literally corroding each other.

Yeah, but the "special junction" is a copper wire with a butt connector filled with conductive epoxy and surrounded by heat shrink tubing. My mom has them installed in her 1970s double-wide, which of course has Aluminum wiring. You stick it on and heat it up and you're done. It would make more sense to go to 48VDC so that what metal the wire is made of matters less from every standpoint BUT corrosion, and then use stainless steel. Unlike Aluminum, you can reasonably solder it, provided you solder more stainless to it, and use the right kind of solder & flux.

Re:What about copper?

[Lars T.]

And steel rusts like a bitch in training.

We could use stainless steel, but that would be more expensive than pure copper, I think.

But we are not likely to run out of it in the near future - which in case you missed it was the point about copper in the first place.

Re:What about copper?

[macson_g]

Is'nt the world reserve of copper basically mined out?

According to Wikipedia, "total amount of copper on Earth is vast (around 1014 tons just in the top kilometer of Earth's crust, or about 5 million years worth at the current rate of extraction)". Of course only small fraction of this is available using _today's_ technology.

Re:What about copper?

[Turzyx]

Hey, look at it this way, when we've eventually all switched to renewable energy, we can finally clear those pesky stockpiles of coal and oil.

Re:What about copper?

[Darth Sdlavrot]

p>Is'nt the world reserve of copper basically mined out?

No. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper#Reserves

And copper can be recycled indefinitely.

Re:What about copper?

[phoenix321]

These alloys were cheaper if they are so easily obtainable, but I think there's a reason behind the price of stainless steel, which could be simple scarcity or high production costs.

A cursory glance at Wiki Grandma tells me that stainless steel requires a chromium content of 10 percent or more. And of course we have a singular dominant reserve: chromium is mined primarily in South Africa, harboring half the world's mineable reserves.

Not only that, but stainless steel is an even worse conductor than plain vanilla steel, having a resistance that is more than 30 times higher.

Re:What about copper?

[Anonymous Coward]

Other poster is right. Aluminum connections can be terminated, which solves a whole hell of a lot of problems.

It's still not perfect, but it's a perfectly viable stand-in for copper. Copper terminals aren't going to need as much metal as copper wires, obviously.

Re:What about copper?

[gr8_phk]

I once heard that Emerson (motor maker) uses 10-20 percent of the worlds electrical copper. Motors are a huge user of copper. I work in electric vehicles, and when we pump 100kW through a motor we're losing some 1.6 percent to heat in the windings. Change that to aluminum and the losses will only increase - and then the cooling solution becomes more complex, the weight goes up, the range goes down. Then there are the previously mentioned issues with aluminum. And to the GGP, all the easy copper has been mined, but I believe there is still plenty available to meet the inceasing demand. If handled properly it can be easily recycled too.

Re:What about copper?

[tom17]

Ahh, I thought 1014 tons didn't sound like much. The copy/paste was bad.

It's 10^14 tons. That's more like it!

Tom...

Re:What about copper?

[Idiomatick]

It isn't as big a deal as you make it sound. There are often light fixtures that use copper or aluminum wiring. If you don't get all the fixtures at one place there is a good chance you'll be mixing them up. And it isn't a real concern.

Re:What about copper?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't mean to disappoint you but... gold is so valuable exactly because its so rare. If gold was so easy to find as cooper, most wires in the world would be made of gold and it would be cheap as cooper...

Re:What about copper?

[Richy_T]

So when you're trying to get your toast out of the toaster, use a stainless steel knife rather than a silver one.

Re:What about copper?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's still a valid point. Gold is irrelevant. A couple thousand tonnes are produced each year, and the estimated total production for all of history is estimated at 158000 tonnes. By contrast, copper production is tens of millions of tonnes per year . Even given its better conduction properties, gold will always be a drop in the bucket for electrical applications, albeit an important one for specialized uses (e.g., electronics, obviously).

Re:What about copper?

[maczealot]

Not only is there lots of research being done about copper replacing aluminum, but this particular scientist has done some himself.

His faculty page
Stuff his group has done regarding copper

Although it looks like he has done stuff to do with corrosion, most of this is over my head... go go Physics Nerds!

Re:What about copper?

[ColdWetDog]

Not only that, but stainless steel is hard to work with. Doesn't bend easily. Doesn't machine easily. It's an OK wire (in some formulations) although not particularly strong and, as you note, has the irritating property of having high resistance. So no shiny love there.

Re:What about copper?

[Pictish Prince]

Just use gold instead!

But really, we have a lot of otherwise useful metals being punted around in the form of money at the moment. We should use digital money and put the metal stuff to better use.

Gee, I guess the US & Zimbabwe are way ahead of the curve.

Re:What about copper?

[amilo100]

Galvanised steel (steel with a very thin zinc coating) is routinely used for fencing. In my part of the world they also use it for telephone wire in rural areas (since copper gets stolen). Steel wire could replace copper in many situations.

Re:What about copper?

[amilo100]

There is no reason not to use aluminum wire or galvanised stainless steel wire.

South Africa may have many chrome reserves but there are many countries with large reserves and there is no shortage (even when South Africa starts to implode).

One reason that South Africa have so many reserves is because of good prospecting (both for chrome and other minerals). Other countries may also have substantial reserves that we don't know about.

It would however not be sensible to use stainless steel.

Re:What about copper?

[Pictish Prince]

It's still a valid point. Gold is irrelevant. A couple thousand tonnes are produced each year, and the estimated total production for all of history is estimated at 158000 tonnes. By contrast, copper production is tens of millions of tonnes per year . Even given its better conduction properties, gold will always be a drop in the bucket for electrical applications, albeit an important one for specialized uses (e.g., electronics, obviously).

Wrong. Silver is the best conductor of electricity. Copper is a close second. Gold is third and Aluminum is fourth.

Re:What about copper?

[geekoid]

Yes...and no.

Re:What about copper?

[geekoid]

If Copper was running out, it would be more expensive then gold.

That said, we will just develop wires from carbon nano tubes.

Re:What about copper?

[HiThere]

And for just terminals, you don't even need coper. Steel, esp. stainless, will work quite well. It may not be as conductive, but you're only talking about a very short path.

Re:What about copper?

[HiThere]

But gold is more corrosion resistant. That's why "gold plated" contacts are sort of reasonable. (Of course, that doesn't take MUCH gold.)

Re:What about copper?

[Anonymous Coward]

I once heard that Emerson (motor maker) uses 10-20 percent of the worlds electrical copper. Motors are a huge user of copper. I work in electric vehicles, and when we pump 100kW through a motor we're losing some 1.6 percent to heat in the windings. Change that to aluminum and the losses will only increase - and then the cooling solution becomes more complex, the weight goes up, the range goes down. Then there are the previously mentioned issues with aluminum. And to the GGP, all the easy copper has been mined, but I believe there is still plenty available to meet the inceasing demand. If handled properly it can be easily recycled too.

We could, in the us, just stop making and using pennys. :-)

Re:What about copper?

[cnkurzke]

well, they already did that.

since people started selling "pennies" for scap metal (worth a lot more than a penny), the USA has replaced the copper pennies with copper-plated Zink pennies in 1982.

http://coins.about.com/od/uscoins/f/copper_to_zinc.htm

Re:What about copper?

[phoenix321]

If you're not barefoot on wet floor tiles and in the 110V region, you might survive for a second try. Oh and don't hold the knife in your left hand, and keep your feet together :)

Re:What about copper?

[phoenix321]

All countries with a developed civil infrastructure OR a stable leadership would have done some prospecting by now. We might have some luck in North Korea and Somalia, but I wouldn't count on it. In all other countries, the mining multinationals should be done with at least a cursory prospecting by now, I guess.

A few decades and asteroid mining will look like a real alternative.

Re:What about copper?

[Tetsujin]

Galvanised steel (steel with a very thin zinc coating) is routinely used for fencing.

Well, yes, but how important is the choice of metal when you're not actually dueling to the death?

Re:What about copper?

[Tetsujin]

Ahh, I thought 1014 tons didn't sound like much.

Oh, but you could build a submarine with that much copper!

Re:What about copper?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why in the heck was this comment rated "Troll"? I sure hope the meta-moderator for this moderation has his eyes open.

Re:What about copper?

[Hucko]

We (known technology) can't yet create let alone string N.T.s together in a volume large enough to be usable as wires, barring the most specialised of (short) cases. When we do, electrical wires will have to compete with uses as structural wires. I'm presuming that unaligned tubes could be used in composite materials for larger areas generally.

Re:What about copper?

[amilo100]

All countries with a developed civil infrastructure OR a stable leadership would have done some prospecting by now.

Some, but not enough. Especially in other African countries (examples such as the DRC that lacked stability) there may be many more deposits. The more mining that is performed in a country the more deposits are found.

