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Carbon Nanotube Batteries Pack More Punch
cremeglace writes "Researchers at MIT have come up with a new way of making batteries from carbon nanotubes. Carbon nanotubes are attractive materials for battery-making because of their high surface area, which can accept more positive ions and potentially last longer than conventional batteries. Instead of this design, the MIT researchers introduced something new — using chemically modified carbon nanotubes as the positive ion source themselves. For now, the new batteries can power only small devices, but if the method can be scaled up, the batteries may provide the power needed for applications like electric cars."
In the last year or so there's been a new battery research story every month promising longer lasting batteries that are smaller and usually cheaper. Yet the most advanced you can buy are still just play Lithium Polymer batteries which seem to power my Android phone for about 15 minutes.
Call me when this research turns into a produced battery.
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome."
Will they be able to prevent thermal runaway in these better than in, say Lithium based batteries? As density goes up this needs to be more of a concern. Laptops melting down are one thing, but imagine the havoc of a car exploding due to battery failure. That's the last thing the electric car movement needs to have happen.
Of all the technologies that are supposedly "just around the corner": fusion power, flexible displays, etc., dramatically improved batteries are probably the most wearyingly repetitive. Literally every 3 months since 2005 I've seen an article on Engadget, or wherever, about some university that claims 500% longer-lasting batteries in the lab, to be available to consumers "in 18 months". Ain't happened yet. Let's all claim success about boosting battery capacity when we can actually buy them, until then this is just so much hot air.
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Something about carbon-based tubers the other day?
The CB App. What's your 20?
...but if the method can be scaled up, the batteries may provide the power needed for applications like electric cars.
And it's that one big damn, 'if,' that actually prevents most technologies like this from seeing commercial production/practical application.
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Extra power packed into batteries by a Scientist named Shoe Horn!
How about potatoes?
was this a bad joke or are you actually retarded?
Actually, a bunch of us don't particularly believe in any conspiracy, but are nevertheless kinda jaded and cynical after hearing one too many (or a few thousand too many) press releases that promise the moon and then some.
Don't get me wrong. I for one don't propose to cut their funding or anything. It's good that they research stuff. I do wish though the press and PR didn't have the tendency to grandstate.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
That seems green to me.
Yet another new threat of new battery technology that may reach us some day. Been hearing this for so long that I've come to believe that the batteries we have today is all that will ever be.
If I didn't have absolutely NOTHING to do, I wouldn't be here.
But I'm really in the market for a battery that packs a bit more kick. Kick of the roundhouse type -- to the face!
How about potatoes?
Millions of starving Irish can't be wrong!
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There's plenty of battery technologies that perform well enough for cars already.
Lithium Iron Phosphate is almost ideal as an example. It holds less charge than a
Li-Ion pack, but in return it can recharge in a sensible amount of time ( 10-15min ).
Now I know some people with no clue will come claim that amount of energy can't safely
be transferred or something. You're wrong. Recharging a 25kWh battery pack (corresponding
to ~150km of driving) in 15 minutes would require 100kW. This is a bit more power than
most devices, but heck, my hairdryer does 2kw out of a standard socket, and I'm pointing
that thing in my face every morning. 100kW might be a lot compared to a cellphone charger,
and it will take a bit of engineering to design a connector, but it's hardly an unachievable
amount of power.
The problem is that these advanced batteries are expensive. Heck even Li-ion is prohibitive
for a family car. Tesla gets away with it because they are selling a luxury model, but if
batteries are going to power a significant fraction of cars then their cost has to come down.
The question now is not so much if but when batteries will take over. Much will depend on what happens
with the oil and electricity prices, but eventually petroleum will become sufficiently expensive that
an electric car is simply a more economical choice.
Unlike the fuel cell guys, which are constantly promising consumer products shipping in "just a few months", I'm glad these folks realize their work is still well away from widespread application where it's really needed.
It isn't a good idea to eat green potatoes. Unless you are eating them with green eggs and ham, that is.
Remember to maintain your supply of
No. We should instead find someone who is not only intelligent but also honest to listen to.
The AEI who funds Green would love nothing more than to keep the world running on coal and oil until Armageddon. The pseudo-intellectuals they hire are no authority on science, technology, economics, politics, or even religion.
So, less energy than lithium ion?
Useless - utterly useless - for "electric cars". Or indeed anything that currently works fine with lithium ion.
Can you think of an application that needs less energy than lithium ion, but more power? Shark-mounted frikkin' lasers, maybe.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
the funny thing is, if we can produce enough carbon nanotubes to make this battery mass producable, we could probably use those carbon nanotubes in a flywheel energy storage device that would have the energy density of gasoline, thereby rendering this battery somewhat obsolete.
I hear that Nicolaus Otto has made great strides in the confined ignition of distillates. But work by Rudolf Diesel my lead to a even more efficient version.
