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New All-Solid Sulfur Based Battery Outperforms Lithium Ion
olsmeister writes "The new all-solid battery design uses solid sulfur and lithium, and outperforms existing lithium-ion batteries with four times the energy density. The battery can maintain a capacity of 1200 milliampere-hours per gram after 300 charge-discharge cycles. More work needs to be done, but one would think this new technology could have applications in renewable energy storage, electric cars, and consumer electronics."
I use a 30 amp-hour 12 volt battery when camping, it's about 20 pounds (for fans, lights, bug zapper, , phone charger, electric blanket, inverter for laptop, etc). I've saved a ton of money not having to purchase D batteries and I can expect 5-8 years of use (hundreds of duty cycles).
"1200 milliampere-hours" is 1.2 amp hours. A battery of this type would weight 25 grams, or less than an ounce. If it's at 12 volts, which per the article (I read it!!!) doesn't sound like the case. But I bet a comparable 12 volt version would weight just ounces rather than pounds.
Battery tech is a primary lagging technology in my opinion.
Best hopes for this technology.
BlameBillCosby.com
They will figure out how to use that extra power somewhere, leaving us at around the same runtime as before.
"They"? Either the device is doing work four times more consuming, your device can stand by four times longer, or your device's battery is approximately four times lighter. Sure, retarded marketing drones are going to figure out a way to stuff four times the amount of adware onto a new laptop, but let's face it, they were going to do that regardless.
Assuming a 4 times increase in battery life at all scales and no size decrease, this would quadruple the range of electric cars - all for a simple battery tech switch. And the batteries are made partly from waste in another industry.
... whatever
Don't get me wrong, I like the added features, but I hope nobody expects laptops that can be used for multiple days in a row without recharging (with sleep mode enabled between sessions of course) or next-gen smart phones that can go a week without recharging. They will figure out how to use that extra power somewhere, leaving us at around the same runtime as before.
I'm much more interested in it for electric cars.
Four times the batter life in a cellphone? Meh - mine already lasts for days.
Four times the range of electric cars? World-changing technology.
No sig today...
Battery runtimes have improved enormously in the past five years; the bottom-end machine I bought then could barely break two hours, my new low-end laptop easily manages four. However that's more due to improvements in the computer hardware's power efficiency than the battery's capacity.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
If the battery capacity increases as well then its a double win. Power efficiency in chip design is beneficial for all sorts of reasons, not just battery life, so will continue to improve. Having increased battery life will impact the current devices. It should also make others more practical as a given capacity battery will take up less space.
I think the GGP is overly pessimistic.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
I'm sure Elon Musk is paying attention to this. He thinks an electric jet would be possible, and this would make that a whole lot easier to achieve. If they can commercialize it in the next couple of years, it would also be just in time to help Tesla develop its next-gen "affordable" EV. I wouldn't be surprised if he and/or Tesla invest in whatever company gets to bring this tech to market.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
more smellily for sure
Oh, you discovered the "leakage alert" feature!
You know, I wouldn't mind it if my laptop smelled like fire and brimstone when I was grading papers. It would kind of help get me in the mood.
It may finally be enough to overpower "range anxiety."
Or on the other hand, to make cars lighter and/or cheaper. I considered EV-swapping my sports car late last year but went with another ICE because of the expense and weight. I figured I only needed 30 miles range, but it still would have added about 500lbs to the car and the battery alone would have been over $10k.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
>all for a simple battery tech switch
Not so simple, except in terms of the mechanic doing the battery replacement. (which of course is one of the beauties of electric vehicles - really easy aftermarket mods to the power system) Battery tech is *the* bottleneck for electric vehicles, and so far it's proved anything but easy to improve on significantly.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
"They"? Either the device is doing work four times more consuming, your device can stand by four times longer, ...
Just wait, till my pocket-warmer app comes out.
Just wait, till my pocket-warmer app comes out.
Lemme guess, Bitcoin/SETI@Home full screen client with 3D accelerated visualization?
... whatever
<sarcasm>Yes, that's why gunpowder is made of liquids.</sarcasm>
With "rarely" AC meant "only once"
Indeed. I think I've been saying for around a decade "There's nothing wrong with EV's that a battery that lasts twice as long for half the price wouldn't fix'. Assuming this battery is identical to LiIon in cost per pound, the 4X energy density would mean that you could get 'extended range' Model S range at less than the price of a baseline one.
As is, the extended range batteries add so much weight to the vehicle that it adversely affects kwh per 100 miles - the 60 kwh battery is 35 kWh/100m, the 85 drops that to 38.
If an additional 25 kwh of battery currently does that, what happens if you 'only' double the total capacity, cutting the size/weight by half?
I really, really hope this becomes reality. Because I'd like to get an EV or a hybrid without breaking the bank, and it's my opinion that this is the last push needed.
I don't read AC A human right
Yay, hydrogen based fuel cells and sulphur based batteries. If ever the 'twain meet - hydrogen sulfide... the future will smell like rotten eggs and fart!
;-p
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Well, no, they tell us in TFA that it's four times the energy density than a Li-Ion battery. We don't use the Li-Ion's native voltage (about 3.8v nominal for most of them) to power electric cars, either. The battery is made up of multiple cells connected in series (or series parallel for a big pack) such that the resulting battery voltage is what you need for your application.
What the article doesn't mention is what the 'C' rating for these batteries would be. Current lithium-ion technologies these days had very good C ratings, but early ones did not. The early batteries couldn't discharge at more than about 1C (so a 1 amp hour battery could only deliver a current of 1 amp without damage) but current lithium-polymer batteries often have C ratings >30. I have a Li-Poly battery for my RC gear that's about the size of two cigarette packs that can output enough current to easily start a car. Can Li-S batteries be built to have high C ratings for both charge and discharge? If not then they are only really useful in portable devices.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Now explain to me why all that work, which the typical user figures has been done by fairies or elves anyway, has any relevance to said user when he goes to get his battery changed? All he is going to care about is how much will it cost, how long will it take, and how much better will it be.
We truly stand on the shoulders of giants. Even a "simple" hammer or wheel isn't simple any more. There is serious research in both of those. And yet, I can still take a cash equivalent of one to three hours of my time and buy this device which literally has thousands of hours of research applied to it. It really is quite simple. Just like the tech switch between two different battery technologies.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?