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Researcher Develops Explosion-Proof Lithium Metal Battery With 2X Power of Lithium-Ion (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: Tufts University professor and founder of Ionic Materials, Mike Zimmerman, hopes that his resilient ionic battery technology will finally replace Lithium Ion. The reason scientists and researchers pay so much attention to battery design is because today's lithium-ion technologies have several downsides, as we saw recently with Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 recall. If you were to take apart a lithium-ion battery, you'd find a positive electrode called the anode and a negatively charged electrode called the cathode. There's a thin separator that sits between the anode and cathode. Everything else is filled up with liquid, or electrolyte. Charging the battery causes positively charged ions to flow through the liquid from the negative side to the positive side. As you use the battery, the ions flow in the opposite direction. However, the electrolyte is extremely flammable and they can explode when pierced or overheated. Zimmerman's ionic battery trades the flammable liquid for a piece of plastic film to serve as the electrolyte. It isn't prone to overheating and catching fire. The same goes for piercing, cutting or otherwise destroying the battery. Also, unlike lithium-ion batteries, Zimmerman's ionic batteries use actual lithium-metal, which can store twice as much power. Lithium-ion batteries don't contain lithium-metal because they're even more prone to overheating and exploding than lithium-ion, but that risk is removed by Zimmerman swapping out the liquid electrolyte for a solid. Further reading: Yahoo News
Harry Mudd will sort things out.
Until one gets developed and no one notices when their new gadget is having it.
I'm gonna sit right here on the edge of this pier and watch the sunset disappear, and drink a beer.
Without half that summary being a 5th grade science lesson I would have no fucking clue how a battery works
Will this mean that I will be able to purchase a rechargeable lithium-something equipped insertable vibrator to where I can now safely stimulate myself with considerably less risk of char-broiling my prostate?
If you were to take apart a lithium-ion battery, you'd find a positive electrode called the anode and a negatively charged electrode called the cathode. There's a thin separator that sits between the anode and cathode. Everything else is filled up with liquid, or electrolyte. Charging the battery causes positively charged ions to flow through the liquid from the negative side to the positive side. As you use the battery, the ions flow in the opposite direction.
Dear Editors, Thanks for explaining, on a tech site, how, basically, every battery works.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Zimmerman's ionic batteries use actual lithium-metal, ...
Just don't drop it in water if it ever gets damaged.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The subject matter Is interesting, but first of all, please link to the original article, and secondly, tone down the sycophancy.
Have the claims been verified by anyone but a Yahoo reporter who knows slightly less than nothing about electrochemistry?
You also might mention that the entire thing is promotion for a NOVA special ("Search for the Superbattery") which will hopefully have more information. (trailer on YouTube.)
...says someone conveniently oblivious of the actual history of technology, full of blind alleys (most of which are usually forgotten a few decades later).
Ezekiel 23:20
The thing that is preventing 600 mile range electric cars is not the limited capacity of lithium ion, it's the cost. I mean, 750 kilograms of lithium ion battery is the equivalent of a 15 gallons of gasoline in a regular car. A Tesla 85D carries a 540 kg battery and gets 270 miles range. You can easily make a vehicle that can carry 1200 kg of battery. A Tesla with 1000 kg of battery would weigh about 3000 kilograms -- but even accounting for the increased weight, it get well over 600 miles of range (that's enough to comfortably drive between any two big towns in most if not all of the US). The problem is that 1200 kilograms of lithium ion battery costs a shit-ton of money. That's the whole point of the gigafactory. What I am saying is that if we had zero new advances in battery technology other that making it much cheaper than it costs today .. we could have electric cars that outperform gasoline cars in miles travelled before refilling.
So if there is an advance in batteries I want to know, what will it cost in the medium term?
Among battery researchers that I know, a key figure of merit is the amount of power you get after the thousandth charge-discharge cycle. There are plenty of great battery ideas out there, but they don't have the lifetimes to be commercially feasible. I wonder how this stacks up.
Logic is a little tweeting bird chirping in a meadow.
Logic is a wreath of pretty flowers which smell BAD.
Are you sure your circuits are registering correctly? Your ears are green.
C'mon, this is basic stuff for a News for Nerds site
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
As usual, new battery announcement, with nonexistent details about real, practical questions that are highly relevant to practical implementation such as: Power density? Battery lifetime? Ease of manufacturing/cost? All of these need to be at least as good as current, top of the line li-on batteries, or it'll die the same death as the previous hundred or so "breakthrough" batteries that have been announced. None of them were so much as mentioned, instead saying (evasively) this uses "real!" lithium metal which "can store twice the power (energy density) of traditional li-on batteries". But can the battery itself store twice the energy density of li-on batteries? And which ones, today's top ones or like, some irrelevant comparison to li-ons from over a decade ago?
First off he is powering an I pad. You cannot see inside the ipad to tell if it has batteries in it. All you see is two wires going in the side no proof the battery he destroys is actually anything but rolled up aluminum foil. Any real batteries when pierced will short by having the electrically conductive screwdriver shorting out the plates on the stack. You should at least get some smoke from the sparks. Same thing on cutting. That blade is going to smash plates right through the plastic electrolyte. If the battery has the ability to deliver amps of current it would spark. No sparks seems like lack of proof that the "battery" is doing anything not that the battery is super safe.
It doesn't help that batteries are made of explodium. It would cut out a lot of the ancillary costs and save a bit of weight if you didn't need to pack them into a safe.
Yet another battery with awesome power that won't blow up. I think I stopped caring 50 awesome new batteries ago.
