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Stanford Develops Fast-Charging, Stable Aluminum Battery
An anonymous reader writes: Stanford researchers have announced the creation of an aluminum-ion battery that they say will charge quicker, last longer, and be generally safer than common lithium-ion batteries. "Aluminum has long been an attractive material for batteries, mainly because of its low cost, low flammability and high-charge storage capacity. For decades, researchers have tried unsuccessfully to develop a commercially viable aluminum-ion battery. A key challenge has been finding materials capable of producing sufficient voltage after repeated cycles of charging and discharging. ... For the experimental battery, the Stanford team placed the aluminum anode and graphite cathode, along with an ionic liquid electrolyte, inside a flexible, polymer-coated pouch." The researchers' main challenges now are getting the battery to produce a higher voltage and store energy at a higher densities.
"The researchers' main challenges now are getting the battery to produce a higher voltage and store energy at a higher densities."
So basically, they're only challenges left are making it into a decent battery?
Practically any material can cause terrific explosions when powdered and airborne. Sawdust explosions have reduced more than one lumber mill to ash, but that doesn't mean we stop building houses from wood.
Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
Don't be stupid. We're fucking up our planet because of our addiction to fossil fuels. If this actually pans out, then it'll make electric vehicles very economical, and will completely obsolete gasoline-powered cars, which is easily the biggest source of our carbon pollution. We'll need more electric generation capacity of course, but that can be done with lots of different sources, including carbon-free ones such as solar, wind, tidal, and nuclear.
With the obvious problems with our environment at this time, it's my opinion that replacing gas cars with EVs ASAP is a screaming emergency.
It's most certainly a lower flammability hazard than the Lithium and Magnesium being used in the current generation of batteries.
You can light steel wool with a common cigarette lighter. We should definitely stop making firetrucks out of steel.
"Battery "breakthroughs" need to state power *and* energy density (not the same thing), plus how long they last. They usually fail on energy."
needs more brawndo
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Actually, our addiction to reproduction is fucking up the planet.
That addiction is not universal. Advanced economies don't over reproduce. Among indigenous 'muricans, population is at replacement. Most Western European nations are actually declining. The Japanese government is marketing parenthood to their youth because they've basically stopped breeding.
The 70s called and want you back. In every developed nation, we've reached zero population growth, except for immigration. Every time people get to a high enough state of wealth, they stop having lots of kids (except for a few wackos like the Duggars). All the other nations are developing pretty rapidly at this point; China has a huge and growing middle class, and labor rates have grown so much that they're going to be looking at outsourcing stuff to cheaper countries before long. Eventually, we're going to have to figure out how to get along in our societies without ever-increasing populations.
This is one of the things we europeans do right -- we build our houses out of stone.
That's awesome for regions that don't have appreciable seismic activity.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
Practically every dollar store in North America has a box of lighters next to the cash register. They'll card you to buy them, but they're the universal method for setting things on fire.
Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
Heating and cooling the buildings that house billions of people, and doing things like farming and treating/transporting water and other important things are hugely more polluting than cars.
Wrong. Most of those things (particularly HVAC) can be done with electricity, so it's at least highly feasible to move that to non-fossil-fuel energy sources.
Electric cars are just going to move the pollution to another place.
Wrong, they allow you to use non-fossil-fuel energy sources. They're also far more efficient than small ICE engines, so even if your energy source is fossil fuel it's still more efficient.
That won't help until aging hippie hand-wringers stop getting their panties in a twist, and get out of the way of us building a lot more modern nuclear power plants. Nothing else will even put a dent in it.
Wrong again. As I said above, EVs are so much more efficient that even if you stuck with fossil fuel power plants it'd be more efficient than millions of shitty, poorly maintained, inefficient gas engines. And solar power is being used more and more; Germany gets a huge amount of power from solar, and that's not a particularly sunny place unlike much of the US. Wind is also supplying a lot of power these days.
Actually, the correlation of lower birth rates is usually related to education and occupation. Lower skilled, lower educated groups tend to have more children. Part of this could be explained by the actual need for "labor" in the family farm/business/etc if there was a conscious choice made in that direction.
> Most of those things (particularly HVAC) can be done with electricity
And for most, georeturn HVAC is far, far more energy efficient than any other source.
It's expensive when everyone has their own tubing, but it seems to me there's a lot of municipal greywater that could be serving this purpose.