It is the same as the copper problem. There are significant amounts of copper in the DRC and Zambia. But because of corruption and the lack of stability it is not exploited.

What would be fun

[SmallFurryCreature]

Is if the best sand is in Saudi Arabia and the factory in Australia, then we would ship send both ways from desert to desert and be sure the aliens NEVER contact us!

Re:What would be fun

[montyzooooma]

Sand is everywhere.

Chile has half the world's lithium and they're gearing up to play hardball over it. This will hopefully deflate those plans.

Re:What would be fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Sand is everywhere.

Chile has half the world's lithium and they're gearing up to play hardball over it. This will hopefully deflate those plans.

If Chile plays hardball, then expect the US to claim Chile's harboring Al-Qaeda and are building Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Re:What would be fun

[daem0n1x]

They did it in the past but the baddies were the "commies". Other times...

Re:What would be fun

[phoenix321]

Oh and the commies are back already. And finished nationalizing the critical mining industries several years ago.

And they openly traded weapons with Iran and North Korea, boasted their strength and are currently dominoeing all neighboring countries to follow a socialist agenda. With Maoist rebels operating in the border territory against the still-capitalistic neighbor and all that.

Just like the good ol' times.

Re:What would be fun

[Jack Malmostoso]

Oh and the commies are back already. And finished nationalizing the critical mining industries several years ago.

I think you're confusing Chile with Bolivia. Chile has one of the strongest growing economy in South America and is a capitalistic country alright. Bolivia, on the other hand, has a socialist government and has been playing hardball with their lithium reserves.

Re:What would be fun

[daem0n1x]

About time for the Yanks to sponsor a new fascist dictatorship and snuff a few thousands of the motherfuckers, hey?

Re:What would be fun

[phoenix321]

Of course we can always wait for the socialist dictatorship to snuff some *millions* in their inevitable joy camps and then just build a memorial. This would be sensible, cheap, safe, environmentally-friendly, politically-correct and deeply respecting the local culture and religion.

You can still do a lot wrong when you're doing nothing. I suggest we print more money and send it to them, that's what my great European Union does all the time - and boy, it works sooo well, just look at Somalia, where an entire new industry with thousands of jobs was created by paying hundreds of millions to free a few ships.

Re:What would be fun

[phoenix321]

I was of course thinking of Bolivia, which currently instigates all sorts of quarrels along their borders. They successfully installed metastases in neighboring countries and are clamoring for more, hence the term "Domino".

Re:What would be fun

[MarkvW]

Ahhhh, the domino theory in another form . . ..

Maybe it's time for "containment!"

Re:What would be fun

[phoenix321]

We can always sit back and have some popcorn while the fireworks are on display. Worked pretty well after the US brought their troops home after Vietnam. Except for most intellectuals, teachers, students, writers, artists, engineers, politicians and entrepreneurs in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Myanmar. But dead people can't hold a peace march so we have forgotten about them by now.

Deep breath and settle

[kramulous]

Phew!

I thought I was going to have to inject silicon under the skin on my shoulder. Funny, didn't think all those implant leakages produced well adjusted, although a little quiet and drooley, bar wenches.

Re:Deep breath and settle

[Tetsujin]

Phew!

I thought I was going to have to inject silicon under the skin on my shoulder. Funny, didn't think all those implant leakages produced well adjusted, although a little quiet and drooley, bar wenches.

No, no, no... You've got your facts all wrong! It's silicone that's used in the implants...

Can't find anything wrong with the rest of your information, though...

"Turn the desert green" backfires

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Wouldn't you know it. You turn the desert into an environment that supports agriculture and the very thing you got rid of in mass quantities turns out to be the main ingredient in the technology of the future. Doesn't that just rub you the wrong way.

Re:"Turn the desert green" backfires

[SirLoadALot]

Actually at the moment things are going from green to desert. Desertification is a major problem around the world, including Africa and China, where arable land is being lost to the expansion of major deserts.

Re:"Turn the desert green" backfires

[Anonymous Coward]

Whooosh

Re:"Turn the desert green" backfires

[Idiomatick]

I hear the sahara is moving north/southward about 40km/yr. That's pretty fucking bad... ~5meters/hour.

And just to throw it in. It is man cause desertification. There isn't any question of this because it hasn't been made into a political issue. Goes to show that man can fairly easily and inadvertently change the face of the earth.

Re:"Turn the desert green" backfires

[mcrbids]

Can't comment on China, but the south Sahara (sub Sahara) has been getting noticably greener the last 10-15 years. Yes, the world is changing. Yes, we are a good part of the reason why. Yes, life will probably get harder. No, life win't end, but but life as we've known it will.

It's part of the process of humanity assuming control of our planet.

Re:"Turn the desert green" backfires

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think they are running out of sand

Re:"Turn the desert green" backfires

[NelsChristian]

Actually, at the moment, the Sahara is greening.

Climate Changes And Increased Rainfall 'Greening' the Sahara Desert Becoming Green Due to Climate Change August 4, 2009.

Marketing/advert submissions

[lanner]

While new battery technology is very important in our current time, the sheer number of duplicate stories and borderline advertisement/marketing stories on Slashdot about these new batteries, WITH a combines lithium FUD scare at the same time no less, sours these stories.

Re:Marketing/advert submissions

[BiggerIsBetter]

While new battery technology is very important in our current time, the sheer number of duplicate stories and borderline advertisement/marketing stories on Slashdot about these new batteries, WITH a combines lithium FUD scare at the same time no less, sours these stories.

Seconded. Does anyone else remember when Slashdot stories linked to journals and essays rather than blogs and press releases? Hopefully the click-through counts reflect the /. reader's ability to avoid anything with "blog" or "gadget" or perhaps these days even "google" in the URL.

Re:Marketing/advert submissions

[Nikker]

Thirds over here. Maybe if we get some low UID's involved in this thread we can bump the IQ of the Slash Populous a notch above rather than debating evilness and iphones.

Just a thought....

Re:Marketing/advert submissions

[TapeCutter]

"Just a thought...

I had that thought once but when I tested it I found UID's and IQ's are not inversely related.

Re:Marketing/advert submissions

[crazycheetah]

You know, that's what I've been thinking... I used to come on /. and read some really interesting thing every day. Now, I end up not even RTFA unless it actually sounds like it has some truly good stuff in the article. And yet I'm still disappointed when I do RTFA quite a lot lately, for how much it doesn't seem like much more than an advertisement/marketing story or blog article.

Disclaimer: My UID doesn't reflect how long I've browsed /., as I didn't use to read the comments nearly as much as I read the actual articles (which has kinda reversed)

Re:Marketing/advert submissions

[Nikker]

I never made that relation. The reason I mentioned the UID was in hopes that it would carry more weight with the sites editors. Many of the low UID's can remember where the site came from and maybe they can help to inspire Taco et al to bring it back.

Re:Marketing/advert submissions

[FlyingBishop]

I seemed to miss the part where this is a marketable product. It looks to me like standard "This research will change the world" silliness that likely won't be commercialized for years. It says as much in the linked posts.

And what is Slashdot for if not publicizing vaporware?

Re:Marketing/advert submissions

[mr crypto]

Seconded again. It seems like new energy technologies are announced at around one per week, and they invariably use "could", "might", "hope" and other terms for "it is not proven but we want more money for research". Everyone is hoping for a silver bullet, but continuation of these articles just breeds cynicism.

We need a Slashdot tag for these, something like "hopeful".

Re:Marketing/advert submissions

[Hoi Polloi]

Ah, here we go. The "good ol' days!" effect rears its ugly head. Nothing satisfies like an unfounded bias.

Re:Marketing/advert submissions

[TapeCutter]

"...get some low UID's involved in this thread we can bump the IQ of the Slash Populous a notch above..." - Sorry but those words tricked my 5th percentile comprehension skills into thinking you were relating UID's and IQ.

Disclaimer: I agree with your sentiment if not your statement.

Re:Marketing/advert submissions

[JWW]

Yes, be careful what you wish for. Remember, in the "good old days" we routinely got stories from Jon Katz, whose skill for hyperbole eclipsed even that of kdawson.

Re:Marketing/advert submissions

[nprz]

Hopefully the click-through counts reflect the /. reader's ability to avoid anything with "blog" or "gadget"

I just play it safe and don't read any articles.

Re:Marketing/advert submissions

[iceaxe]

Oh, no, you just made me remember Katz! Why?! I had purged that from my forebrain on purpose!

*goes back to drooling and ogling the rest home nurses*

Re:Marketing/advert submissions

[Anonymous Coward]

Fortunately, my 1st percentile comprehension skills can help you out here:

He was insinuating that the people with current UID's have lower than average intelligence. Therefore, SINCE UID's and IQ are not related, we can expect new people (with average IQ) to bump the IQ of the Slash Populous.

Learning the skill of identifying implication is a skill more suited for politics rather than nerds, unfortunately.

