Researchers Predict Next-Gen Batteries Will Last 10 Times Longer (newatlas.com)

Lithium-metal electrodes could increase the storage capacity of batteries 10-fold, predict researchers at the University of Michigan, allowing electric cars to drive from New York to Denver without recharging. Using a $100 piece of technology, the team is now peeking inside charging batteries to study the formation of "dendrites," which consume liquid electrolytes and reduce capacity. Slashdot reader Eloking quotes New Atlas: Battery cells are normally tested through cycles of charge and discharge, testing the capacity and flow potential of the cells before being dissected. Dasgupta and his team...added a window to a lithium cell so that they could film the dendrites forming and deforming during charge and discharge cycles.
In a video interview they're reporting that dendrites can actually help a battery if they form a small, even "carpet" inside of the battery which "can keep more lithium in play." According to the article, "The future of lithium-ion batteries is limited, says University of Michigan researcher Neil Dasgupta, because the chemistry cannot be pushed much further than it already has. Next-generation lithium cells will likely use lithium air and lithium sulfur chemistries."

Comments

Progress!

[Tablizer]

and Note 7 II's will explode 10x brighter.

Re:Progress!

[Rei]

Actually, that is a concern. Li-ion batteries don't have lithium metal in them unless something goes wrong. Lithium-air batteries always have lithium metal in them, by design.

In practice, you'll probably see a bit of the energy density given up in order to beef up the casing to prevent rupture/fire.

Thankfully, lithium-sulfur batteries don't use lithium metal, just lithium polysulfides. The max energy density isn't as high, but it's still quite good. They're already on the market, albeit in small quantities for applications that require the absolute highest rechargeable energy density (mainly aerospace).

Is this for real

[Feral Nerd]

If this pans out (have my doubts), even if the capacity is only increased five fold, there will be two kinds of car companies, those that go electric and those who go the way of camera manufacturers who bet on film cameras being the future and waited too long to go digital.

Re:Oh Boy

[tsa]

I remember when I was a young boy 40 years ago the batteries in my toys would last just an hour or so, and they would start to leak a very dirty brown liquid a few days after I had put them in my toys. Back then we hadn't even heard about rechargeable batteries, let alone Li-ion batteries. Nowadays I can play around with my Lego toys for a long time before my rechargeable, non-leaking batteries go flat. Li-ion batteries pack so much power into a small volume that they are able to explode all by themselves, or power a phone with the calculating capacities of a supercomputer from the 1990s for many hours on end. So reality doesn't support your claim that batteries haven't improved over the last 50 years.

Re:Oh Boy

[TheRealMindChild]

Things simply use less power these days. Long gone are the times you needed 2x D batteries to power a flashlight.

Re:Oh Boy

[Wookie Monster]

Batteries for Lego toys mostly power motors, not lights. Electric motor efficiency hasn't improved that much. 50 years ago, battery powered tools didn't exist at all because no battery could hold enough charge and still be portable.

Re:I say BS

[DamonHD]

It happens regularly.

Quite a lot of my replies are asking people to stop doing it because it's ignorance, posturing or worse!

Rgds

Damon

Re:Compact Florescents would like a word

[thinkwaitfast]

Regular fluorescent bulbs are chock full of mercury too. I've never understood why CF is singled out on this point. I have all LED now, but cf was a lifesaver when going off grid.

Re:That's not what 10-fold means

[newcastlejon]

p>10-fold = (2^10)*original capacity. 1024*100 percent increase is a 102,400% improvement.

That's not what tenfold means. Saying something increases tenfold is the same as saying ten times (10x or 1000%).

Re:I say BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, the smell of fresh crap on Slashdot on a Sunday afternoon:
"Inexpensive housing for the poor has existed since the first axe was used to chop wood and form walls and a roof."

And where, pray tell, do these resourceful Homeless and their shopping carts full of surplus building supplies, build their houses? Shanty towns have been around forever... until the Lords of the Land gets pissed off and levels them. Bulldozers do make it much easier these days, but in Ireland 170 years ago, special iron-tipped sticks were used to tumble the walls of the houses of the evicted, so that they couldn't return. Or perhaps you are more familiar with the thousands of "Hoovervilles" circa 1930. General Douglas MacArthur gained fame and good will by using Federal Troops to burn the ~15,000 Man "Bonus Army" Camp out of Washington, DC, with the able assistance of Patton and Eisenhower.
And then, by any chance did you see that movie with a young Hank Fonda made about a decade later, called "The Grapes Of Wrath"?. Those weren't Sets, that was a real Shanty Town, as was the Weedpatch Migrant Camp, which _was_ built by the Homeless, under Government Support. Damn commies.

