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Interviews: Ask Lithium-Ion Battery Inventor John Goodenough a Question
John B. Goodenough is a solid-state physicist and professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at The University of Texas at Austin. While he is most famous for identifying and developing the lithium-ion battery, which can be found in just about every portable electronic device on the market, he has recently created a new fast charging solid-state battery that looks to revolutionize the industry. We sent him an email about doing an interview and he has responded. Now is your chance to ask Goodenough a question!
We'll pick the very best questions and forward them to John Goodenough himself. (Feel free to leave your suggestions for who Slashdot should interview next.) Go on, don't be shy!
We'll pick the very best questions and forward them to John Goodenough himself. (Feel free to leave your suggestions for who Slashdot should interview next.) Go on, don't be shy!
How do you respond to critics of the new battery technology? When can we expect to see them hit the street?
There are several innovative ideas for better batteries that never make it to market. The problem is that you can make a few by hand in the lab, but production of useful numbers does not scale well at all or it scales, but is horrible expensive.
Will your development reasonably scale? If not, what stands in your way.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
There seems to be some confusion about whether or not your battery has the same material or differing material on the two electrodes. Can you elaborate on this and, if the electrodes are the same material, how the battery works?
Could you speculate on the reasons behind the increasing frequency of li-ion battery fires? Cheaper parts, smaller tolerances, higher energy density, or all of the above?
How sick are you of all the puns and jokes about your name?
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Given the way Slashdot has devolved to the point where it isn't even a tech site anymore and it's frequented mostly by idiots who think Goodenough puns are funny, why wouldn't you just sirens your time doing something useful instead? (Serious question)
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Over time batter energy density has improved by approximately 5-10% a year. Do you expect this trend to continue? If not, what do you expect will happen in the long-term? Are there other metrics by which you expect batteries to continue to improve?
Assuming your new battery tech scales easily and economically for mass production and given the intensifying demand for such tech ... when would you expect to see it supplant lithium-ion as the battery technology of choice for manufacturers ?
Demand for lithium is soaring and supply is scrabbling to keep up. If I was contemplating constructing a lithium mine/extraction facility, I would be worried that my investment might do fine for five years and then suddenly become worthless when some new battery chemistry came along. Is this fear justifiable? Is it reducing current or near-future lithium supply?
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
I am an electrical engineer and developing a battery pack for a light electric aircraft. What do you think is the next big application for batteries after EVs and home energy storage? Into what specific area of batteries should engineers focus their work on when developing battery systems? What is your ultimate vision for battery technology? Could you elaborate?
Dear John, (see what I did there?)
do you have any positive (or negative, for that matter) opinions on use of hemp (as can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...) in batteries? Organic too..
What about graphene?
John,
Is it (theoretically) possible for a battery to reach the same energy density as fossil fuel? Gasoline has an energy density of 46MJ/kg while a lithium based battery has an energy density of around 1MJ/kg.
This would mean that an electric car, boat or airplane would have the same potential range as their oil powered brethren.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Perhaps slashdot should institute a policy of delete-moderation for QandA. I'm all for whatever nonsense in news posts, but this is like inviting a guest into your house and then using them for midget bowling. It's abusive.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I've noticed that replacement lithium polymer battery packs for hybrid cars sell often sell for less than $1000 on eBay, while much smaller lithium based 12v batteries for conventional cars (with starter motors) often sell for more. As an example, here is a battery suitable for starting a small V8 that sells for $1600.00 http://www.jegs.com/i/Lithium-...
I would assume that it would be much easier to manufacture conventional 12v starter batteries in volume due to the ability to put them in many more different models of vehicles.
The ability to shave off 30+ lbs of weight from racecars would be enormous, so the demand is there, but why not the supply?
I'm curious about the development path leading to the recent announcement. What changed to make this battery possible now, versus a decade ago?
Was it analytical techniques (better math, faster computers)? Measurement and observation tools (fast/fine X-Ray, femto-second pulsed lasers)? Overall progress in the physical, chemical and electro-chemical sciences? Assembling the right team and lab? Or was it more about waiting for a spark of insight or inspiration?
Which factors dominated the development path? And what about the path forward to commercialization?
1) Is there any reason these batteries cannot be used for grid-scale energy storage?
