U.S. 5X Battery Research Sets Three Paths For Replacing Lithium

dcblogs writes "One year ago this month, the U.S. Department of Energy announced a $120 million plan to develop a technology capable of radically extending battery life. 'We want to change the game, basically,' said George Crabtree, a senior scientist at Argonne National Laboratory and a physics professor who is leading the effort. The goal is to develop a battery that can deliver five times the performance, measured in energy density, that's also five times cheaper, and do it in five years. They are looking at three research areas. Researchers are considering replacing the lithium with magnesium that has two charges, or aluminum, which has three charges. Another approach investigates replacing the intercalation step with a true chemical reaction. A third approach is the use of liquids to replace crystalline anodes and cathodes, which opens up more space for working ions."

Comments

Re:2x Lithium battery and cars still don't work

[Waffle Iron]

OK, Lets use an Enerdel 12s block. 3000 cycles by 1300 watt-hours gets us 3.9 million watt-hour-cycles.

The cost is $711. So 3.9 million w-hr-cycles / $711 is 5485 w-hr-cycles per dollar. What is the w-hr-cycles of gasoline again?

That's an interesting question:

Gasoline gives us only one cycle.

$ units
You have: (114000 btu / gal) / (3$ / gal)
You want: W hr / $
                * 11136.701

Sounds bad... but car engines are only about 20% efficient and electric cars are more like 80% efficient.

If we normalize that way, the gas car is 2227, and the batteries are 4388.

Looks like the batteries win, even with current temporary lull in gas prices.