DOE Wants 5X Improvement In Batteries In 5 Years

dcblogs writes "The U.S. Dept. of Energy has set a goal to develop battery and energy storage technologies that are five times more powerful and five times cheaper within five years. DOE is creating a new center at Argonne National Laboratory, at a cost of $120 million over five years, that's intended to reproduce development environments that were successfully used by Bell Laboratories and World War II's Manhattan Project. 'When you had to deliver the goods very, very quickly, you needed to put the best scientists next to the best engineers across disciplines to get very focused,' said U.S. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu, on Friday. The Joint Center for Energy Storage Research isn't designed to seek incremental improvements in existing technologies. This technology hub, according to DOE's solicitation (PDF), 'should foster new energy storage designs that begin with a "clean sheet of paper" — overcoming current manufacturing limitations through innovation to reduce complexity and cost.' Other research labs, universities and private companies are participating in the effort."

Comments

Chu!

[mrbluejello]

It's so refreshing having a Secretary of Energy that actually knows something about energy and physics, rather than somebody who just knows how to dig carbon out of the ground.

Re:Chu!

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. 5 years to develop 5X cheaper and 5X more energy dense? How gullible are you?

The free market doesn't solve all problems, but any company that could deliver this would make hundreds of billions of dollars. Why aren't they doing it? Because nobody knows how!

This $120 million is good research, but it isn't going to deliver. Dr. Chu will certainly be glad that the deadline is past the time that he will be out of office.

Re:Chu!

[icebike]

Not true. Ask the makers of viagra.
Patented for years. Only recently was it revealed they didn't disclose every detail in their patent. So virtually on the eve of the patent expiration, their patent was revoked.
But the don't have to give back the billions they made.

But I never said they were all those things in every case. It was a list of possibilities.

Pocket change

[ebonum]

Industry has been pouring billions into research. How is $120 million over five years going to do anything?

Anyone who invents a technology ( and production process to keep it cheap ) to get a 5x improvement will be a billionaire over night. If you are going to do this, do it right and spend some real money. How about 250 million a year over 5 years? btw. The if the US government pays for it, the US government should patent everything and get a 5x return for the taxpayers.

Re:Wrong direction

[Desler]

Didn't the Apollo program bring us the 8-bit microprocessor?

No, it didn't. Intel did in 1971 with the 8008.

Enough $?

[markdavis]

$120 million really doesn't sound like enough money to me to solve a problem that has been the bane of thousands of electronics companies for many decades....

Still, this is a VERY worthy cause. Batteries have improved a lot over the years, but not nearly fast enough to keep up with what we need. Especially important as we move ever closer to electric cars (I would just LOVE to have one).

And it isn't just the capacity and price that is important- safety and component scarcity and disposal concerns should be addressed too.

Molten Salt Batteries

[catchblue22]

The idea of molten salt batteries sounds quite intriguing to me, especially for bulk utility level energy storage. In this TED talk, MIT professor Donald Sadoway details his designs and describes the models he has already built. In short, the idea is to have two liquid metals, one less dense and one more dense. In the middle is a layer of molten salt. The less dense molten metal floats on the top. In the middle is the molten salt, and at the bottom is the more dense molten metal. The molten salt acts as the electrolyte in the cell, and the two different metals pass electrons around due to their different electron affinities.

When building these cells, they would use common cheap materials, so that the cost of this type of battery would be trivial compared with the amount of energy it can store. The fact that the cell is molten is actually an advantage. We spend huge effort in our current electrochemical cells trying to keep them cool. This type of cell would thrive on heat...indeed the energy used in charging and discharging it would help keep the metals and the salt molten.

Clearly this type of cell would not be used to power your laptop or cellphone directly, but it could be used to store energy from solar panels on your rooftop, or to store energy from large solar power plants for use in the night. As always, I am sure there are bugs to work out, but really, this sounds incredibly promising.

Re:Wrong direction

[Ellis D. Tripp]

Didn't the Apollo program bring us the 8-bit microprocessor?,

Nope. Not even the 4-bit.

The Apollo guidance computer didn't use a microprocessor at all. It was built from thousands of individual RTL 3-imput NOR gates:

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