2) Who own the patents to the battery technology and will they license it cheaply or hold back the market for 20 years like the overly greedy venture capitalists behind Aquion Energy?
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
If you want your race car to be light, just get rid of the battery entirely. You don't need a battery to race, only to crank the engine, something you really try to avoid doing whilst already racing.
I am very excited about sodium batteries.
As sodium is a much more environmentally friendly element to produce at large scale (my conjecture, I didn't look it up).
What were the roadblocks of using sodium in previous batteries?
I suspect whisker growth, but am not familiar with batteries enough to know other possibilities.
With the glass version, what are the big drawbacks to using sodium instead of lithium (if any)?
Thank you for your kind reply in advance!!
Why is every technology breakthrough I read about "five to ten years away from commercial viability."?
It seems to fit, even in Goodenough's career.. Invented lithium-ion battery early 80's, implemented by Sony first in 1991. (I think I got that right, pulled it from memory without checking)
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
Prof. Goodenough,
Right now, electric cars are only for the well-to-do. In my rural area, not only do people have to drive long miles, but many of them couldn't afford a new car anyway, let alone an electric one.
Do you envision battery prices becoming down to the point where an electric vehicle can compete with a gas-powered car at the low end of the income scale as well as at the high end?
There are many reasons why this isn't ever happening. A very big one is that such a 'battery' would be producing heat all the time. Say your device has 10W peak demand, and your radioisotope thermal generator (nuclear battery) has efficiency 10% (better than we've yet achieved), then you'd need an RTG which was emitting 100W of heat all the time. (On the plus side, it would do a fine job of heating the interior of your car on cold days.) (If your device only uses 10W occasionally, you could pair a 1W output RTG with rechargable batteries, but now all you're saving yourself is the need to plug it in each night.)
Further reasons:
* Cost - even with efficiency of scale, producing radio isotopes will be very expensive
* Scaling - the technology works (sort of) for 100W power generation, it may be hard to scale down to 10W or 1W
* SIze - a 100W RTG is the size of a person.
* Safety - they contain really nasty radioactive sources. If you use alpha emitters, you can make them 'safe' with very thin shielding, but once the material escapes into the environment (e.g. in a house fire, or someone chops the battery with an axe) it is very nasty indeed.
Yes, future technology can help somewhat with any of these - but it needs to improve all of these problems, each by many orders of magnitude, before nuclear batteries will be practical.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
To quote the paper :
:) If the substrate reaches 100C again, what appears to be the behavior? Does it depend on a rapid decrease or "flash freeze" to 25C to stabilize the structure? Will it render the cell absolutely useless? Will it simply continue "business as usual"?
"the dipoles can be rapidly aligned at 100°C by an ac applied electric field and frozen into alignment at 25°C < Tg. "
Has consideration been given (experimentation as well) within the laboratory environment to the behavior of the glass substrate within extreme naturally occurring temperatures. While, my personal property values increase proportionately with the effectiveness of global warming and hope at some point to own luxury resort beach front property here in Oslo, Norway, it's not uncommon to operate an EV within sub -20C temperatures and with -50C temperatures further north.
Current Li based cells suffer badly within these climates. In addition, in the past working together with Lee (Elias) Stefanakos Ph.D. from USF, we experienced in Florida certain behaviors in higher unregulated temperatures (with regards to lead-acid cells.. circa 1993) behavioral degradation of chemical electrolytes at +37C (if I recall correctly).
How does your and Maria's solid-state substrate behave within extreme temperatures. While I certainly am no material's scientist, I am curious whether there are behavioral symptoms displayed when performing under such naturally occurring extremes.
In addition, fluid electrolytes can often "self-repair" under these circumstances as a result of "reflowing". If these negative behaviors are apparent in within the solid electrolyte, are the damages sustained (structural fractures for example) or does the substrate display typical expansion and contraction under naturally occurring conditions?
For a bonus
What other developments in the field of energy storage do you keep a close eye on? Do you forsee breakthroughs coming from other technologies such as gyroscopes or even organic hydrogen production?
No matter what someone might think, one day they will because there's not going to be any more fossil fuels.
#DeleteFacebook
We keep hearing about breakthroughs in the battery technology world to the tune of several per year. After many years in this forum, the empirical observation is that such breakthroughs are forgotten after a few months, quietly buried, practically never having a measurable impact on our lives. Please explain why your latest claim about a battery breakthrough is not going to end up following that route.