“My top advice really for anyone who says they’ve got some breakthrough battery technology is please send us a sample cell, okay. Don’t send us PowerPoint, okay, just send us one cell that works with all appropriate caveats, that would be great. That sorts out the nonsense and the claims that aren’t actually true.”
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Challenge accepted.
In the event of an actual nuclear war, the only safe place will be ISS... and even then, only until the food runs out. That's when the cannibalism starts, and after that, it's survival of the fittest. In the end, there can be only one.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I know, but i was pointing how how oblivious the public is to the innovations in general, how even the biggest jumps are generally "not news" and everyone gets dragged to more advanced technology by a treadmill that they don't notice is there.
About 3 times a year /. and the other sties post one more story on a breakthrough battery. Smaller, lighter, larger capacity, faster charging but it never seems to happen.
This is the source of the information. It's part of PBS' "Search for the Super Battery" which airs today (February 1, 2017) at 9 pm on PBS.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
No? ;)
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
Anytime someone touts a new battery technology find out the answer to these basic questions:
1. What is the energy density in terms of watt hours per kilogram?
2. How many discharge cycles can it take before capacity drops to 80%?
3. What is its flammability?
Then we can move on to things like cost and manufacturability (which can usually be solved with enough will).
and the next thing you read is that it will take years before it's actually production ready.. And by that time there will have been new advances being made in batteryland..
How many times in the past have we read that some professor/university has created a much better battery, and how many of those have actually been made already....... none....
So take this news with a barrel of salt..
Article: We've done something that never been done before, advanced science, and made what seems like it could be a step toward improving batteries. Slashdot: Can I buy it yet? No? Worthless.
But when it comes to battery technology, our AC is right to be bitter (but is still an idiot to call it 'fake news', of course): we see these stories every few months, and literally none of them ever come to fruition.
This will come to nothing. In a few months time, with the exception of a very small circle, nobody will even remember it.
A charged battery contains energy, possibly lots.
If you damage it or take it apart, the energy has to go somewhere.
Boom/hiss/crackle/pop!
A pox on web designers who feel that window.innerWidth == screen.availWidth
Right, let me know when my mentioned 3 years ago, 5 years ago, and 7 years ago or something like that 90% air super capacity batteries show up.
There is a fundamental law that batteries have to follow.
The energy that is stored has to be able to come back out. So, if you short the electrodes, all that stored energy may be released in a short amount of time. Unless your energy density is very low (i.e. below usable) that will heat up your battery on short notice. There is not much you can do about that.
But when it comes to battery technology, our AC is right to be bitter (but is still an idiot to call it 'fake news', of course): we see these stories every few months, and literally none of them ever come to fruition.
(
Wrong. Some of us remember when all our electronics with rechargeables had NiCads with their infamous memory effect. The lithiums we use now were one of those "stories" of new battery types and it did of course come to fruition. What is needed is one where the price/performance is equal or better than existing models then we will transition to the new design for those it makes sense to do. I suspect this one by using a solid lithium rather than a lithium compound (I know of lithium/manganese and lithium/cobalt on the market) is more expensive per battery than the compound batteries.
This is Trump's America now... Of the new battery technologies posted on /. only 1 in 1,000,000 actually make it; in my opinion.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
A couple major issues with this writeup.
First, power is the rate of energy consumption. Energy is the amount of stored work. The summary refers to power, but they mean energy.
Second, this has been done before. The problem with using a metallic cathode is that when the battery charges Li ions move from anode to cathode and crystallize back into Li metal. During crystallization they form tiny needles called "dendrites" which eventually pierce the polymer separator and cause the battery to short-circuit, rapidly releasing all of the stored energy in the process. If there was a way to prevent the dendrite formation, that would truly be an important discovery. Sadly, this is not it.
It's not too bad a place to be. The crew can hole up safely for a while, then take the escape Soyuz down to earth. Without ground guidance you'd have a hard time aiming at anything very precisely, but you should be able to hit a target the size of Australia - which, having no nuke-worthy targets away from the east cost, would probably come through relatively unscathed.
Just starting out in the outback would be better though.
It's all bullshit. A lithium-metal battery is a SERIOUS. FIRE. HAZARD. And it cannot be fought with traditional firefighting equipment (i.e. WATER.) Go look at what goes in a Class D fire extinguisher, and then look at the cost. I'd like to see the zero weight, micro thin unubtainium shell he proposes to make the thing 100%, ABSOLUTELY puncture proof. We put Li-Ion batteries in tiny plastic bags.
The electrolyte is not flammable. Open up a pouch and stick a match to it. It. Does. Not. Burn. "Vent with flame" occurs because of the current flow resulting from an internal short -- in the Samsung case because of metal contaminates (and normal heat expansion crushing it within the confined case), in the case of a puncture because the anode and cathode are now touching. That's also why it's impossible to put out a Li-Ion battery fire: Current flow cannot be disrupted. All you can do is quench it until the charge is depleted. (which can take thousands of gallons of water)
Lithium is about $7.5 / kilogram, or $3 / pound, and going up rapidly as demand increases.
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I recently saw a PBS Nova program that had a segment on Mr Zimmerman's invention. He is a plastics engineer by trade.
And the battery packs he made were amazing. Some were quite thin.
It was demonstrated how effective, and safe, they are; being cut into pieces (and still working!), stabbed, crushed, chopped, etc.
Looks to me to be a real solution. I am taking stock out on Mr Zimmerman!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.