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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."
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.
...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!
> Currently nothing to see here.
Yes, because none of us have any interest at all in developing technology. We just want to see the results on the market. Ongoing research? How boring. Wake me up when you can make my 'Pod run longer. Don't waste my time with this stupid "science" crap. That's for nerds.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Everybody knows that if you can design an economically viable improvement on present-day batteries, you are going to be wildly, obscenely rich. There are plenty of applications where people would be perfectly willing to pay several times more for a battery than what they are paying now if there was a significant improvement in capacity/mass. This leads to a lot of research being concentrated even on very wild potential ideas. Many are viable in the lab, but are too expensive to produce (by a margin of several orders of magnitude), too dangerous, too short-lived, or any combination thereof.
No matter how many misses there will be, this situation is more or less the ideal case for a free market to optimize for -- if it is possible to safely store more electrical energy in a smaller mass, it will be found eventually.
We're already close to the limits and it can't really be improved.
Yeah, I remember hearing a talk way back when pointing out that we're going to run out of shrink Real Soon Now because 100 nm is the absolute limit that simply can't be bettered. The guy introducing the talk said he'd given a similar one on the 60's or early 70's saying that 1 micron was the absolute limit that simply couldn't be bettered...
This is not to say that there aren't limits, but that we are terrible at predicting them. Anyone who confidently pronounces a limit on something is just announcing their ignorance of technological history, which pretty much disqualifies them from pronouncing a limit on something. It's the only catch...
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
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.
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.
How weird. The tiny lithium battery I put in my smartphone a year ago still powers it for at least a day's worth of use on a full charge, if not more depending on how little browsing and video watching I do. I won't spoil the ending and tell you what kind of phone I have; I will leave that as an exercise for the reader.
And for what it's worth, it may feel like an eternity but no less than 10 years ago we had no such fancy-fangled inexpensive lithium batteries for our phones/laptops. If you wanted one, it was gonna cost you, it wasn't going to hold much energy, and it would be dead with about 6 months of regular use. Today's very cheap, highly durable, very energetic lithium polymer batteries are the result of continuous un-sexy research that made headlines in the 80s and 90s, but is still undergoing a lot of change and improvement. The next revolution in battery storage will probably also happen without much fanfare; I hope your phone holds out until then!