Have you contacted Elon Musk, or has he already contacted you?
#DeleteFacebook
Is it fair to credit you that we have RC helicopters and multicopters?
Either way, thanks for all you've contributed.
I had a sucky sig.
Somewhere around the mid- to late 2000s, I was researching LiFEPO4 patents, and came across the University of Texas (UT) patent for which you are listed as an inventor. When I investigated licensing the patent, it was so expensive that it was not profitable to bother with the license at all. The factory partner I worked with was in China, and they were mass-producing the same LiFePO4 for jurisdictions not impacted by the patent.
As I understand it, the law firm that UT chose to manage the patent set a price that was incredibly high. Then, invariably, some company would build a market for a LiFePO4 product that violated the patent, and then the law firm would step in after the company had actually done some business and sue them for all they were worth. I have to admit that this last bit was told to me by some battery industry veterans, but it seems plausible based on how the battery industry works.
Nonetheless, the decision of UT to exclusively grant permission to the law firm to manage the patent kept the invention out of the market and likely cost UT some incredible amount (billions?) in royalties.
How do you feel about your invention, which clearly made mass-production of the chemistry viable, being effectively kept off the market for so long?
(BTW, when UT lowered their prices with, like, 5 years or so left on the patent, the factory I worked with immediately purchased the licensed material for selling their batteries in the U.S.)
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
Someone from Ars wrote a great article about several scientists critique of the solid anode/cathode idea not behaving like a 'traditional battery' and 'must be using some unknown physics' since the chemical changes in a solid wouldn't flow/propagate through the electrolyte. How is the chemical reaction causing a charge to accumulate in this solid? This article has since disappeared from the internet. How large was this battery you made? how many did you make? Can you supply the data and build instructions for peer review?
Just drop acid, already, and invent something better... or quit your whining.
Super capacitors and a very small battery
Is it (theoretically) possible for a battery to reach the same energy density as fossil fuel?
The theoretical maximum battery capacity is well in excess of fossil fuel. A battery made of 50% matter and 50% anti-matter could conceivably convert its mass into energy. That is the theoretical limit but we are a long way technologically from getting anywhere even vaguely close.
Rechargeable lithium cells are clearly excellent and power the majority of battery powered things I own. However, by comparison to older, less energy dense techs, they don't seem especially robust, for instance they degrade fast if deep discharged or left at very low charge levels. By comparison, say, NiCd batteries are very robust: while they do lose life, they do it in a pretty slowly and predictable way, you don't get it going off a cliff edge. I've noticed with some (though not all) devices, the battery life drops from hours to minutes in a relatively short timespan. The battery meter also ceases working, which I assume means that the internal resistance spikes way up suddenly and at higher voltages than fresh cells.
Can you offer any good insight as to why this happens, and do you think there are going to developments in the pipeline which will introduce the tolerance of the cells? Or are we going to have to rely on better quality active protection circuitry instead?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Do you envision batteries being able to run a sophisticated smart watch for at least a week? I would gladly buy such a smart watch if it wasn't overly large and expensive.
Change it to Greatenough to spur all the hecklers.
Why portable fuel cells didn't take off yet? Refueling would be much faster than recharging.
"Soy based plastic"? You mean making plastic from plants?!
Stop your nonsense.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go 3D-print something out of PLA.
#DeleteFacebook
Do you think lithium ion batteries will ever be able to economically provide grid scale frequency regulation? If so what timelines?
Do you think lithium ion batteries will ever be able to economically provide grid scale peak/valley stabilization? If so what timelines?
If not what tech do you see filling that gap and any timelines?
Typically I believe nuclear batteries have much lower power density than most chemical batteries - they store far more total energy, but can't release it nearly as fast. And in fact they release it at a constant rate*, whether or not you're using it - radioactive decay doesn't come with an off switch. Plus, as current technology mostly depends on heat conversion, you've got to figure that for every watt of electric power it can delivers, it will also be delivering 2-3 watts of heat.
There's also the size issue - a nuclear battery needs both an energy conversion mechanism and radiation shielding - shrink that down to the size of a AA, and your maximum available power becomes pretty tiny, unless you're using something highly radioactive as the fuel source - in which case it will decay rapidly and need to be replaced much more frequently - and now your mostly-discharged battery is not only toxic but also radioactive.