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the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
In most designs regenerative braking has to throw away power because you can't charge the packs fast enough. A battery that CHARGES faster would be useful not only for quick-charging but also for regenerative braking. I didn't RTFA though so I have no idea if it carries more current in both directions.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Is there no end to the usefulness of these 'carbon nanotubes'? And, umm...how many decades before we actually see something commercially viable that uses them?
So many injustices..so little time..
was this a bad joke or are you actually retarded?
While I'll admit that the walking through soot - carbon footprint may not be the best joke in the world, it ain't that bad either. And no, I'm not retarded. I'm asking a legitimate question in order to prompt discussion and so educate both myself and my fellow Slashdot readers.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
...you know, all the revolutionary achievements we read here every week...and our energy problems are solved!
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
No. We have no carbon nanotube-based materials that could make a flywheel anywhere close to batteries in terms of energy density. Individual tubes do not a similar bulk material make. Plus, flywheels have catastrophic failure modes, don't scale down well, and all sorts of other problems.
They have their uses, but if you compare what's on the market today to what's on the market today, and what's forecast versus what's forecast, it's really hard to make the case for flywheels. Heck, has anyone even broken 40Wh/kg yet? Flybrid is only at 22Wh/kg.
Yes, I've read a poem. Try not to faint.
Sounds like you're perpetuating the "batteries haven't improved" myth. Batteries have advanced at about 8% per year for the past two decades, and show no signs of slowing down (actually, just the opposite). The problem is that most people experience batteries through electronics, and electronics' demands on batteries have grown nearly correspondingly.
Back in 1989, the best top-of-the-line rechargeable cells were the brand new NiMHs, with an energy density of about 45Wh/kg. Today, the best on the market are 220Wh/kg li-ions (or are they up to 240 by now?) And just watch as the new silicon-anode cells start rolling out (it's already started); they'll end up blowing the old graphite cells away.
If the rate continues, in another 20 years, a 215-mile EV today will be a 1000 mile EV. In 30 years, a 100-mile EV today will be a 1000 mile EV. Now, one can say, "Sure, that's the trend that's existed for the past 20 years", but it won't continue. Well, to be honest, as mentioned, the rate of advancement only seems to be increasing. There are literally dozens of next gen techs already being worked on that could hit the 15-20 year target but should only take ~5-10 years to commercialize. Will all of them work out? No. Will most of them fail to play out? Yes. But will all of them fail? There's virtually no chance of that happening. And already we have some techs in the lab that could hit targets in that 20-30 year timeframe -- li-air, digital quantum, etc. In fact, there was a huge advancement announced in Li-air just a couple weeks ago -- they got the efficiency up to ~85%, and think they can get it even higher. And they think it'll improve the lifespan, too (efficiency and lifespan were the two biggest problems with li-air).
Yes, I've read a poem. Try not to faint.
And yet here we are, 21 years later, and NiMH rechargeable cells are still the best available rechargeable technology for standardized form factors such as AA.
NiMH AAs weren't available immediately. When they did become available, they were pretty pathetic, a far cry from today's NiMH AAs.
Li-ion doesn't scale down that small very well because of the required charge management hardware and because the nominal voltage is too low for a single cell but too high if you put two in parallel. As a consequence, things that want to use li-ions typically use li-ion packs, not AAs, and run at different voltages. However, today we finally have at least li-ion primary cells in AA form factor that work in some devices which are half the weight of NiMHs yet deliver ~3,000 mAh.
Dare we even compare today's NiMH or li-ion AAs all to alkalines? Try putting alkalines in a digital camera that takes AAs and see how long it lasts ;)
The closest thing to a secondary-cell li-ion AA you'll usually find is the ever-common 18650 cell. Break open your typical li-ion battery pack for a laptop and you'll probably find them. They look kind of like AAs, but they're not -- they're a nominal 3.7V, not 4.5V.
Yes, I've read a poem. Try not to faint.
The comparison to a gas tank is somewhat inadequate as these batteries are far heavier than gasoline; if you have a serious accident that compromises the frame of the car you really can't guarantee that the battery container is going to be unperturbed. There needs to be two or more dedicated safety measures to contain or divert the energy from the batteries away from the occupants in the event of damage.
Also: They can release their energy much more quickly (and thus more hotly) than gasoline. Gasoline requires oxygen from the air (or wherever) to burn and this limits its thermal power. Lithium cells are self-contained and have all the pieces of the reaction ready to go. (That's why they're heavier than an equivalent amount of gas.) They're only limited by the physics of the propagation of the catastrophic energy release mechanism.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
... all the technologies that are supposedly "just around the corner" ... Ain't happened yet.