Re:Marketing/advert submissions

[samkass]

Does anyone else remember when Slashdot stories linked to journals and essays rather than blogs and press releases?

The most frustrating submissions to me lately are ones that link to fluff articles ABOUT a real journal article, but don't actually link the journal article in question. Meta-meta-discussions tend to quickly devolve into chaos.

Re:Marketing/advert submissions

[Ironchew]

Does anyone else remember when Slashdot stories linked to journals and essays rather than blogs and press releases?

I'm no fan of blogs with one page of ads per paragraph, but the last time I checked, most scientific journals have a paywall in front of them. I thought the internet would eliminate the need for publisher middlemen between scientists, but most science is still locked away from society this way.

Re:Marketing/advert submissions

[MarkvW]

Very good point. I'll bet that they learned from reading their data that linking to journals and essays generates fewer hits than linking to blogs and press releases. More its means more ad revenue means more return to shareholders, which is what corporations are all about.

Corporate organization pushes a drive to go bigger and bigger--and more and more toward the lowest common denominator. Disney, McDonalds . . .

Anyway, thanks for your post. Maybe I should start spending my time with something a little more engaging!

Re:Marketing/advert submissions

[hduff]

The link to the journal article was unreliable for me, so I chose the one that worked. I would have preferred to submit the direct link to the journal article. Don't assume that submitters are clueless.

Re:Marketing/advert submissions

[geekoid]

I think you ahve created a new logical fallacy: Argument from low UID.

I have been here sin year one, note my UID.

This is my 3rd account. The only think low UID means is that it's a low UID, nothing more.
And /. has been linking to posts and poorly written articles since it began.

Ironically, I got my 2nd account specifically because I was getting modded up just because I had a low UID.

I got my current account because I lost the password to my second account in a move and there wasn't any password retrieval method.

Yes, the good ole days when people ranted about how sucky the new star wars movies are going to be.

Re:Marketing/advert submissions

[Anonymous Coward]

I am Junis, you insensitive clod!

Re:Marketing/advert submissions

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, last submit didn't go, maybe this'll work this time. IIRC, Lithium can be extracted from our little oceans around the world, so is scarcity real?

Re:Marketing/advert submissions

[cyphercell]

Except new people would have higher UIDs, suggesting that you're parsing the original post's meaning rather than the actual written word. This would be your intuition at work rather than your reading comprehension.

Re:Marketing/advert submissions

[BiggerIsBetter]

Maybe I should start spending my time with something a little more engaging!

If you find that something, please let us know.

Re:Marketing/advert submissions

[TapeCutter]

I agree that interpreting words to mean what they don't say is a skill more suited to politics.

Re:Marketing/advert submissions

[Hucko]

Got any evidence to back that up?

Re:Marketing/advert submissions

[adolf]

In my version of the "good old days," we hadn't yet heard from Jon Katz on these pages.

Natrium batteries

[Colin Smith]

Chemically very similar to Lithium. Plenty of Natrium around.

 

Re:Natrium batteries

[captainpanic]

Natrium is called SODIUM in English. (Not sure, but I think that English is the only language that does not use the word "natrium" for Na).

And it might not be able to form the components that you need for the battery (it's not pure lithium).

Read more here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Electrochemistry

Also, if it would work, sodium is much heavier than lithium.

Re:Natrium batteries

[thodi]

That would be sodium for most people here, by the way.

Re:Natrium batteries

[Jack Malmostoso]

Hmmm yes but no.
Lithium has quite the diagonal relationship with Magnesium.
Diffusion of Sodium is quite different than Lithium's.

Re:Natrium batteries

[Anonymous Coward]

not true, czech language doesn't use "natrium" for Na either, it is called "sodik" instead

Re:Natrium batteries

[pmontra]

Not sure, but I think that English is the only language that does not use the word "natrium" for Na.

Natrium was the original Latin name for the element but it's Sodium in English http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium, sodio in Italian http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodio, sodium in French http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium, sódio in Portuguese http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%B3dio, sodio in Spanish http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodio and I stop here because I don't want to enter into languages I don't know.

Google gives 12,500,000 occurrences of Sodium and 730,000 of Natrium.

Re:Natrium batteries

[dvh.tosomja]

> Not sure, but I think that English is the only language that does not use the word "natrium" for Na

Slovak and Czech call it "Sodík"

Re:Natrium batteries

[Marcika]

Natrium is called SODIUM in English. (Not sure, but I think that English is the only language that does not use the word "natrium" for Na).

No, both are used very widely, actually: "Sodium" (from arabic suda: soda headache tablets) is used in most Romance and Slavic languages and "Natrium" (from ancient Egyptian natron: baking soda/soda ash) is used in Germanic languages and Hungarian/Serbocroatian, mostly due to the influence of Berzelius (who was a Swede).

Re:Natrium batteries

[Colin Smith]

Also, if it would work, sodium is much heavier than lithium.

and much lighter than nickel.
 

Re:Natrium batteries

[daem0n1x]

How about "Sódio" in Portuguese?

Re:Natrium batteries

[Anonymous Coward]

Its called "natrium" in Swedish. Never heard of sodium until you wrote it.

Re:Natrium batteries

[Colin Smith]

Hmmm yes but no.

And yet it's being worked on.
e.g.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.elecom.2006.08.029

 

Re:Natrium batteries

[Max Romantschuk]

Interestingly it's natrium in both Finnish and Swedish.

Re:Natrium batteries

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Spanish word for sodium is "sodio". Funny thing, as one would have expected it to be "natrio" instead (just substitute "o" for "um" and there you have a Spanish version of a Latin word). Which makes me wonder if someone at sometime forgot that sodium probably comes from Arabic, as per Wikipedia, and thought it was Latin instead.

Re:Natrium batteries

[MattSausage]

So just out of curiosity, and probably to be modded redundant, the Chemical formula for salt is spoken as "Natrium Chloride" there?

Re:Natrium batteries

[Darth Sdlavrot]

Actually, Spanish word for sodium is "sodio". Funny thing, as one would have expected it to be "natrio" instead (just substitute "o" for "um" and there you have a Spanish version of a Latin word). Which makes me wonder if someone at sometime forgot that sodium probably comes from Arabic, as per Wikipedia, and thought it was Latin instead.

Perhaps Spanish was influenced by the Arab presence in Spain during the Middle Ages?

Re:Natrium batteries

[the_one(2)]

Interestingly you can say kaustik soda for sodium hydroxide in Swedish. Dunno if soda is an old name for natrium or if it's just that specific combination that is imported (swedish wikipedia didn't say and I'm to lazy to check elsewhere).

Re:Natrium batteries

[the_one(2)]

yup. Natriumklorid to be exact. Natriumhydroxid is sometimes called kaustik soda though.

Re:Natrium batteries

[zippthorne]

That's a lye!

Re:Natrium batteries

[pmontra]

It seems that sodium is a newer name for natrium. Some languages kept the old one and others switched to sodium.

I found an explanation at http://takimika.liceofoscarini.it/sostanze/etimelementi.phtml?periodo=3&gruppo=1 I translate it from Italian:

Sodium derives from modern Latin sodium, coined by Davy [probably this guy] from middle ages Latin soda of arabic origins. The origin of the element symbol is different. It comes from natrium, the middle ages name for sodium carbonate, Na2CO3, derived from Latin nitrum and Greek nítron (salpetre), that is potassium nitrate, KNO3, which looks like sodium carbonate and was often confused with it in the old ages.

By the way, "kaustik soda" is "soda caustica" in Italian.

Re:Natrium batteries

[geekoid]

You mean Natrium Portmanium~

Re:Natrium batteries

[Tetsujin]

Natrium is called SODIUM in English.

Well, whatever it's called, it's just the thing for blowing up evil fish monsters!

Also, there is no such thing as voodoo...

Lithium limited?

[MojoRilla]

According to the All Cars Electric blog there is no looming shortage of lithium. From the article:

Gerson Lehrman Group, a New York consulting firm, estimates that even if 500,000 cars powered by lithium ion batteries were produced in 2015, they would use less than 10 percent of last year's global lithium output. And global output continues to climb.

And there is the fact that salt water has lithium. In fact, some startups are trying to extract it now. If the price goes high enough, it will be practical to extract lithium from the ocean.

Re:Lithium limited?

[7-Vodka]

To say that the supply of lithium is limited, is like going back 150 years ago and saying that the supply of oil is limited.

Re:Lithium limited?

[MichaelSmith]

To say that the supply of lithium is limited, is like going back 150 years ago and saying that the supply of oil is limited.

So when can we expect Peak Lithium?

Re:Lithium limited?

