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Battery Breakthrough: Researchers Claim 70% Charge In 2 Minutes, 20-Year Life

Posted by Soulskill on from the but-only-works-for-left-handed-people dept.

New submitter chaosdivine69 writes: According to Scientists at Nanyang Technology University (NTU), they have developed ultra-fast charging batteries that can be recharged up to 70 per cent in only two minutes and have a 20-year lifespan (10,000 charges). The impact of this is potentially a game changer for a lot of industries reliant on lithium ion batteries. In the car industry, for example, consumers would save on costs for battery replacement and manufacturers would save on material construction (the researchers are using a nanotube structure of Titanium dioxide, which is an abundant, cheap, and safe material found in soil). Titanium dioxide is commonly used as a food additive or in sunscreen lotions to absorb harmful ultraviolet rays. It is believed that charging an electric car can be done in as little as 5 minutes, making it comparable to filling up a tank of gasoline.

8 of 395 comments (clear)

  1. No mention on capacity though by Obscene_CNN · · Score: 5, Interesting

    No mention on capacity though. If its capacity is low enough the these claims are easy to achieve.

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    1. Re:No mention on capacity though by Rei · · Score: 5, Interesting

      And of course, the assumption that if your station's maximum output is 10 MW that you have to have a 10 MW feed to the grid is also wrong. It presumes that you can't have a battery buffer in your station. Look at your typical gas station; pumps spend by far most of their time idle. A charging station with a peak output of 10 MW could probably meet all its needs with a 2 MW feed and a 20-minute battery buffer (although a statistical analysis of consumption patterns would be required for specifics)

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  2. Light on details, however... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Ah, good, the article DOES mention power density indirectly, saying that this new lithium ion design can store more energy more compactly. However, what about heat generation during thie high-speed charging? Will that be a problem?

    1. Re:Light on details, however... by Ralph+Wiggam · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Also on the logistics side, the amount of power required would be extraordinary even if there were no waste heat. The battery in my electric car is 24 kW-h. 70% of that is 16.8 kW-h. Wouldn't delivering that much power in 5 minutes require a 200,000 Watt hook up? Now imagine an electric "filling station" with 5 or 10 bays that could be used concurrently.

      The outlet in my garage is 220V 30A (normally used for electric clothes dryers), and I think that's about as heavy duty as you can get in a normal American home. The battery charger is 6600W, to go along with that outlet.

      So even if we had these amazing batteries today, there are still a lot of other problems involved in actually shooting that much energy into them that quickly.

    2. Re:Light on details, however... by EETech1 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      1 - 2 MW is nothing for a commercial property though. The only reason your house is wired for 100 amps is you would rarely use over 30 - 40. If the demand is there to sell power, the power company will find a way to deliver it to you.

      I design systems with multiple megawatt connections. The last place I was at had 50 MW of service installed to run 5 machines. It was nothing out of the ordinary.

      Getting 250 Amps of 480 3 phase is nothing for a commercial property. That would handily cover your 200KW load.

  3. the problem with lithium ion technology by ihtoit · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...is when it comes to fast charging the things. You run the risk of dendritic shorting, which is where lithium dendrites cross the electrolyte and touch the graphite electrode, causing the battery to short. THAT is where the heat comes from, not a dry chemical reaction. That's also where the risk of batteries exploding arises, and why certain laptop batteries have been exploding - thermal safeties have been omitted from aftermarket batteries, these are the ones that have been exploding because laptops in powered-off state are charging the batteries with the full whack of the PSU which causes the shorting. Without the safeties, the power isn't cut, the dendrites continue to grow until BOOM! Rechargeable batteries have an additive in the electrolyte that's supposed to inhibit dendrite growth, but it doesn't stop it, particularly when the battery is being abused. Anecdotally, I have rechargeable batteries that I've had for 20+ years and they still hold usable charge - for the simple reason that I have never and will never use a fast charger on them.

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  4. Re:Charging amperage by Charliemopps · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Ok, lets do some math...

    70% of 85kwh = 59.5kwh
    5min is a 12th of an hour.
    So to charge a 59.5kwh battery in 5 min, you would need 12 * 59.5
    So a 714KW charger
    At 12v that would be 59500 amps. Which is insane.
    I can't find any sort of documentation on that kind of cabling that would require.
    But I can find documentation of 120vdc using about a 3inch diameter cable.
    Which gives us an area for the cable of about 7 inches.
    Given a Cable 6ft long to charge it, it would have a volume of 508in3
    1in3 of copper weights .31 pounds
    So your cable would weigh 157lbs.

    Keep in mind, this is the total volume of the copper cable. You'd likely make it braided so it were flexible and it'd end up being larger than 3in in diameter at the end. You'd need to have a crane to charge your car.
    I'm not saying that isn't possible, but given the amount of work involved wouldn't be a lot easier to swap out batteries like you do propane tanks on your gas grill? I mean, if there's already a crane involved. Then you don't need to amperage's so high you could weld asteroids together.

  5. 100kW battery makes sense by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There could be such a thing as a 100kW battery: it would be a battery which can provide a power of 100kW. Not all batteries can do this since they have an internal resistance which either prevents this power from being achieved or will cause them to overheat and explode/catch fire even if it is. Indeed, assuming that this battery can carry a decent amount of energy, it is very likely that you could make a 100kW battery from it since it charges so quickly it must have a very low internal resistance.

    Ironically there is no such thing as a 100kW/hr battery though...