Part of the problem is the ongoing storm of breakthroughs. Not only do they have to turn out to be practical in a real, manufacturable product, they have to remain the cutting edge long enough to make back the cost of tooling up once they come to market. Lots of this stuff gets displaced within months by something better.
Fortunately enough of the breakthroughs meet this criterion and make it into production for the products to advance - quite rapidly. It may not be as visible as Moore's Law in semiconductors. But the race IS on.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Unlike the fuel cell guys, which are constantly promising consumer products shipping in "just a few months", ...
Huh? They're shipping NOW - in power-an-office-building sizes.
There's no inherent reason they can't be scaled down to power-a-laptop-off-a-butane-tank size in reasonably short order (assuming you don't mind your laptop putting out several times the heat it does now...).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I do not like green potatoes and ham.
Any improvements in electricity storage devices will be compensated for by producers of devices which use those electricity storage devices and thereby negate the improvements.
i.e. You're never going to get more than 100 miles out of your electric car. It'll just get bigger heavier and faster instead.
Battery electric vehicles have had a range of approx 100 miles for a century now. 100 years ago, around 40% of all cars sold in the US were electric. How's that for technological history.
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Or they could coat all the insides of the body panels and chassis with a thin layer of battery that would still give a very large total volume, evenly distributed. If they divided it into independent cells evenly drawn down, even a collision trashing that part of the car would put only a a little of its power storage out of commission.
If they could manufacture and assemble the battery layer as a sprayed paint, that could lower costs and speed repairs. And if the upper outside surface of the car could be covered in solar PV panels (or paint), the whole battery could recharge at whatever fraction of 1KW:m^2 the sun (or artificial lighting) is pouring down on it.
Those are other, extra innovations not yet within our grasp in addition to these nanotube batteries just achieved. But they are good complements to the batteries and its properties. The arrival of the battery material might just pull us closer to the complete package.
--
make install -not war
The real cost is (as you said) batteries. Even the cheapest lifepo4/nimh batteries on the market would cost $10,000 in this scenario. Fast charging (I.E. less than 15 minutes) is a non-starter. Where are you going to find that 100 kW outlet? The problem is a chicken and egg problem. In order to have cars, you have to build all these chargers. But who wants to build chargers until there are cars? A much easier solution to this problem can be found here.
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Community is a cartel
Even better, their work could be combined work by fischer and tropsch to burn uranium.
Responsibility is an addiction
Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel
There already are millions (billions?) of starving Africans. Given that, who are you expecting to care about the Irish?
In soviet Russia, God creates you!
In most designs regenerative braking has to throw away power because you can't charge the packs fast enough. A battery that CHARGES faster would be useful not only for quick-charging but also for regenerative braking.
You don't need the full capacity to be of the fast-charge type though, it would be enough to have a smaller "buffer" battery to store energy from braking. The main pack could be topped up by the buffer pack at a slower rate, or the energy could be used directly from the buffer if braking is followed soon after by acceleration (which would often be the case).
The main pack could be topped up by the buffer pack at a slower rate, or the energy could be used directly from the buffer if braking is followed soon after by acceleration (which would often be the case).
It doesn't make sense to use a battery here. But it also doesn't make sense to charge pack to pack, because battery charging is lossy. And of course you want the whole pack to fast-charge, so that you can hook up a super-fat connector and charge in a timely fashion. Gas stations might [very eventually] be replaced with parking lots full of chargers, with some spaces equipped only with fast chargers.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
whoooosh!
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Well, alkalines don't last long in a digital camera because their capacity is far smaller on big loads. On small loads, they'll destroy any NiMH battery.
Is it not possible to shove a small voltage regulator and a li-ion battery into a AA-sized container such that it produces 1.5v of output voltage? Or would the heat produced be too great?
Think about automobiles. Do you realize they would never make it to the market today. Same with airplanes. Both these have catastrophic failure modes, and would be a liability nightmare. It is very hard to be innovative and completely safe at the same time.
-Your existence depends upon the death of billions of cute tiny fuzzy bacteria, and viruses. Each of them have as much right to live as you.
I was actually referring to those "power a laptop off of butane" guys, who have indeed been promising shipping product for many years, yet consistently fail to deliver.
Well, alkalines don't last long in a digital camera because their capacity is far smaller on big loads.
It's about inferior voltage discharge curves.
On small loads, they'll destroy any NiMH battery.
No longer true; today's NiMHs now boast about the same mAh as alkaline.
Is it not possible to shove a small voltage regulator and a li-ion battery into a AA-sized container such that it produces 1.5v of output voltage?
It's not really easy. The simple approach is a linear regulator, which basically means that you pile in resistors to lower the voltage. But that's obviously really wasteful and means lots of heat. Switched mode and magnetic regulators are too big and expensive for something like a AA cell.
Yes, I've read a poem. Try not to faint.
For now, the new batteries can power only NANO devices. There, fixed that for you ;-)