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New Manufacturing Technique Halves Cost of Lithium-Ion Batteries
An anonymous reader writes: Experts in materials science at MIT have developed a new process for creating lithium-ion batteries that will drop the associated production costs by half. The researchers say fundamental battery construction techniques have been refined over the past two decades, but not re-thought. "The new battery design is a hybrid between flow batteries and conventional solid ones: In this version, while the electrode material does not flow, it is composed of a similar semisolid, colloidal suspension of particles. Chiang and Carter refer to this as a 'semisolid battery.' This approach greatly simplifies manufacturing, and also makes batteries that are flexible and resistant to damage, says Chiang. ... Instead of the standard method of applying liquid coatings to a roll of backing material, and then having to wait for that material to dry before it can move to the next manufacturing step, the new process keeps the electrode material in a liquid state and requires no drying stage at all. Using fewer, thicker electrodes, the system reduces the conventional battery architecture's number of distinct layers, as well as the amount of nonfunctional material in the structure, by 80 percent."
If this pans out it probably means the end to the claims that solar PV and wind power can't affordably supply us with all of our electricity needs. It also makes electric cars all that much more affordable. Elon Musk may need to redesign his battery factory.
They DID spin off a company and start filing patents.
"The process has received eight patents and has 75 additional patents under review; 24M has raised $50 million in financing from venture capital firms and a U.S. Department of Energy grant."
Also from TFA, they have made 10,000 samples on their production line. They are initially aiming at the power company market, thus huge batteries with huge price tags. They are targeting $100 per kilowatt hour by 2020. One of the co-founders also co-founded A123. So there is some experience at bringing batteries to market.
Lots of companies fail for reasons besides their technology. I won't be surprised if this one fails too. On the other hand, it is more real than most such slashdot stories.
Exactly. If it was this great, they would have already spun off a company
Wow...couldn't even be bothered to read the FIRST SENTENCE of the TFA before spouting off, could you:
"An advanced manufacturing approach for lithium-ion batteries, developed by researchers at MIT and at a spinoff company called 24M"
and start filing patents, as MIT usually does.
and about 3/4 of the way through the article:
"The process has received eight patents and has 75 additional patents under review"
Next "breakthrough" please.
Why, so you can make some more "insightful" comments based on what you didn't even bother to read about them?
Yeah, if this was somebody else, I would agree with you.
BUT, this is Dr. chiang who has been fairly accurate with all that he publishes.
As such, I would be willing to guess that he is a lot closer to 100 than others.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The explanation I got for why a single idea presented inside a company ended up with a dozen patents was they wanted a "picket fence" of patents for all conceivable variations of the idea that would allow a competitor to get most of the benefits without technically violating the actual patent. Because most of the filed patents are brainstormed ideas for every contingency, they can get fairly absurd and stupid looking.
At least do a little digging if you're going to call BS. From the article:
The company has so far made about 10,000 batteries on its prototype assembly lines, most of which are undergoing testing by three industrial partners
So, this isn't some "in 5-10 years" battery technology we'll never see. This is stuff that has already been coming off the assembly line by the thousands, meaning that they've been able to accurately gauge the actual costs involved in manufacturing. Moreover, their pedigree is pretty good. One of the co-founders for this company was a co-founder over at A123, which many of us already recognize as another player in this space. This isn't their first time getting up and running with battery manufacturing.
Which is to say, these are people with a proven track record of research and manufacturing experience in this field, they already have an assembly line up and running, and they've already placed around 10,000 of their products in the field for testing. You're welcome to call BS, but I'm inclined to disagree.
[...] why the hell would we expect "[e]xperts in materials science at MIT" to be able to accurately calculate the manufacturing and production costs (and thus savings) for a novel battery technology?
Because, this isn't their first rodeo. When they weren't busy being experts in materials science at MIT, they were busy founding A123. A123 remains a successful company, but they sold it off, continued doing research at MIT, and now have something new that they'd like to make, so they're ramping up a new company to do it.