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Researchers Create Sodium Battery In Industry Standard "18650" Format (gizmag.com)
Zothecula sends word that a French team has developed a battery using sodium ions in the usual "18650" format. Gizmag reports: "A team of researchers in France has taken a major step towards powering our devices with rechargeable batteries based on an element that is far more abundant and cheaper than lithium. For the first time ever, a battery has been developed using sodium ions in the industry standard "18650" format used in laptop batteries, LED flashlights and the Tesla Model S, among other products."
Pardon me if I use the name-dropping to think lesser of the company that has made the announcement.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
It seems like we're getting announcements about revolutionary world changing never seen before astounding new battery designs every day, but nothing ever comes to market.
Maybe it's time to question what the fuck is wrong with the shitty "journalism" that tries and make huge stories out of nothing.
Don't believe the Li!
Using sodium ions?
So, they would be (re)charged with "a salt in battery"?
Yeay! Because you know that $7-8/kg for lithium carbonate was really breaking the bank.
I hate to bring up our imminent arrest during your crazy time, but we gotta move.
But not in 18650 format. We have 25kwh of aqueous sodium ion batteries (5000 full cycles and still counting) giving us solar energy at night. Because of the lower voltage per cell, they use a safe sodium salt water electrolyte. G**gle aquion pittsburgh..
I keep old rechargeable batteries around to disprove the notion that there have been no advancements.
#1 Radio Shack NiCad D size battery from the late 1980's. 1.2V 1200 Mah
#2 Energizer NiMh AA size battery from the late 2000's 1.2V 2600 Mah (up to 1.4v when fully charged)
#2 R/C heli Lipo, volume equivalent to C size from post 2010 3.7V 5000 Mah
You do the math.
I knew that power tools and laptops used 18650 cells, which are slightly larger than AA batteries. Given the hype about "Tesla's advanced battery technology", I'm pretty surprised to learn the Tesla battery is also simply 7,000 flashlight batteries.
I see that the Tesla battery pack weighs 1,200 pounds. Reducing weight greatly improves efficiency, handling, braking, and acceleration, meaning lighter weight is all around better. It seems a bit wasteful of weight and materials to have 7,000 metal casings around 7,000 tiny batteries, connected with thousands of connections, rather far fewer larger cells. I'm surprised they don't use perhaps 24 or 100 larger cells instead, thereby eliminating thousands of unnecessary casings and connections.
The most important details: The energy density performance (90Wh/kg) are above the expectations especially considering the excellent cycle life (at least 2.000 charge/discharge cycles). It would also be nice to see voltage drop-off as the battery discharges and expected price, but now I'm getting greedy...
Shooting in the dark here - do the individual batteries make the larger pack more serviceable / recyclable? Packing the lithium into larger solid cells may also create problems with cooling / leak containment, etc. I'm sure there's more than a couple of whitepapers on the the topic out there.
The idea on many small battery cells is that the standard size makes them available from multiple suppliers, reducing risk, and the gaps between the cells due to the packing fraction provide a conduit for cooling.
Telsa does have a lifecycle plan to refurbish packs from cars for use in the home; at least in the press photos, the home packs are a different form factor, so I wonder if they break up the packs to cull outright broken cells and then reconstitute the good ones into wall units. Since the breakdown is a function of electrode area, having the area in smaller pieces might help with reuse.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
I've been hearing a lot lately about this super battery, and that super battery, but I don't see my quadcopter flying any longer than before.
If you want an actual answer instead of just an excuse to bag on Tesla ... Smaller cells have more surface area to dump heat, which is crucial when recharging. In other words, the mass of the casing (which is not large) is actively being used for thermal management. Additionally, in the manufacturing process, smaller cells have a lower reject rate and allow both a much more repairable battery pack than custom cells and improve the performance as cells degrade. The packing density for these cells is pretty good, (85%) and smaller cells allows tailoring to custom shapes, though Tesla doesn't take advantage of that, having roughly rectangular packs.
The "many small batteries" approach is what makes it possible to get a decent charge in a Tesla in around 20 minutes... instead of 80+ hours.
If you charge 7,000 small batteries in parallel you'll do it roughly 1000 times faster than charging seven huge batteries with the same total capacity.
Define "fun". Seems fun to me.
Tesla chose the 18650 battery since they were light (power/weight) and cheap and they could get them in large quantities. They designed the battery pack to sit low under the passenger compartment. This gives the car a very low center of gravity and amazing handling. The battery case is very thin with small mass and the large number of small batteries allows for a liquid temperature management system which is crucial for long life and performance.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
When I first started looking at standard AA batteries in about 1994 you had your normal Zink-carbon batteries that the good ones would be 1200mAh capacity. There were some premium Alkaline batteries that were 2000mAh. If you wanted rechargeable you were looking at NiCd at about 800mAh.
