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Researchers Create A Lithium-Ion Battery With Built-In Flame Retardant (engadget.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Engadget:
One big problem with lithium-ion batteries is that they have the tendency to catch fire and blow up all kinds of gadgets like toys and phones. To solve that issue, a group of researchers from Stanford University created lithium-ion batteries with built-in fire extinguishers. They added a component called "triphenyl phosphate" to the plastic fibers of the part that keeps negative and positive electrodes separate. Triphenyl phosphate is a compound commonly used as a flame retardant for various electronics. If the battery's temperature reaches 150 degrees Celsius, the plastic fibers melt and release the chemical. Based on the researchers' tests, the method can stop batteries from burning up within 0.4 seconds.
It gives the impression that the more dangerous the battery is, the more it stores, at a point i wouldn't be surprised if they came up with a lithium-Nitroglycerin battery that outperforms everything else.
This is a well-known flame retardant. Its environmental effects are not so well known. From Wikipedia:
Limited information is available indicating significant toxicological effects of TPhP. Although it was initially expected to have an overall low impact, a growing body of evidence suggests that the effects may not be so harmless. Triphenyl phosphate exhibits low acute toxicity by dermal or oral contact.[3] However, an increasing number of studies have linked exposure to TPhP with reproductive and developmental toxicity, neurotoxicity, metabolic disruption, endocrine effects, and genotoxicity
Personally, I prefer a random smartphone blazing off a hipster's balls from time to time than a rotten environment and half of humankind with endocrine problems down the line (besides, the first alternative would exert natural selection in a beneficial way).
What we need is a DiLithium battery to propel us to the 24th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It gives the impression that the more dangerous the battery is, the more it stores
That is actually true in a sense. Greater energy density equals a potentially larger kaboom if you hold all other things equal. Now obviously it's more complicated than that since there are multiple factors that go into the risk of combustion but it's not illogical to say that the more energy a battery holds the more it can potentially release. Fortunately there are other factors that are considerably more consequential in determining how dangerous a battery is.
Gasoline is quite dangerous under the right conditions and has a substantially higher energy density and specific energy than any lithium based batteries we currently can make. Although for that matter so does a block of wood or animal fat...
What's more satisfying than a model airplane that crashes AND bursts into flames?
Seems to me to be an admission of an ultimate fail.
Our products might blow up and burn you, so here's some flame retardant so no one else gets burned.
This battery will prevent CPUs from executing HCF instruction, that is vital for the proper functioning of a well known smartphone brand.
What makes a battery more hazardous than fuel, is having the reaction occurs at the same location as the stored energy.
There are an estimated 150,000 car fires in the US every year. I don't think either of us has the data available to make an apples to apples comparison but I very much doubt that battery powered cars will prove to be meaningfully more hazardous that gasoline powered ones.
With fuel, combustion chambers are very distinct and distant from storage tanks.
Gasoline does not have to be in a combustion chamber to ignite. A hot manifold with a leaking fuel line is more than enough to set a car on fire.
Oh so a flame resistant material or even a good insulator magically makes the heat just disappear into nothingness when 4AH of energy is released in like 3 seconds. I didn't know that's how physics worked.
One big problem with lithium-ion batteries is that they have the tendency to catch fire and blow up all kinds of gadgets like toys and phones.
Tendency? I don't thin you know what that word means.
Given the number of lithium-ion batteries in the world, then number of fires and explosions is rather small, even including the well-publicized Samsung devices and Boeing 787 incident.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
A battery capable of running a laptop for 10 hours is - if the energy is applied as heat, or even just sheer unrestricted electrical discharge - the same as powering 600 laptops for a minute. Or 3600 laptops for a second. Imagine the energy you need to do that - to just turn on 3600 laptops simultaneously, even for a second.
Answer: 36,000, not 3600.
We just need better pants. Fiberglass, Nomex, asbestos, fireproof pants are the answer! No one cares if your phone bursts into flames in your hands. Just drop the phone!
Now if the phone bursts into flames in your pants, you gotta save your junk! And both sexes got junk!
I humbly submit that "phone-ready" pants are the future.