[Hadlock]

depends. right now were're surface mining lithium salts from exposed salt flats. theres no telling how many rich veins of lithium salts are hiding in valleys or near aquifers. i'm sure someone is working on that, but until someone runs analysis on where those veins might be i doubt anyone could tell you. more than likely battery technology will move beyond lithium long before (100 years?) we run out of lithium "ore" you can just shovel off the ground and into the back of a truck (Seriously, do a google image search for "lithium ore" - they literally shovel it right off the ground into piles, and later into pickup trucks)

Re:Lithium limited?

[Ginger Unicorn]

Would extracting lithium from the sea impact sea-life? I imagine if we started doing that and relying on it, our consumption would just keep spiralling upwards while there was a drawn-out global debate about what effect it is having, which gets resolved just in time to stop the human race dying out, but not in time to stop significant destruction to the marine ecosystem.

but i might just be being paranoid/pessimistic as i don't know anything about it.

Re:Lithium limited?

[MtHuurne]

There are some important differences though. Oil is used as an energy source, while lithium is used to store energy. When a battery reaches its end of life, the lithium can be extracted and used to make a new battery.

Also, a rising price of lithium means more lithium ore will become economical to mine. Because extracting oil takes energy, there is a point at which it is not worthwhile to extract the oil since you would have to burn more oil than you extract.

Besides, the price of lithium is currently a very small portion of the price of a battery. The price of lithium could rise to 10 times its current level and batteries would still be affordable. If the price of oil would rise to 10 times its current level, the impact would be huge.

Re:Lithium limited?

[phoenix321]

A few weeks after Peak Copper, Peak Oil and Peak IQ.

Peak Oil is scheduled since thirty years to happen any minute.
Peak Copper is currently underway in Europe because valuable non-ferrous metals are pilfered where and whenever the police isn't looking for a second.
But Peak IQ already happened in 1990 (google for "Flynn Effect", if you doubt it) but I think it was some sort of a pre-requisite for the other Peaks - with the exception of Peak Climate, which curiously follows the inverse of the Flynn Effect trend.

Re:Lithium limited?

[phoenix321]

We are already extracting sodium and chloride from sea water and it's a boon to people and Golf courses in the Middle East.

But we could start mining lithium in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and filter out all the plastic nurdles there and sell them as a cheap by-product, would that appease the Greens?

Re:Lithium limited?

[CrimsonAvenger]

Gerson Lehrman Group, a New York consulting firm, estimates that even if 500,000 cars powered by lithium ion batteries were produced in 2015, they would use less than 10 percent of last year's global lithium output. And global output continues to climb.

Of course, worldwide auto production is a lot closer to 10,000,000 per year....

Re:Lithium limited?

[Anonymous Coward]

The situation is completely different.

A non-renewable energy resource such as oil is consumed by the process of using it as fuel -- i.e. it is destroyed (unless you're willing to wait millions of years for the carbon cycle to do its job). It also has a well-defined theoretical endpoint that would never be crossed: once it takes more energy to extract it than the oil contains, there's no point in extracting it. It's simple physics. And the practical economic threshold will be reached well before that point.

By contrast, a non-renewable material resource such as lithium is not destroyed during use, and it can be recycled. This prolongs the availability of the resource immensely. The challenge becomes recovering as much of it as possible rather than trying to manage its inevitable depletion. Furthermore, as a non-energy resource, we can keep mining it from geological sources of ever-diminishing concentrations. There is no practical limit to the resource as long as the price/demand goes high enough. Although it is unlikely it would ever be necessary, we could extract it from average rock if we had to. Oil isn't like that at all.

Thus, by recycling efficiently "peak lithium" might never happen. The worst that would happen is increased expense. "Peak oil", however, is inevitable as long as we keep using it, and no matter how high the price goes. Well, unless you stopped using it as a fuel and only sold it as perfume or something.

Re:Lithium limited?

[Anonymous Coward]

The growing demand for and perceived shortage of Lithium is why I made out like bandit earlier this year on Galaxy Resources (GXY) shares. Bought at $0.35 and sold out at $2.10 not even six months later.

Re:Lithium limited?

[michael_cain]

More than 50,000,000 annually. Automotive World reported that global commercial vehicle production for 2008 was 70.5 million units, including 52.6 million passenger cars, 13.6 million light commercial vehicles, and 3.6 million trucks. Total production was down 10.8% from 2007 due to the effects of the world-wide recession. Production in China and India for local sales are increasing very rapidly.

Re:Lithium limited?

[kaatochacha]

Shortly before lithuim is blamed for causing a rise in global static levels, and various shady people begin selling lithium offset credits for people who take it medically- Three heart patients=$550.

Re:Lithium limited?

[Ginger Unicorn]

Do you mean environmentalists in general? Or a particular group? I'm sure i have no idea what might or might not appease a particular idealogical or political interest group. There's no such thing as the pacific garbage patch - it's a myth. Presumably the sodium and chloride you're referring to are from desalination. In desalination the sodium and chloride that are separated out from the sea water are dumped back into the sea. So what is really being removed is the water, thus increasing the concentration of NaCl in the ocean. Unless the water that is separated out is permanently retained on land somehow this also gets back into the water table and returns to the sea, mitigating the impact of desalination, although the initial introduction of concentrated brine into the sea does have environmental impact. If we extracted lithium from the sea and put it into an ever growing arsenal of batteries - would it ever get put back in the sea? Would this matter?

Re:Lithium limited?

[phoenix321]

No matter how high or low the concentration of lithium in sea water may be, we could mine out several millions of metric tons from it and not be able to reduce the planet-wide concentration by a noticeable percentage even if we wanted to.

Assuming we have only 1 microgram of lithium per liter of seawater, there would be oodles of lithium and if or while we may be able to economically extract it, there's just so much untreated seawater left that it would not matter much.

The annual planet-wide downwash of lithium into the oceans from rain and rivers is probably much more than all lithium we ever mined in the last 100 years, but it's should be so diluted that it's of no economic use to extract it.

We could always throw our used lithium batteries back in the oceans :)

Summary

[phantomfive]

Still in prototype (seems he might have only made one, and he tested it for 600 hours ). Not rechargable. More powerful than current hearing aid batteries. May be made rechargable in 10 years (how on earth do people estimate this stuff? How can you estimate how long it will take to do something no one has ever done? It might not even be possible). Rumors abound. If it works out it will be great, but don't hold your breath.

Still, it's kind of cool that you can make a battery out of sand.

Re:Summary

[blind biker]

First of all (I'm a researcher in power MEMS/micro power sources), I must say that a battery that has been tested for 600 hours count as an excellent proof of concept. Most of the stuff we develop we're happy if it works for minutes, let alone hundreds of hours. This is in advanced stage. Second: so what if it's "only" a primary battery? The market for primary batteries is HUGE and because they are disposable, making them cheap and environmentally friendly is just if not more important, than with secondary batteries.

Re:Summary

[AGMW]

Still, it's kind of cool that you can make a battery out of sand.

Yep, and to charge it you just turn it over!

Re:Summary

[phoenix321]

My car still burns non-rechargeable hydrocarbons and one tank barely lasts 600 hours.

If the energy-to-weight and energy-to-cost ratios of that battery could reach even the general vicinity of gasoline, everything else concerning click-in systems or replacement is peanuts and will be invented less than one second after the battery itself. Of course we will have BluBattery and HD-Battery warring for dominance, but that's only a minor nuisance compared to the fact that we now could power cars, trucks, boats and airliners without needing to pay or liberate more 17th century cleptocracies somewhere in the deserts.

Re:Summary

[queazocotal]

It can't.
It's not possible to recharge in its current form, and will be comparatively expensive.
Even neglecting that - and the poor discharge rate - it can probably only be discharged at a slow rate due to the design - it is a better hearing aid battery that might last - say - 20 days instead of 10, and be a bit less toxic.

You _could_ put it into your car - but it would require a truly massive battery.

Re:Summary

[mea37]

TFA doesn't give us enough information to determine if these cells would be suitable in applications that currently use primary cells.

It does claim that they could displace lithium batteries, which is not a primary cell application.

I suppose you could try to make swapping batteries in electric cars quick and easy, and then maybe you could work out a model for using primary cells in cars. I'm not holding my breath on consumer acceptance, but I could be wrong about that.

Even then, we'd need to see actual numbers. The reason there isn't just one battery chemistry today is that battery characteristics vary widely - there's a lot more to it than just nominal voltage and weight - and different batteries are suited to different applications. The only battery I consider suitable for backpacking with a 10W radio station in my pack is a AGM lead acid - and that's in spite of its weight. I would never hike with a large ilthium battery, yet I would never use lead acid to power a cell phone.

So until we get past the media hype and see some real data on these batteries, I'd say it's premature to claim that they could save us from an impending lithium shortage (which, in case you missed it, is what TFA is trying to say).

Re:Summary

[geekoid]

If it holds enough electricuty, it doesn't need to be rechaarble. You just go to the battery replacement station and get new ones.

