Boosting Battery Storage With Seaweed

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Boosting Battery Storage With Seaweed

Posted by Soulskill on Monday September 12, 2011 @11:18AM from the giving-batteries-a-kelping-hand dept.

New submitter cartman writes "A substance found in brown algae, 'including the type which forms forests of giant kelp,' could be used to increase the storage capacity of batteries, according to scientists at Georgia Tech (abstract). The substance, called alginate, allows silicon particles in the anode to swell without damaging the anode, thereby increasing storage capacity of batteries by up to a factor of 10. 'The full potential of a silicon anode can't be exploited until researchers develop a matching cathode capable of handling the same amount of lithium ions. But even with existing cathodes, alginate-silicon anodes could increase the capacity of lithium-ion batteries by 30 to 40 percent, according to Yushin.'"

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I still don't believe it. by SexyKellyOsbourne · 2011-09-12 11:31 · Score: 3, Insightful

After all, for the past 10 years, slashdot has been predicting that we'll be using bacteria, vodka, and other primitive elements to power our laptops non-stop for days.
http://slashdot.org/story/01/11/15/1914208/Methanol-Fuel-Cell-Battery-For-Your-Laptop
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/02/10/17/1630245/Fuel-Cell-Laptop-announced-by-Toshiba
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/03/03/25/0056230/Enzyme-Bio-Battery-Runs-on-Ethanol
http://slashdot.org/story/03/06/07/2110231/DoCoMo-Will-Launch-Fuel-Cell-Mobile-Phones-By-2005
http://science.slashdot.org/story/03/09/08/113239/Bacteria-Powered-Batteries
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/06/03/11/1745258/Laptop-Fuel-Cells-Coming-Soon
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/06/20/0110232/Potato-Powered-Batteries-Debut
As with the "Year of the Linux Desktop", I'll believe it when I see it.
1. Re:I still don't believe it. by tp1024 · 2011-09-12 11:44 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  But where is the Virus battery? I mean, WE HAVE BEEN PROMISED they'd be around.
2. Re:I still don't believe it. by im_thatoneguy · 2011-09-12 12:33 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Ummm, this is completely different in every single way. Those are all fuel cells. This is just a better lithium-ion battery.
could, not can. by Lead+Butthead · 2011-09-12 11:35 · Score: 2

... could be used to increase the storage capacity of batteries
Translation - Fund me, and I might produce something.

--
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Up to 10x more ... must be a fraud by tp1024 · 2011-09-12 11:38 · Score: 3, Insightful

C'mon. How often did we read this stuff? How often will we keep reading it again?

For over 100 years now, miracle batteries for electric cars have been supposed to be just around the corner.

I'll quote from the link I gave:

"A large number of people interested in stored power are looking forward to a revolution in the generating power of storage batteries, and it is the opinion of many that the long-looked-for, light weight, high capacity battery will soon be discovered." (source, 1901).

"The demand for a proper automobile storage battery is so crying that it soon must result in the appearance of the desired accumulator [battery]. Everywhere in the history of industrial progress, invention has followed close in the wake of necessity" (Electrical Review, 1901).
Can't just finally file them right next to the perpetuum mobile cranks and move on until somebody actually delivers on those stupid promises?
1. Re:Up to 10x more ... must be a fraud by tp1024 · 2011-09-12 12:04 · Score: 2
  
  The Lowtechmagazine ran a story on the development of electric cars and batteries last year:
  
  In spite of this, the 2010 vehicle has a much better battery under the hood than the 1908 vehicle. The Fritchle Electric had lead-acid batteries, like all its contemporaries, with an energy density between 20 and 40 Wh/kg (early 1900 batteries had energy densities of only 10 to 15 Wh/kg). The Nissan and the Mitsubishi have a more powerful lithium-ion battery with an energy density of around 140 Wh/kg.
  
  The Nissan's battery can thus store 3.5 to 7 times more energy for a given weight than an average early electric from about 1910.
  
  The gain in runtime of laptops is mostly a matter of them getting much more efficient and using much less power over the last 20 years. The failure of cars to get greater range is mostly a matter of them getting much less efficient and using ever more power over the last 120 years.
2. Re:Up to 10x more ... must be a fraud by failedlogic · 2011-09-12 12:49 · Score: 2
  