"All that's left for that inexpensive housing is for the poor to do what humans with far less did thousands of years ago, and get their asses moving."

To where, you mushy turd of a Human Being? Your Backyard? The Parking Lot at where you work? Central Park in New York City... again? Or maybe you are thinking of some only slightly radioactive Nevada desert now surplus to Government needs, and only maybe fifty miles from the nearest Shopping, Schooling, and Employment? (Note: Even the Shoshone Tribes don't want that land back...) Or perhaps you are thinking of some place further away, where they can go with little chance of ever returning. Much of Quebec and Nova Scotia were settled by some suddenly Homeless; America's solution to the Loyalist Problem. But these days, Canada may object.

Re:Compact Florescents would like a word

[ledow]

Fuck knows what shit it is that you're buying, but there's a CF replacement bulb in every socket in my house and I've literally never changed one.

The outdoors one is on from dusk to 11pm all year round and is a CF. Still going.

In fact, all that's happened is that I've started replacing the CFs with LED lights - and same thing there. Not one in the bin yet. In fact I've still got a box of 20 LED bulbs which are just waiting for the CFs to die but I don't get up on a chair to change them unless they do and NOT ONE has. In the same time, I've replaced 12 halogens and about 7 incandescents.

And I'm using the cheapest thing on Amazon that I can buy in bulk and is supplied in a direct-replacement for an existing bulb-shape.

Hell, I even replaced all the tiny little high-power halogens that were popular in light fittings with bigger-but-same-output LEDs that take 1/50th the power.

I honestly don't know what junk you're using or what's wrong with your house electrics, but CF's do what they claim, and so do LEDs.

Re:Oh Boy

[chihowa]

50 years ago, battery powered tools didn't exist at all because no battery could hold enough charge and still be portable.

The first cordless electric drill was produced by Black and Decker in 1961, using NiCd batteries. That's 55 years ago.

Re:I say BS

[Rei]

*Sigh*

And I'm telling you that lithium-ion batteries are not a "single tech", that they've dramatically improved in power and energy density (both volumetric and gravimetric) over time. And if you doubt this, I repeat: go find and older lithium-ion battery and compare it to a new one.

As for li-air, yes, the maximum energy density of li-air is about 10x of the maximum of li-ion. Namely because it works by direct oxidation rather than intercalation, so you don't need the mass of the matrix into which the ions get intercalated. It is not a "magical tech". It exists. Like all technologies in all fields, however, you have to reach production specs. This means not only maintaining a combination of safety, reliability, longevity, efficiency, temperature range, power density (charge and discharge) and energy density, but also affordability in mass production. And to be able to guarantee that you can do all of these things to a high enough level for investors to take the risk.

As with all technologies, you start out with promise in one or two fields, but serious problems in many others that you have to deal with. With time you refine them, until all of refined to a state where the product is commercialized. Li-air has actually been advancing quite well. In the early days one of its biggest problems were efficiency and longevity, but they've made huge strides in both in recent years. Lithium sulfur still looks nearer term, but commercialization of Li-air appears to have gone from "possible" to "quite probable".

Re:I say BS

[Rei]

the improvements have been minor in battery tech... the main improvement has been in lowering energy use in the chips (shrinking mainly)

Flatly contradicted by comparing old batteries with new, amp hours vs. volume and mass. For the past couple decades, batteries have doubled in energy density once every 8 years or so. Do you perchance have an old cell phone lying around at home? Check out its amp-hour rating and see how big/heavy it is compared to the amp hour rating and size/mass of your current cell phone's battery.

and the article say's nothing about 10x, so yes this is bullshit..

No, it is not. The maximum theoretical energy density of li-air is about 10x that of the maximum theoretical for LCO/graphite li-ion.

The problem is chemistry, no matter how much you want to believe it's possible to make a battery that is anywhere near as energy dense as gasoline, the chemistry say's no!!

Once again, false. The maximum gravimetric energy density for li-air is comparable to gasoline (12kWh/kg vs. 13kWh/kg) in the charged state, and significantly better in the discharged state. Now, you don't ever achieve the maximum for a particular chemistry, or even close to it. But then again, for a given amount of EV range, you don't have to, as electric drivetrains are 3-5x more efficient than ICE drivetrains.

Of course, neither of these are actual impediments to EV adoption; nobody gives a rat's arse whether a battery pack is physically larger or heavier than a gas tank (partially or completely offset by the reduced drivetrain mass). The real impediment is price. That said, if cost per unit mass/volume remains the same and energy density improves, then cost per watt hour improves as well.