Even if it can 'only' scale to small batteries. Imagine no more batteries tossed into landfills.

Re:Summary

[geekoid]

Very clever. I had to think for a moment to realize what you where talking about.

Re:Summary

[geekoid]

I'll choose which ever wiring the British don't choose.

Re:Summary

[mikael]

If it is going to be possible to manufacture paper batteries based on silicon nano-tubes that store more energy than a lithium-ion laptop battery, then that is going to happen much sooner than we could imagine.

Re:Summary

[phoenix321]

Paper batteries sound like a nice energy-to-weight ratio, which would be great. Our automotive companies should have still some SUV design blueprints and toolsets lying around so energy-to-volume ratios would be less of a limit. The large cargo compartment will finally be useful for suburbanites :)

charge my batteries

[Trepidity]

in a daze 'cause i found juice

does this mean

[commodoresloat]

they'll be treating manic depression with silicone?

Then again, I guess they've been doing that for years with breast implants...

Re:does this mean

[rcamans]

And what's this sexism bs? Why not femic depression? Or Femalic?

Re:does this mean

[bilbobob]

More to the point, in 10 years time my girlfriend will have implants that can recharge my ipod. Obviously contactless power would be best; not sure USB piecings would go down too well. I might even start saving for my own pec implants now.

Re:does this mean

[commodoresloat]

I think the appropriate term is mynic

Information

[gabebear]

Paper at http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S1388248109003889

The capacity of the prototypes was very small, but they are hoping to acchieve 10 Ah/g.

Re:Information

[Lars T.]

Paper at http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S1388248109003889 The capacity of the prototypes was very small, but they are hoping to acchieve 10 Ah/g.

So how much is that in potato batteries?

Re:Information

[phoenix321]

Specific Ampere hours don't tell much about the energy content, which is the crucial value in battery development.

The paper talks about a 1-1.2V battery, so we could assume it gets about 1 Wh/g or 1kWh/kg. 1 kWh = 3.6MJ, so this battery could reach about 3-4MJ/kg.

Gasoline or diesel are in the range of 40-50 MJ/kg, but the engine and ancilliaries are much heavier than a simple electric motor. This electric motor has a much higher torque than four-stroke gasoline engines and can sustain short bursts of much higher peaks, therefore 75kW would be comparable in an electric car. Assuming a common automotive power plant of 100kW weighs about 200kg complete with all liquids including 50l of gasoline, we would have 12.5MJ/kg for this common application total.

This revolutionary battery is still only a third of the power-to-weight ratio of a common automotive power plant (with an estimate probably erring some in favor of the battery). And that is without the electric motor, because I have no idea how much a 75kW specimen weighs.

Re:Information

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no idea how much a 75kW specimen weighs.

(Posting anonymously in order to preserve mod points)

A lot less than you'd think. I have a 10kW motor that weighs 1.5kg, and isn't as wide around as my out-streched hand. The biggest enemy for these permanent magnet motors is heat. Even if your 100kW motor is 99% efficient, you still have to dump 1kW. Assuming that the motor scales (and it does), you could make 100kW out of 15kg, but I don't know how you'd keep the magnets below 85C (the temperature at which normal supermagnets demagnetize).

And of course 99% is unrealistic. 90% would be a little better. So now you have to dump 10kW of heat from an object the size of an LCD screen. That's quite a lot of cooling. Cars get away with it because much-- perhaps the overwhelming majority-- of their waste heat goes out the exhaust in the form of hot gasses.

Still, contrast that size and weight with an equivalent car engine and you see why electric is so interesting. Cooling them efficiently is a challenge, but by no means impossible.

Re:Information

[gabebear]

Oops, forgot to put voltage...

but you seem to have moved a decimal. 10Ah/g at 1V = 10Wh/g, which would make it possibly several times better than gasoline.

The 10kWh/kg claim is hard to believe, lithium-ion is currently maxing out at ~400Wh/kg.

Understand how it works - and then applications

[Anonymous Coward]

The article does not help understand how it actually works, so I read around and went to the Technion-friends website.

Basically normal sand is Silicon-Dioxide. If you take pure silicon and build a battery from it, and expose the battery to air, the silicon will interact with the oxygen in the air. So the pure silicon will become silicon dioxide - sand. In the process, it releases energy.

The neat trick in the battery - is that they set it up so that the energy is released NOT as heat (which is the usual thing), but some of it as electricity. They do this with some kind of membrane that allows oxygen ions to flow through, but electrons must come the other way - hence an electric flow.

Like any innovation, will take some years to be fully researched and commercialized. Small batteries will probably come first, bigger ones (for cars) later. And how to recharge does not seem obvious - at least not from the description so far.

A lot of people above are skeptical - but really this kind of innovation is what science and engineering are all about. Innovation goes hand in hand with raising ever more questions; we should be used to that by now.

Really really cool. And smart. My hat off to the Israeli guys and their collaborators in USA & Japan.

(Electro-)Chemistry is quite fuzzy

[Jack Malmostoso]

I have read the original publication (doi:10.1016/j.elecom.2009.08.015) and cannot understand much of the (electro-)chemistry of it.
The electrode potential is strongly dependent on the doping of the silicon, which makes sense, but the I/V curve looks less than impressive. It's mostly a bad fuel cell, at the moment.
Also, the chemistry of the electrolyte is not clear to me. In principle the battery should work according to dissolution of Si from the anode, transport through the electrolyte (an ionic liquid with fluorine) and reaction with oxygen at the air cathode. The researchers claim that they observe a white deposit at the cathode, and that this deposit is SiO2.
Silicon-fluorine chemistry is quite complicated, IIRC, and I cannot for the life of me imagine transport of Si4+ ions in the electrolyte. Also, HF as such does not dissolve Si, but it need some strong acid to start the etching. How this phenomenon can happen in the ionic liquid is beyond me.

Also, in the introduction, the researchers claim that the battery has an "infinite shelf life", but then talk about corrosion currents in the paper. If there is corrosion (i.e. self discharge), then the shelf life is quite limited.
Cherry on top, they claim that SiO2 is easily reducible to reobtain Si. I am not familiar with silicon metallurgy, but I am not sure it is easy to do it electrochemically, let alone replate Si at the anode upon recharge.
On the plus side, they used metallurgical grade Si, which is dirt cheap when compared to semiconductor grade Si.

I would love for this to work, but at the moment the authors have omitted quite a bit of information. If I were the referee, I would have asked at least the questions above. Think of it, there is a corresponding author for a reason.

Disclaimer: I work in battery research, and I am hence jealous that they made it to the front page of Slashdot.

Re:(Electro-)Chemistry is quite fuzzy

[rcamans]

Um, making the front page of a gossip blog of ill repute is not necessarily the peak of one's life.

I, for one, welcome my silicon overlords.

Re:(Electro-)Chemistry is quite fuzzy

[MattskEE]

How much HF is involved in this process? Because that stuff can be extremely dangerous if the battery were to break or burst.

Figuring out how it works

[giladpn]

(sorry may be some confusion - a double post since the previous one inadvertently was anonymous)

To better understand how this works, I went to the Tehnion website.

Sand is actually Silicon-dioxide (combined silicon and oxygen). Pure silicon interacts with oxygen form the air to create sand. That's first-year normal chemistry. Usually such an interaction produces heat not electricity.

They built the battery from pure silicon, and the trick is that Oxygen from the air has to pass through a membrane to get to the silicon and oxidize it. The membrane will allow only oxygen ions through, so electrons have to flow the other way to match up with the ions and maintain overall neutrality. Hence you get a current instead of only heat.

Of course it will take some years to commercialize. Small applications will come first (small batteries), only later will we get big batteries (for cars?) and even later rechargeable stuff (if at all). I noticed many people are skeptical - but this is normal in science and engineering. Any real innovation raises new questions that must be answered. Kudos to the Israeli team, and their collaborators from USA & Japan.

Re:Figuring out how it works

[geekoid]

At this stage, everyone should be skeptical. Need more evidence and is mass production is feasible

English is wrong.

[Colin Smith]

Natrium is called SODIUM in English.

The chemical name is Natrium. Clearly English is wrong.

 

Re:English is wrong.

[phoenix321]

The chemical name for mercury is "hydrargyrum" and I'm glad nobody uses that regularly. "Quicksilver" could follow the latin word best without bending the tongue of scientists and technicians beyond repair.

Re:English is wrong.

[Darth Sdlavrot]

You must be from München.

I'm from Munich, and I call it Sodium.

but...

[Anonymous Coward]

what happens when we run out of sand? :)

Re: peak lithium

[Anonymous Coward]

Every day obviously, but which peak are you referring to? Mania or Depression?

Thank you. Thank you. I'll be here all the week.

Estimates

[Anonymous Coward]

off-topic, but...

How can you estimate how long it will take to do something no one has ever done? It might not even be possible)

Heh. That's what folks in my industry (software) do all the time.

