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Li-Ion Battery Inventor Creates Breakthrough Solid-State Battery, Holds 3X Charge (fossbytes.com)
A research team led by John Goodenough at the Cockrell School of Engineering (Yes, this is a legitimate story) has created a new fast charging solid-state battery. Decades ago, American physicist John Goodenough co-invented the lithium-ion battery, which is now omnipresent in today's technology. The team has published a research paper in the journal Energy and Environmental Science. Fossbytes reports: The design limitations of lithium batteries containing liquid electrolytes don't allow them to charge quickly. If done forcefully, it would lead to the formation of metal whiskers (dendrites). Eventually, a short circuit would happen, or the battery would explode. However, that's not the problem with the solid-state batteries. The researchers have used a solid glass electrolyte in place of the liquid one. The glass electrolyte allows the researchers to use the alkali metal anode (negative side) which increases the charge density of the battery and prevents the formation of dendrites. Also, the glass electrolyte enables a battery to operate in extreme temperatures of -20-degree celsius. You can read more via The University of Texas at Austin.
Until Jane Waybetter from Bulldaze School of Engineering comes out with an improved solid-state battery, winning the Valiant medal.
Are you morons even trying anymore?
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.
I wonder how the solid electrolyte holds up under rugged use/abuse.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
It is when the current charging recommendation is >0 for LI-ion so anything below is extreme for LI-ion.
Wouldn't it make more sense to dominate the battery market? Are you one of those people who think Chevron is sitting on the technology to make 300mpg cars?
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
I think this one differentiate from the rest in two aspects: first, this one looks much more production-ready than all the others I heard about (TFA says "has more charging cycles, supports fast charging, and isn’t prone to catch fire"). It may be necessary improve mechanical strength (the glass electrolyte can be too brittle for real world applications), maybe voltage or current throughput... what do you think?
And second, this one is from the man that did it once before. For me, it's good enough (^^).
Or Hot :-). I read a number of articles from analysts who thought it would take around 15 years for the technology to be produced in commercial volumes. But the fact that it looks like this is going to happen at all, even with a 10-15 year time-frame, is a BIG deal. 3x the charge will give electric vehicles a 600+ mile range.
-Matt
Wouldn't it make more sense to dominate the battery market?
No, it makes more sense to produce shitty and expensive products whose quality degrades over lifetime than to sell products where the customer buys it once and is so happy with it they don't need to buy it again.
In fact, many products in the world have gotten planned obsolescence put into the product so that you have to buy a new one over time.
Ever heard of the light bulb cartel?
As always, comments before reading TFA: "This is the first all-solid-state battery cell that can operate under 60 degree Celsius."
So yes, -20C is extreme for this type of solid state battery.
A lead acid battery will freeze at -20C when it's below 60% charged.
Other types of rechargable batteries should not be used at all at that temperature.
But how economical is it to modify the existing multi-billion dollar battery factories to make these solid state batteries?
Spoken just like Edsel Ford or just about anyone managing a US Steel plant since World War Two.
You do something like that or you eventually become far less relevant to the economy.
I just watched a recent Nova that highlighted a similar technology, but using plastic rather than glass as the electrolyte. Check out a short clip about it here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/n.... Seems like it has the same advantages, but without issues of brittleness, given that his sample batteries are shown being flexed. On the other hand, the plastic might be more susceptible to cold than the glass electrolyte.
Really? There is some serious competition in the battery sales world. The desire for range on electric cars alone should be enough to get one built. If the existing companies wont build it someone will. That's too big an improvement to ignore.
Probably not - no ingredient we've been told about is exceptionally dense.
From Wikipedia Li-ion batteries have 100-265 W.h/kg and 250-676 W.h/L, which implies density of about 2.5kg/L.
This page gives typical density of glass as 2.4 to 2.8 kg/L. Sodium metal has density 0.97 kg/L. So the new cell should have similar or better mass density than the Li-ion cells.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
...well, John, goodenough
What are the chances that in, say, six months time everybody will have forgotten about this, and it will come nothing? For, that's what seems to happen with the vast majority of scientific/technological breakthroughs announced in this forum.
A few weeks ago, Nova showed a lithium-metal battery developed at Univ. of Michigan that uses plastic, has 2X the energy density of Li-ion, and doesn't explode or burn even when cut numerous times. Pogue showed such a battery continuing to produce power even when sliced many times with scissors.
The irony of that statement is you are simplisticly casting yourself in my role without even attempting to find out that I'm an engineer that some years back worked in the manufacturing industry - you removed the complexity and placed a very simple strawman in the place of someone who has been considering this issue since the 1980s.
Also I gave two examples - two views of companies that were very reluctant to upgrade their processess and suffered very gravely.
I could have been as insulting as you have, but instead of pointing out appalling ignonance on your part I placed the spotlight on two examples of others who acted in the same appalling ignorance as you expressed.
Factories that do not upgrade process lines shut down while the work is carried out elsewhere in places that do. Haven't you heard of the "rust belt"?
I always look forward to Slashdot's famous Battery of the Week stories. Each week we are introduced to the latest battery breakthorough that is just around the corner. Or maybe 10 years down the road. Or maybe never. Does it matter that it will never be produced, and never available for sale? Absolutely not!
This is about dreams, and visions. It has nothing to do with reality. I'm a dreamer. MLK was a dreamer. The Everly brothers were dreamers. Mexicans are dreamers. We are all dreamers!
Dream on, mis amigos! Dream on!
He just isn't quite Goodenough.
The man's 94 years old. You're going to have to be very, very creative to make a joke out of his name that he hasn't heard 1000x
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
I mean, yeah it's cold. But it's a perfectly normal temperature to see in winter in many places in the world.