  After much study, the parent is correct.
  I was not able to find any references to battery powered laptops in 1908. This is evidence enough of the improvement of battery technology.
3. Re:Up to 10x more ... must be a fraud by Brian_Ellenberger · 2011-09-12 12:50 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  C'mon. How often did we read this stuff? How often will we keep reading it again?
  For over 100 years now, miracle batteries for electric cars have been supposed to be just around the corner.
  Can't just finally file them right next to the perpetuum mobile cranks and move on until somebody actually delivers on those stupid promises?
  From the article:
  "If you were to put the lithium-ion battery of the Nissan Leaf in the 1908 Fritchle, the vehicle would have a range of about 644 km (400 miles). "
  Don't be so negative. It hasn't that battery tech hasn't advanced in 100 years, it's that it hasn't kept pace with the demand for faster, safer, bigger vehicles. The advancement in any technology is rarely a big bang. Take the lithium-ion battery in this laptop I am typing on for example, and look at the series of advanced necessary to give me a 6 hour battery in a high performance laptop: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#History. From wikipedia:
  "In 1979, John Goodenough demonstrated a rechargeable cell with high cell voltage in the 4V range using lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO2) as the positive electrode and lithium metal as the negative electrode."
  "In 1991, Sony and Asahi Kasei released the first commercial lithium-ion battery."
  It took 12 years from discovery to the first commercial battery, and another 5 to 10 years for them to be widely used. Yet on a supposed "tech" site all I read about are people critiquing any battery tech discovery as lame if it doesn't allow for a plug-in to be driven 500 miles on a charge. This discovery may turn out to not be practical, or may turn out to be THE discovery that leads to a battery revolution.
  And even if we didn't get a 500 mile per charge battery, but instead got some tech that allowed the Volt to be at the same price point as a current Prius? Or even got it from 40 miles to 60 miles in a charge. These relatively modest advancements could start a major revolution where liquid fuels are only used for long-haul travel.
4. Re:Up to 10x more ... must be a fraud by tp1024 · 2011-09-12 23:00 · Score: 2
  
  As I mentioned further upthread, the problem is that cars are using ever more power - because people agreed that they want to drive them fast. This not only implies a lot of power usage, but also extra weight for safety features. An electric car that does no more than Mach 0.04-0.05 (roughly 50-60km/h) and weighs as much as a small walrus (about 500 kg) could have a the kind of range people are used to these days.
  
  The problem really is the other cars being too heavy and being capable of driving too fast (that and people not using IS-units) - which has implications on safety and the expectations of car owners. Light, small, moderately fast and cheap cars (about $2000) with relatively short range (about 50km+ @ 50km/h) would be perfectly sufficient for most things people do with their cars - but you can't buy them. The current set of incentives and lack of infrastructure just gets you overpowered cars with huge and incredibly expensive batteries and still nowhere near the common range. Nothing a reasonable person would buy.
  
  If you're looking for a revolution, look at the cars, don't look at the batteries.
Re:if we see this... by sexconker · 2011-09-12 12:37 · Score: 2

if we see this tech hit the streets, it would be one thing. but how long have we been hearing about stuff like this? it been years since we really had any real boost in battery tech. the laptop battery that i got with my 4 month old laptop is the same tech as the old toshiba battery i got in 1996. lithium ion tech is way out dated. we should have had a real break thru by now. but no, any real advance like this promises the sky and the moon, but we will never see a damn thing from this. life as normal. nothing to see. please move along.
Li-Ion is a fundamentally shitty design.
Li-Ion cells explode when you charge them too much, and die when drained completely. Li-Ion charging circuitry basically charges a bank of cells to about 80%, thn trickle charges to about 90%, then tops off. The charger knows the array is "full" when it sees it's not holding any more juice. This happens when some of the cells burst. So every charge is actually decreasing your Li-Ion's capacity.
Ni-MH is a much better battery design for capacity and durability. But people want fast charging (which damages their shit) more than they want an actual good battery. And manufacturers want cheap. So Li-Ion wins. And when they want to charge you more they upsell to Li-Poly which is the same old shit.
Re:if we see this... by russotto · 2011-09-12 14:04 · Score: 3, Insightful

Li-Ion cells explode when you charge them too much, and die when drained completely. Li-Ion charging circuitry basically charges a bank of cells to about 80%, thn trickle charges to about 90%, then tops off. The charger knows the array is "full" when it sees it's not holding any more juice. This happens when some of the cells burst. So every charge is actually decreasing your Li-Ion's capacity.
No cells burst during normal charging of Li-Ion batteries.
NiMH has lower energy density, lower power density, lower charge efficiency, and higher storage losses. It's just inferior.
This is actually useful research by Jack+Malmostoso · 2011-09-12 19:02 · Score: 3, Informative

Silicon anodes have been under study for many years now, and most researchers gave up when they figured out that the usual binder used in Li-ion batteries (poly vinilene difluoride, PVDF) did not work well with silicon. A couple of years ago people found out that using carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) actually allowed to cycle silicon for hundreds of charges/discharges without significant capacity fading, so the research in the field boomed again and now Sony is commercializing the first examples of batteries with Si as negative electrode.
It's all about the engineering, and since silicon has proved that the binder is a more important piece of the Li-ion technology than previously expected, these news are actually very welcome.