(/me runs to skirt the customer hitting me over the head)

But notice the caveats

[Ancient_Hacker]

Wonderful, but there are an awful lot of warning signs that this thing is not a world-beater:

* It's not rechargeable. And I don't know of any simple electrochemical process that reverses the oxidation of silicon.

* It requires a Flourine-carrying electrolyte! Lithium is bad enuf, but Fluorine is really bad stuff.

* Usually "air-powered" batteries are limited to very low current, slow discharge applications, such as hearing-aids.
So it's very unlikely these could ever work like in a laptop or car, where you need amps, not microamps.

* Any practical and competitive battery would have to have a good power-density and be stable and manufacturable at a reasonable price.

Re:But notice the caveats

[Jack Malmostoso]

It requires a Flourine-carrying electrolyte! Lithium is bad enuf, but Fluorine is really bad stuff.

All Li-ion batteries carry a fluorine containing electrolyte. In particular, LiPF6 is the salt used, dissolved in organic solvents. Plus a whole bunch of additives. The ideal salt would be a perchlorate, but being explosive it's not allowed.

Re:But notice the caveats

[qc_dk]

It's not rechargeable. And I don't know of any simple electrochemical process that reverses the oxidation of silicon.

Neither is gasoline. No wonder we don't use the stuff. ;-)

Re:But notice the caveats

[Anonymous Coward]

*It requires a Flourine-carrying electrolyte! Lithium is bad enuf, but Fluorine is really bad stuff.

              Can't even be used as rocket fuel, cause its to corrosive.

Re:But notice the caveats

[geekoid]

Many small batteries are not recharable, and this thing is a lot better in a land fill If it scaled to vehicals, then you will jsut go to a 'Battery replacement station'.

Flourine isn't that big of a deal.

The break through is that they ahve fouind a way to scale this up. Maybe more testing dev. required.

Re:But notice the caveats

[Anonymous Coward]

No one every claimed they'd figure out how to recharge gasoline in 5 years.

Peak Oil is past.

[Anonymous Coward]

Peak Oil is past. Peak oil isn't "we're running out" or even "we're not able to get it out quicker" but merely that you can't increase supply to match demand.

That's all.

And that passed us by in the 70's in the US, 90's in South America and North Sea and depending on which country, the 80s to the 00's in the Middle East.

Increased oil prices are the proof. OPEC tries to keep the price low enough to be sold quickly and high enough to be profitable, thereby maximising the rate of profit making in the oil industry.

That they have been unable to control the prices shows Peak Oil is past.

Call me VERY cynical, but. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

I wouldn't put it past the Israeli psyops people to pull a stunt like this.

Please follow the logic.

1. "We're taking a beating in public relations as a nation. What with the whole deliberately bombing civilians, bulldozing homes, withholding vital medical care from those who don't agree to become snitches, and perhaps the creepiest of the lot, abduction and organ harvesting. --Yes we can control the real press no problem, (have you heard those stories given full coverage in the "real" news?), but this internet nuisance. . ! It's out of our control. We tried a massive astro-turfing campaign with demonstrably false talking points (thank-you Jon Stewart for being the only guy in television land for having the gonads to point them out.) while we were bombing Palestine last holiday season, but when people are able to get together on the unrestricted internet and were able to discuss things in forum rather than simply stare at a CRT and nod like zombies, our evil toxic bullshit PR threatened to not be 100% effective. We need to control this internet!"

2. "What is the most vital, most exciting, most anticipated technological breakthrough that people closely associated with the internet have been wishing for? Ah yes. Good battery tech."

3. "Subtle message; keep us safe from repercussions resulting from our numerous crimes against humanity. (The abused sickeningly often turns into the abuser, and in the case of Israel, it's just a typical example. The West Bank IS a concentration camp.) --But just hold off for another 5 years, because if you turn on us now, you won't get these marvelous batteries which can make your laptops last forever, and did we forget to mention, they can also save the world from automotive greenhouse pollution? Copenhagen what? No that's just random timing, honest!"

4. "Profit."

Hm. Actually, now that I think my way through this, it just seems fishier and fishier. Why is the word "Israel" built into the company name? This smells of a psy-ops play for mind share. --Hardly surprising for the only country on the planet which was able to organize a giant astro-turfing campaign to bolster world-wide support for war crimes and atrocities during the so-called "Cast lead" where the IDF used phosphorus on civilian targets. For crying out loud!

Sorry, Israel. I could care less about your religion, (or any religion, for that matter), but your government is evil and like Germany, the world is letting you get away with it. Heck, worse, the US is funding the damned thing.

So, sorry, no, I don't think your oh-so-innocent battery story making headlines is what it says it is.

-FL

Re:Call me VERY cynical, but. . .

[Jesus_666]

Why is the word "Israel" built into the company name? This smells of a psy-ops play for mind share.

So you argue that National Semiconductor is a CIA front (having "National" in its name and being American)? American Express was founded in 1850 but the olderst three-letter agency I can think of, the FBI, is half a century younger. Who does AmEx work for?

Also, this battery is interesting but hardly going to revolutionize the automotive world. From the specs they have released it sounds more like a replacement for zinc-air batteries used in hearing aids. Unless they invent a car that runs on ~1V these batteries are unlikely to power one.

So we have "hey, let's use a company with a name that will immediately put all the conspiracy theorists on high alert to release research data about a somewhat nice but not very exciting new battery technology so they will let us get away with whatever we want". Sorry, but either the Israelis are complete idiots or this is not a scheme to somehow keep us from scrutinizing them.

Re:Call me VERY cynical, but. . .

[BeardedChimp]

As much as I despise how Israel behaves as a nation, do not mistake the actions of it's government for that of it's scientists.

Re:Call me VERY cynical, but. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

So we have "hey, let's use a company with a name that will immediately put all the conspiracy theorists on high alert to release research data about a somewhat nice but not very exciting new battery technology so they will let us get away with whatever we want". Sorry, but either the Israelis are complete idiots or this is not a scheme to somehow keep us from scrutinizing them.

You give the population of the Earth, (and certainly the internet), far too much credit, IMHO.

And I notice you had a hard time coming up with company names with the word, "America" (or similar) in them. I did too, otherwise I wouldn't have pointed out the Israeli name thing.

Now. . , the question is, was I modded into Troll Dust because of an unprovable speculation, or because I pointed out the truth of Israel's crimes against humanity in a world where people would prefer to pretend that psychopathic barbarity is A-okay?

-FL

Re:Call me VERY cynical, but. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

As much as I despise how Israel behaves as a nation, do not mistake the actions of it's government for that of it's scientists.

I'm sure the guy working on batteries is just a guy working on batteries, and more power to him. But it's the Israeli self-promotion machine using him which I am pointing out here.

Scientists have a long history of tunnel vision. I'm sure the guys making the atom bomb were fine people as well, but that doesn't mean politics aren't always present.

For one, I hope this battery works out well. I want my laptop to last longer on the road. But there is still evil afoot and it's silly not to look at it and recognize its forms. The fact that my post has been modded into the ground as a 'Troll' is evidence that there is some serious dementia at work here.

Truth hurts.

-FL

Re:Call me VERY cynical, but. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_company_name_etymologies

There's quite a few with "America" or "American" in them. Note though, putting "America" in your name when, to be competitive in the modern world market, you have to be an international corporation, is not the smartest business move.

"You give the population of the Earth, (and certainly the internet), far too much credit, IMHO."

It's interesting to me how almost all conspiracy theorists have the shared characterizations of being both elitist and ignorant at the same time.

Re:Call me VERY cynical, but. . .

[Jesus_666]

I could pose the counter-question of whether you think there is an Israeli consipracy and want others to know or whether the Israelis hired you to post unprovable speculation under the banner of an Israel critic to discredit all such critics? Can you undeniably prove you're not involved with them?

That's the problem with this kind of question: They're completely without substance because no matter what the answer is, you can always discount it by applying the question to the answer.

Re:Call me VERY cynical, but. . .

[abigor]

Always funny to see how knee-jerk people are about Israel, yet how silent/uncaring they are when it comes to similar, and mostly much bloodier, situations - the Algerian government's actions in Darfur, the Chinese in Tibet, Rwanda back in the '90s, etc.

I wonder why this is?

Re:Call me VERY cynical, but. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

Always funny to see how knee-jerk people are about Israel, yet how silent/uncaring they are when it comes to similar, and mostly much bloodier, situations - the Algerian government's actions in Darfur, the Chinese in Tibet, Rwanda back in the '90s, etc.

Seems pretty obvious to me. It's all about cultural identity. --I went to high school with guys who now serve in the IDF. I know more Chinese people now, and consequently, the situation in Tibet is closer to my awareness as well.