Fast forward to about 2004. Alkaline batteries at about 2000mAh was standard. Lithium batteries at 3000mAh were around and NiMH had almost completely replaced NiCd at about 2100mAh for good quality ones. Then there is also the proliferation of Li-Ion batteries for other applications. Charge times for rechargeable batteries had come way down.
Today Alkaline batteries are at about 2600mAh, with Lithium still at 3000mAh. NiMH are still in use and the good ones are still at 2100mAh with some "Pro" batteries at 2550mAh. Li-Ion still in great use, but getting smaller while keeping the same amount of power. Charging times have continued to decrease, mostly with new charging technology that can be used on the older batteries as well.
What does the future hold? Well, we have heard about tech for making Li-Ion batteries fully charge in minutes. There is the improvement in sodium batteries. Different chemical combinations of Li-Ion to hold more power.
Why is it not here now? Most new technology takes at least 5 years from announcement of it working, to being able to mass produce it at a decent cost. That is for companies that have lots of money and experience in that specific field. More of an average is 10 years between proof of concept and mass production. 10 years may sound like a long time to people, but in the manufacturing world with new technology, it really isn't that long. Intel runs with a 10 year plan, and they can bring many of their advancements to market in 5 years. Intel is a company with a lot of money and a lot of knowledge about exactly what they do and yet, they still work on basically 10 year plans. Most companies are not as efficient.
Yes many times products will be designed and brought to market in 1 to 2 years, but they usually use existing technology. They use chips, tech, batteries that exist when the product is announced. They already have the full design done, all they need to do is mass produce them, and it still takes 1-2 years. Even though exactly how to mass produce it and all the parts are known. New technology on the other hand is a different beast that there are often problems in figuring out how to mass produce it, or they find out that it can't be mass produced cheaply enough.
The other thing is that you are getting the new technology all the time, you just don't notice it because it is done in an incremental process. The battery has a little more power, it is a little smaller, it charges a little faster. Where if you compare something today to 10 years ago you would notice that the battery stores a lot more power, it is a lot smaller and it charges a lot faster.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
...about sodium! So we'lll just have to reach them through the rock-n-roll music that the kids seem to like.
It looks like they solved one problem by creating another. If we extract huge amounts of sodium from naturally occurring salts what will become of all those other reactive elements that made up the other part of the salt molecule?
Wouldn't batteries sourced from metallic oxides be better for the environment because the released oxygen (waste) will also compensate for oxygen lost due to all the carbon we have burned and turned into CO2?
TFA lies about the energy density being comparable.
The article states that the energy density of this sodium battery is 90 watt hours per kilogram, except Li-Ion typically stores between 250 and 320 watt-hours per kilogram.
So they have a ways to go.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It sounds like a precarious business model. Everyone prefers lithium batteries. So long as lithium prices are high enough, you can find a market for cheaper inferior batteries. But high lithium prices will lead to higher lithium production and prices likely coming back down. In building a sodium battery plant, you're gambling on lithium price being sufficiently high most of the time for several decades into the future.
The picture changes if you can make the sodium batteries as good as lithium for at least some market niche, or if your battery plant can easily switch between lithium and sodium (which seems fairly likely.)
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
If you're comparing 18650 cells, you need to use watt hours per volume, not mass.
Isn't sodium really toxic (not good when exposed to air) and explodes on contact with water (youtube.com has plenty of examples of this)? I wonder how long it would be before a lawyer sues the battery makers after someone opens a battery somewhere near water? Maybe they have taken this into account with the battery design?
You COULD use 7,000 cells at 3.7 volts each in series to get 25,800 volts. As you know, they run at 480V or so - the voltage of 120V lithium ion cells, as I originally said. So no, that's NOT a reason to use hundreds of little batteries rather than 100 much larger ones.
GP is also wrong, the maximum charge rate of lithium ion (in amps) is approximately equal to the capacity of the cell in amp-hours. That is to say, you can charge a lithium ion cell in an hour (plus safety factor) no matter what size it is. Two 500ma cells do NOT charge faster than one 1000ma cell. It takes an hour to charge, regardless of size.
That's simply not true at all. The maximum charge rate of any lithium ion cell, large or small, is about one hour to fully charge (plus a safety factor) . Two 50,00ma cells take exactly the same amount of time to charge as one 10,000ma cell.