*technically an exponential decay, but nothing you do with affect it appreciably
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
It seems that the world's reserves of lithium are far more centralized than nearly any other energy source. Do you foresee a way to avoid the geopolitical struggles for lithium ore that we experience with oil reserves?
Do you see an upper limit on the ability to recycle and reuse existing lithium batteries (those that have avoided a landfill)?
Nothing evolves faster than the word of god in the minds of men who think themselves divinely inspired.
Why would you include batteries at all? If you have brackish water at night, then you almost certainly have it available during the day as well, and can perform desalination then, when you have maximum power availability. Why waste money and power (batteries aren't free or 100% efficient) trying to spread the work over the full day cycle?
As a matter of fact I seem to recall a number of different solar desalination technologies out there, most of which use solar thermal rather than photovoltaics, thus more than quadrupling the available power while also cutting costs. (26% efficiency is absolute high-dollar cutting edge for photovoltaics)
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Designing car batteries is tough. The environment they live in is generally rough - while modern cars avoid putting the battery in the engine compartment, older cars still have it there, so you have to contend with high temperatures under the hood (too high to charge safely). Then there's charging - Lead-acid batteries have a stupidly easy charge regimen - you apply voltage to the terminals, it charges. Overcharging is handled by the battery (they can explode because they do generate hydrogen gas, but well vented it's not an issue), and they can tolerate a lot of abuse. Next, there's also a regulatory aspect of the battery - just by being there, the voltage swings of the electrical system are limited because the battery takes up excess voltage as charge and provides for voltage sags by discharging.
If you need to ask, without a battery, the car electrical system can sag to as low as 9V or lower at idle or slower speeds with high loads, 15V or higher when the engine is going good, and with lots of high voltage spikes of 170V or more because of the ignition system. And if someone jumpxtarts, the voltage goes all over the map.
Now do all that with a Li-Ion battery. First, the charge regimen is very controlled - any limits get exceeded and it is unsafe to charge, so you need a very complex charge controller. You also need one that can provide the regulation expected of the battery - absorbing excess voltage (even if the battery can't, it must dump the excess electricity somewhere), and providing a boost when it sags.
And it's not the battery, but the electronics.
Still, for some applications, they are actively used - aviation loves Li-Ion batteries because they're a lot lighter, and even in general aviation aircraft, temperatures don't get too bad because of immense airflow once airborne (so the charge controller can shut off charging on the ground) And they're lighter and last longer than their lead acid counterparts, so you can operate avionics and lights with the engine off without worrying too much of draining the battery prior to start.
Race cars don't have starting batteries - they use a starting cart that provides the starting power. They do have an electrical system because the engines are electronic ignition, the control panels are all electronic (the gauges, telemetry), driver radios etc. But since races generally last for well know periods of time, they only need a battery big enough to last that long (they don't want to bother with alternators unless you're talking about a 24 hour race).
With so many different research approaches to improving batteries, investment in bringing new technology to production scale is often viewed as a hazardous endeavor... there's a pretty good chance the tech you pick will end up getting surpassed by another before financials break even.
Obviously the free market helps foster a spirit of competition, but its brutal Darwinism also serves as a disincentive. Planned market solutions can spread out risk, but also have to be wary of funding completely unworthy endeavors... if everyone working on batteries, win or lose, got a small but guaranteed "compensation prize", lots of people would jump in and claim without merit to be working on batteries. Subdividing the technology so that different phases of a manufacturing process are developed by different entities seems a promising idea for those parts of the technology that may have wider applications or may apply to multiple competing designs -- but that would require a lot of advocacy which just does not seem to be there.
Have you seen any interesting proposals for business/market/public-funding models to address the "too many ways to skin a cat" problem?
Someone had to do it.
Do your fake new batteries use zero-point energy to achieve perpetual motion or do they use cold fusion instead?
How thick is the initial anode foil of Li or Na? This determines the capacity of the battery. All quantities in the paper are expressed per gram of lithium.
The cathode has particles of glass electrolyte, carbon, and sulphur, with a copper collector. When the lithium is plated onto the cathode, upon which of these components is it plated, and how thick is the plating?
In the IEEE article, it was stated that the cathode problem has not yet been solved. Can you elaborate on this? Were the lab experiments conducted without a cathode?
Those are not the only options.