Anyway, defending one's psychopathic behavior by pointing out other people who are doing the same thing is rather a bullshit defense. And calling people's reaction to butchery, "Knee Jerk" is a little strange, don't you think? After all, it's hardly an automatic response. It takes rather a lot of courage to criticize Israel openly in the current media environment. "Knee-jerk" would more aptly describe those people cringing with Pavlovian response to the threat of being called an Anti-Semite.

Labels are bullshit. What I see are people trying to justify genocide with a bunch of semantic nonsense. And you bloody-well know it.

-FL

Re:Call me VERY cynical, but. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

There's quite a few with "America" or "American" in them.

No there's not. I saw a number of acronyms in that handy wiki-list, but none with the word "America" front & center. "AOL" doesn't pack the same punch as "Technion-Israel", now does it? In the game of media perceptions, this sort of thing makes rather a large difference.

It's interesting to me how almost all conspiracy theorists have the shared characterizations of being both elitist and ignorant at the same time.

Well, elitism is a natural by-product of seeking while others choose to hide. I certainly feel superior to those who repeatedly say and believe false things despite all evidence to the contrary. However the question of ignorance is the thing which is more interesting. Nobody knows everything, and the job is to seek and analyze the information and ideas which flow. This is all I am doing. I have simply come to realize that it is more efficient to assume guilt when it comes to the mainstream media and resolve innocence based on crucibles such as this very one we're in right now. --Anybody who assumes innocence from a main-stream media voice today is, frankly, a fool. --I say that based on what is readily knowable about the long series of endlessly repeating patterns we see in human nature, corporate nature, psychopathic nature, national policy and war.

-FL

Re:Call me VERY cynical, but. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

I could pose the counter-question of whether you think there is an Israeli consipracy and want others to know or whether the Israelis hired you to post unprovable speculation under the banner of an Israel critic to discredit all such critics? Can you undeniably prove you're not involved with them?

Point taken. But it's curious that Israel is the villain in both your scenarios.

-FL

Specialty

[zogger]

If this is your specialty, then please contribute more good articles about new batteries. It's hard to sort through the "coming soon in 10 years to never" from "coming soon, works pretty dang good now, perhaps on sale as early as next year" from "on sale now, here is a link" stuff.

Battery tech to me today is sort of like solar PV tech. I've read hundreds of articles of new amazing break throughs, yet when I go check prices, the PV panels I got ten years ago are still a deal compared to what I see offered for sale today. They are marginally more efficient today, but at twice the price. Same with ancient tech lead acid batteries for bulk stationary storage, or short range urban electric vehicles, still the best deal out there. As soon as you go to anything else, zooba, whip out the platinum card and prepare to pay as much for a battery bank as a new mid range conventional car.

That's what people are looking for, the currency unit to watts or amphours deal.

Except for the smallest portable gadgets using lithium ion, I am just not seeing any affordable and practical major breakthroughs hitting the market with either solar PV or batteries, compared to say the advances in the last ten years with computers/cellphones, what you can get for the same or less dollars.

Re:Specialty

[Areyoukiddingme]

The prices of both solar PV cells and lighter batteries are very carefully being kept artificially high. It's amazing how effective the cudgel of patents can be in the hands of inimical interests.

I refer to the established facts of the lawsuit Chevron brought against Toyota for the electric version of the RAV4 over its nickel metal hydride batteries. Chevron owns the patents for NiMH, acquired during the merger with Texaco, which purchased the rights from GM in 2000. Toyota lost and paid a $30 million settlement and was the subject of a permanent injunction against production and use of NiMH batteries in any form.

The various lithium battery chemistries are still relatively new and development continues fairly rapidly, so of course they're all tied up in patents. There's already been a patent lawsuit between two lithium battery researchers. Why the patent holders aren't pushing harder for high volume production I don't know; most of them are not owned by corporations that would lose money from their primary lines of business if volume production happened.

The case for the price of classic hard silicon solar PV cells being keep artificially high is just one of simple observation. Solar PV cells are produced with semiconducting silicon, very similar if not identical to the doped silicon used to make the vast majority of computer chips in the world. Those computer chips are manufactured literally by the megaton for fractions of a penny per chip. Their features are much more complex and difficult to inscribe on a chip than the features of a PV cell, which means their manufacturing cost is, if anything, higher than it would be for PV cells. Retail products that use those chips are dirt cheap and ubiquitous. Therefore the only possible explanation for the absurdly high price of solar PV cells is an artificial constraint being imposed any time a manufacturer considers mass production of solar PV cells. What that constraint is I don't know. The basic technology is so old that it should be out of patent coverage by now. I've seen a graph claiming the price of solar PV cells has been dropping steadily for the past 30 years, but it's rather obvious that it has not dropped at anywhere near the same rate as cheap electronics, so something is amiss.

Re:Specialty

[geekoid]

I talk with people who create Solar cells. I hea r all about the industry, and my brother works in a cutting edge company. I can say, with the utmost confidence, that your head is in your ass.

I can't comment on your NimH claims, but based on the fact that you have no idea what you are talking about regarding PV development and jump to wild conclusions based on yuor ignorance I feel I am safe to assum you donty know what your are talking about either.

A brief seardh turns up the fact that Toyota is opening a new NiMH plant in 2010.

http://green.autoblog.com/2008/05/27/toyota-announces-plans-for-new-nimh-battery-plant/

Toyota out out this little know vehicle called the Prius that uses NiMH. Of course they hardly advertise it so I can't expect you to know that~

Re:Specialty

[Anonymous Coward]

Toyota lost and paid a $30 million settlement and was the subject of a permanent injunction against production and use of NiMH batteries in any form.

I mainly agree with your post, but this really can't be right. The Prius uses NiMH (except perhaps the latest rev., not sure), and I gather they have sold a few of those in the US. :-)

And yes, I'm sure the older gen Priuses used NiMH... I've watched a battery being taken apart! (By professionals... do not attempt at home! For once those warnings about death and serious injury are justified!)

Re:Specialty

[Areyoukiddingme]

Energy Conversion Devices press release
http://www.ovonic.com/news_events/5_2_press_releases/20040707.htm

ECD Ovonics Announces Settlement in Patent Infringement Dispute

COBASYS and Panasonic EV Energy to cooperate in the development of
next-generation state-of-the-art nickel metal hydride batteries

Rochester Hills, Mich., July 7, 2004 -- Energy Conversion Devices,
Inc. (ECD Ovonics) (NASDAQ:ENER) today announced that it and COBASYS
LLC, its 50-50 manufacturing joint venture with ChevronTexaco
Technology Ventures LLC, have entered into a settlement agreement
with Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (MEI), Panasonic EV
Energy Co., Ltd. (PEVE), and Toyota Motor Corporation with respect to
patent infringement disputes and counterclaims involving nickel metal
hydride (NiMH) batteries before the International Chamber of
Commerce, International Court of Arbitration. Under the terms of the
settlement, no party admitted any liability.

Under the terms of the settlement, COBASYS and PEVE will cross
license each other for current and future patents to avoid possible
future litigation. COBASYS and PEVE have agreed to a technical
cooperation agreement to advance the state-of-the-art of NiMH
batteries which are widely used in hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs).
COBASYS and PEVE have also established a joint development program to
collaborate on the development of next-generation high performance
NiMH batteries for HEVs.

The parties reached an amicable settlement on mutually satisfactory
terms that will help them to meet the requirements of expanding the
HEV market. Details of the settlement are confidential.

For more information about ECD Ovonics, please visit
http://www.ovonic.com/

For more information about COBASYS, please visit
http://www.cobasys.com/

# # #

This release may contain forward-looking statements within the
meaning of the Safe Harbor Provisions of the Private Securities
Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements are
based on assumptions which ECD Ovonics, as of the date of this
release, believes to be reasonable and appropriate. ECD Ovonics
cautions, however, that the actual facts and conditions that may
exist in the future could vary materially from the assumed facts and
conditions upon which such forward-looking statements are based.

Contacts:
Ghazaleh Koefod, Shareholder Relations
Dick Thompson, Media Relations
Energy Conversion Devices, Inc.
248.293.0440

Raymond Wagner
VP Marketing, Cobasys LLC
248.637.7400

--------------

Next time, instead of saying "I know things and you don't, so nyeah nyeah nyeah", say what you know. This is slashdot. My only error was in saying the injunction was permanent when in fact it persists only until 2010, and we only know that for certain this year after Toyota announced their plans for 2010, as the terms of the settlement were confidential for the past 6 years.

Asshole.

Re:Specialty

[Ancient_Hacker]

Your analysis is fundamentally off-base. Silicon solar cells are expensive, not because of some global conspiracy, but because they require a lot of silicon square footage. One slice of ingot can make several thousand $100 CPUs, or less than a square foot of solar panel. That's one big reason why solar cells cost so much. It would be worse, but for the fact that solar cells are made from silicon slices that are rejected for making IC's. Just a little off-tolerance on impurity level or resistivity and the slice gets sold at a discount to the solar cell folks. If they had to pay the going rate for good silicon the cells would really be out of sight.