I see that the Tesla battery pack weighs 1,200 pounds. Reducing weight greatly improves efficiency, handling, braking, and acceleration, meaning lighter weight is all around better. It seems a bit wasteful of weight and materials to have 7,000 metal casings around 7,000 tiny batteries, connected with thousands of connections, rather far fewer larger cells. I'm surprised they don't use perhaps 24 or 100 larger cells instead, thereby eliminating thousands of unnecessary casings and connections.
There are a number of reasons.
1. 18650 cells are the cheapest per kWh, significantly so.
2. The smaller cell size helps with thermal management. It's easier to deal with the heat from using the batteries the smaller they are. There have been problems with airlines that use larger cells with them catching fire.
3. Power capability is actually higher with smaller cells. For a car with the acceleration of a Model-S, this is important.
4. Due to the amount of R&D into the cell, which is the most common LiIon cell in the world, weight and volume wise it's at least as energy dense as anything else, extra casing or not.
5. The connections aren't actually that big of a deal, most of the batteries are simply end-to-end.
I don't read AC A human right
I don't recall seeing anywhere in the article where watt-hours per liter are achieved with this technology, but even if it is more dense per unit volume than Li-Ion, all that means is that you save space.... if it weighs more, then it still requires more energy to push around, which is important if you want your batteries to be mobile.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
That's the same sentiment everyone had when Tesla was formed to create electric cars.
The charging comment is only true up to a point. As you get larger solid packs, the surface area doesn't increase as fast as the volume and the insides can get very hot. Thermal management is super critical for many battery types so this is a major limitation.
With a small cylindrical battery, the empty packing space between the cells provides a perfect channel for cooling.
... That tech is harder and some development do not pan out of the lab.
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Why are you shifting the goalposts to a price that a battery manufacturer buying by the tonne would never pay? Maybe you could just do a google search like this:
http://www.google.com/search?q=lithium+price+per+tonne
The S is a great example of the 18650. What's the issue?
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a number of similar articles, items, or devices arranged, connected, or used together
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/battery/
Like you blew me last night?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Perhaps you should look up the word "number". 24 is a number, 120 is a number. 7000 is an excessively high and wasteful number.
Tesla's system is like a two level RAID array for batteries. The car can work around weak cells and failing modules with software and targeted replacement (a RAID6+ of modules employing RAID6+ with the cells). One monolithic battery or even a small number of them would not have the same flexibility or replacebility. Also Tesla's business goals would have them buying a vast fraction of the battery production in short order. It made sense to start with the most widely manufactured 18650 cell. Now that they are building their own factory I imagine you'll see custom packs perfectly suited to their needs.
Lots of projects on Endless-Sphere are now using pouch cells. They have more kwh per unit (~20 Ahr vs 2.2-3Ahr), stack densely and employ tabs that make it easy to connect them in parallel or series.
They are small scale automaker and were not able to order whole new production lines for custom form at that time, going all custom isn't cheap either. So they just used what was available with some improvements, they are not the same flashlight batteries despite the same form factor. They are going to increase battery size a bit in the future. Other automakers use bigger cells.
It is not worth to recycle lithium, it is too cheap.
Larger cells mean inability to control the heat which is what really destroys the cells. In addition, with high parallelism, they are able to deliver a great deal more amps as well as charge much faster. IOW, the use of massive cells was an intelligent choice, not one forced on them. In addition, the wrappers are not the same as what goes into your laptop.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Recycle may also be a euphemism for "dispose of responsibly" - landfills full of lithium probably aren't a good idea, we're already "medicating nature" with wastewater contaminated by pharmaceutical lithium.
From their website: http://www.ceramatec.com/technology/ceramic-solid-state-ionic-technologies/advanced-energy-storage/solid-electrolyte-batteries.php
Ceramatec appears to be mostly an R&D company that spins off production entities, but I only looked for about 3 minutes so I could be wrong. Lithium and sodium battery research is ongoing. They focus on ceramics, and a large part of their business is energy related.
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"Thud" indeed...
Mostly getting something new into production is a hell of a lot more work than a promising prototype so the new technologies falter at that step instead of being actively stopped by anyone.
Another thing to add is a lot of stuff actually works but is not considered worth putting into production to compete against current oil and coal prices. When the oil price doubles or more again you'll see a few interesting things coming into production a few years after that jump.
This will amount to nothing. It will never make it to the market. In a few months time, nobody will remember it. Anybody want to bet against me on this?
That sounds like a beauracrat's tactic of predicting something random, then hoping that no-one will remember it if they are wrong... 8-)
Guess we won't need to mine asteroids to get "absurdly valuable" minerals, technology always gets better.
No, they will mine things like Iron and Water so as to avoid lifting them up out of a gravity well.
Why bother with bringing them back to Earth? 8-)