-20C is extreme if we are talking about the temperature of a phone in your pocket.
It leaves Musk happy. The megafactory churns out batteries until this (or something similar) gets commercialized, then he switches production to the new battery type. It will let Tesla make more cost-effective electric cars. (If the inventors can impress him enough, Tesla might hire them commercialize it itself. It would be a Muskian thing to do.)
It is people who have invested in lithium mining who are unhappy.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Ever heard of the light bulb cartel
Yes, it fell apart within a decade because other companies started making cheaper, better light bulbs.
In a highly competitive market like batteries, these conspiracy theories become more and more unlikely.
Saw this episode of NOVA, Search for the Super Battery with David Pogue about Tufts University professor and engineer Mike Zimmerman and his solid plastic electrolyte, described here: New Damage-Proof Battery Has Higher Energy Density, Won’t Explode:
But Zimmerman’s battery can withstand repeated damage without risking explosion or fire. In fact, it can continue to power devices even after most of it has been chopped away.
Watched him hit the batter pack it with a hammer, drive nails through it and cut it up with scissors all while the battery kept producing power.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Cause good enough
isn't good enough
for Goodenough!
slashdot: A failed experiment.
I have a 100 mpg motorbike, still faster than most cars. A Smart car hybrid with a 600cc turbo Diesel should be able to get 100-200 mpg. They aren't sitting on it, they just know nobody would buy it.
Learn to love Alaska
An electric car with 3x the range ... ... ... ... ... GPS, emergency beacons, swim wests ...
Or a drone
Not to mention the people working on electric powered planes/helicopters
A phone that lasts three times as long
Naval equipment for sailors
You must live under a rock.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Most phones have user replaceable batteries, and those that don't have replaceable batteries. http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how...
Learn to love Alaska
Not much of a problem. Electric cars are popular in Norway, despite Canadian temperatures and current battery technology. There is a simple fix for batteries in cold climate: Insulation and a battery heater. The heating may steal a few percent of range, which is much better than not being able to use the car at all. Insulation ensures that the heating losses are small.
And of course, a battery that only need heating when below -20C is much better than current batteries that like being heated up to +20C. (Which is what we call "summer temperature" here.) 3x capacity - even better!
I highly doubt that -40 Coulombs equals -40 Farads.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
" Are you one of those people who think Chevron is sitting on the technology to make 300mpg cars?"
Of course not, everyone knows Shell's sitting on that.
Not if we are talking about my ex.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
And unless your particular battery module is a commodity component, this is worth jack.
Nokia had the right idea on this ; most of their user-replaceable battery modules had lifespans longer than the line of phones they first appeared in. But with the trend toward integrated batteries, everyone started designing special-purpose units for one particular model, which is no longer worth manufacturing after that model became obsolescent. Which is a shame, because treated well, most phones will, as you note, outlast their battery.
Batteries degrade even on the shelf when you don't use them, so unless your phone was so mega-popular that it's worth manufacturing new ones (basically just iPhones), any module you're going to get is going to be old stock, or a knock-off manufactured so cheaply that you could almost rely on being able to use your phone as a grenade.
I have a Nexus 4 that I've had 5 years, has survived being repeatedly upgraded to the latest version of Android even when Google / LG stopped supporting it, is even outlasting the TPU case I bought for it, has only one or two imperceptible scratches on the screen. It's still my daily driver and still a great phone - the only two components I worry about are the USB port (I got a wireless charger to help reduce the number of cycles) and the battery - I still get 2 days of standby time if I'm careful, but it's starting to drop charge a little quickly once it drops below 40% now. I'd love to get a brand new, official, manufactured-this-year LG battery module for it, but such a thing does not seem to exist. And even the third-party knock-offs all seem to have been made in 2013 and sat in some superheated SE Asian warehouse since then, degrading to the point where they are sometimes worse than the unit they are replacing (as far as anecdotes on /r/nexus4 seem to reflect.)
You're going to have to be very, very creative to make a joke out of his name that he hasn't heard 1000x
Is that because Goodenough is the enemy of perfection?
Ezekiel 23:20
It is all about return on investment; in a growing market that is much easier to achieve. At some point, if the new technology provides sufficient value, old factories will be upgraded...
> a modern ICE will cost you less than 4 grand in fuel for the entire life of the vehicle
In the USA, maybe. In nations where the tax on fuel makes up most of it's cost like the UK... I spend about £2,000 a year on fuel in my tiny little Skoda CitiGo, commuting a mere 60 miles round trip 4x a week.
Tesla Model 3 (the closest they've come to a mass-market car) has a range of 215 miles. The battery pack makes up a large amount of it's mass. If you can cut the battery down to 1/3rd the size, the range of the car will go up, so you can probably cut it a little further - maybe to 1/4. Now you're talking about a battery that only costs 2.5x as much.
Plus the speculation that these batteries will cost 10x as much when the inventor describes them as "cheap" is wild. If they cost 3x more to manufacture, they're definitely already worth it for electric cars - because even a unit that holds the same charge as the current battery, and thus costs the same, improves the car by being lighter, taking up less space, and charging faster, giving it better range or carrying capacity and greater utility.
People pay 10 times the price for LiFePO4 batteries than lead-acid batteries for their RV because it means more usable electricity, and the cost is a relatively minor part of the equation.
As for $100 more for a phone, already did so. The external battery case I have cost that much... and is well worth it.
It may be more expensive, but battery life is such a limiting factor on many things, that any way to expand on energy stored per volume will be used, even if the cost is a lot more.