Sion

[AP31R0N]

i wish calling Lithium batteries "Li-on" (Li + ion) had taken root. Maybe we'll get it this time with Si-on.

Re:Sion

[Mopatop]

Everyone I know calls them "Lion" batteries

Re:Sion

[AP31R0N]

Your friends are cool, then!

Most of the commercials i see/hear insist on calling them Lithium-ion. *shrugs*

Re:What about the old people?

[Anonymous Coward]

Much simpler to just cut the population then the supply of everything (per capita) suddenly increases.

What we ought to be working on are technologies to help look after all those old people (you and me) as their proportion increases over time.

Why you nasty troll!

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop trolling around, you stupid biatch!
As the other guy said, you can't connect the actions of the government to the actions of the scientists.

So next time, before you write crap, make sure to clean your ass beforehand, ya stupid jerk!

Now buzz off before I scrape your ass from the sky.

BTW: I am looking for a girlfriend.

Re:Why you nasty troll!

[Fantastic Lad]

So next time, before you write crap, make sure to clean your ass beforehand, ya stupid jerk!

Now buzz off before I scrape your ass from the sky.

Yeah, that sounds about right. Touched one of those nerves they hard-wired into you as a kid, did I? Maybe you should build a wall around me and tear up all my olive trees?

Denial when reality is right there saying the opposite. Cognitive dissonance will in fact tear your brain in half. Either that, or your soul. If you still have one.

-FL

One question

[OhHellWithIt]

Will it spontaneously combust the way some lithium batteries do? If not, then it's hardly a replacement!

Environmental warfare

[handy_vandal]

... man can fairly easily and inadvertently change the face of the earth.

Man also deliberately changes the face of the earth in an adverse manner, for purposes of warfare. In the ancient world, invading your neighbor's territory and destroying crops was a routine practice. See also: Salting the earth, Entomological warfare, Weather warfare.

The Energizer Bunny is not gonna like this!

[macraig]

No lithium?! Here they are talking about taking him off his meds again... it's gonna make him anxious, and you don't wanna make Bunny anxious!

Carbon based batteries

[Midnight Thunder]

Having recently read an article in the "New Scientist" as to how Carbon could be the new Silicon, thanks to Nanotechnology, this got me wondering whether Carbon could do the same thing for batteries, so I decided to see what the research status is. From what I can see Zinc-Carbon is the current cheap solution in non-rechargeable batteries (according to Wikipedia), though a few hits turn up Lead-Carbon batteries, with this following article suggesting it could be a "game changer":

http://seekingalpha.com/article/115257-lead-carbon-a-game-changer-for-alternative-energy-storage

As to whether that pans out we will have to see. The advantage of Carbon over Silicon and Lithium is its availability.

Re:Carbon based batteries

[gabebear]

Zinc-carbon are sometimes sold as "Heavy Duty" alkaline-type cells. They have been around for awhile, and can't handle the high current that lithium can.

Carbon-Lead is neat, but has a terrible power density(worse than normal lead-acid batteries). They can handle incredibly high currents, but the density makes them not very useful as a battery. They might be a cheap replacement for super-capacitors in regenerative braking.

Shipstones

[Fished]

In Friday, Heinlein made the point that the problem is not an energy shortage, but a shortage of really good, efficient, cheap ways to store and transport energy. He invented a technology called "Shipstones" to overcome this--which were essentially a sort of supercharged storage battery. This in turn enabled a world where fossil fuel use was all but unknown. (This was one of the few Heinlein books to address anything resembling environmental issues--and while I think some elements of his "solution" are far-fetched, such as a return to horses and animal power except for "Authorized Power Vehicles"--it's interesting to see how he dealt with it.)

There is a point to be made here. A really good battery technology is potentially a world changer. With such technology, we could get back to using oil for plastics and medicinal uses, just like the Romans did. :)

Re:What about the old people?

[Phoenixlol]

You suggest cutting the population AND preserving old people? I was hoping for a Logan's Run scenerio after that first sentence :(

The Saudis will always have us in the vise....

[jameskojiro]

Because they won't let us use the sand we already have instead we will have to import it from those crazies....

No shortage of lithium

[AnotherBlackHat]

Lithium can be extracted from sea water, and even using current known methods, it would only raise the cost of lithium batteries by about 8%.
http://gas2.org/2008/10/13/lithium-counterpoint-no-shortage-for-electric-cars/

The killer problem for battery powered cars isn't weight, or energy density, it's cost.
The battery pack in the Tesla model S is an estimated $30,000 of it $55,000 price.

-- Should you believe authority without question?

Let's rethink this...

[Tetsujin]

Just use gold instead!

But really, we have a lot of otherwise useful metals being punted around in the form of money at the moment. We should use digital money and put the metal stuff to better use.

You make a good point, but why stop there?

We need these electrical conductors to get electrons from one place to another, right? If we could just tell the people at the other end to use the electrons they've already got at the other end, we'd save all sorts of trouble...

The only possible downside to this plan is we'd have to go out to the local pharmacy from time to time, buy a box of electrons to sprinkle over everything to de-ionize it again...

Bolivian hardball

[Tetsujin]

Bolivia, on the other hand, has a socialist government and has been playing hardball with their lithium reserves.

And believe me, nothing hurts like having a ball of Bolivian Lithium thrown at you... It's not worth it, just for a walk...

PV

[zogger]

Well, please explain then, if possible, why panels-watts per dollar, are just not getting any cheaper. People really don't care that much about watts per square meter of modules, they want watts per buck deals. Watts per square meter are more a metric for spacecraft arrays, because of launch costs, folks in suburbia couldn't care less if they have to cover half their garage roof or all of it, as long as it gets much cheaper watts per dollar.

    Near as I can see, we hit a plateau of affordability around 2002 (last year I bought any myself, started in 99) and they are getting more expensive, if anything. I know all about the fabs and how they were forced to use silicon rejects for so long, the demand for microchips has been so high, etc, but seems PV demand would have increased enough by now to overcome that limitation, along with all these thin film "printable" cells we keep hearing about. Nanosolar allegedly ships some cheaper stuff, but it is pure unobtanium retail inside the nation they are manufactured in, they go to Germany last I knew because of the guaranteed grid tie pay back figures, which are really good for the owners there. That leaves everyone else with still expensive stuff as the only option.

Like I said, hundreds of articles about new amazing breakthroughs over the past *decade* but it ain't hitting retail yet, same with any amazing batteries except for real small cheap gadgets, and even those are spendy, many dollars for a replacement cheap tiny bare bones cell phone or laptop batt still.

Luckily my old golf cart lead acid batts are still doing OK, I installed a desulphator to keep them clean, etc, but if I was to go shopping today for replacements..it would still be 18th century tech level lead acid as by far and away the best deal out there for bulk storage on the cheap. All these amazing breakthroughs with PV and batteries are not translating to anything joe six pack can get retail, so that's the question "why not"?

    Ten years ago I really believed that by by now we would be able to slide on down to home depot and be able to grab 100 watt panels for 100 bucks, from a variety of makers. I thought it would be a lot more common and less expensive by now. I thought we might be able to grab NiMH or whatever for around 1/4th price they are still today, yet we can't, either product. And LiIon...just outtasite, ridiculous to even think about it for a home solar battery bank unless you are rolling in cash and don't know what to do with it. All the other exotic chemistry batteries..same deal, LiFe and so on, zinc/air, all that stuff, stuck in R&D land, while we potential consumers are still waiting for next week's amazing breakthrough article. In this same ten years, computers got three times as powerful for one third the cost..or is that not a fair comparison? PV is still around five bucks a watt retail, more or less the same as it was ten years ago. You can get marginally cheaper deals than that occasionally, scratch and dents, that's it. Where's the buck a watt stuff?

Cobasys

[zogger]

The history of NiMH batteries in electric cars more or less revolves around these guys

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobasys

Better link

[zogger]

from further down that same page, more on topic on why no large cheap NiMH yet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_encumbrance_of_large_automotive_NiMH_batteries

Ze me'od lo yafe'

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't tear olive trees.. :(

Well frankly I know that the Palestinians are being mistreated. But nobody knows how to deal with them..

And as said before, just because the soldiers misbehave, doesn't mean that the scientists misbehave as well. It's just plain mean to do that to my delicate soul.

And I'm still looking for a girlfriend. Any idea why I can't find any?

Re:Ze me'od lo yafe'

[Fantastic Lad]

Nice back-peddle.

There's hope for you yet if you recognize that such things are sometimes required. It's the same as saying, "Ouch. I was wrong."

Doesn't mean you have a soul, though. A genuine feeling of "Ooops" versus a simple tactical maneuver are two very different things.

-FL