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'Instantly Rechargeable' Battery Could Change the Future of Electric Cars (sciencedaily.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science Daily: A technology developed by Purdue researchers could provide an "instantly rechargeable" method that is safe, affordable and environmentally friendly for recharging electric and hybrid vehicle batteries through a quick and easy process similar to refueling a car at a gas station. John Cushman, Purdue University distinguished professor of earth, atmospheric and planetary science and a professor of mathematics, presented the research findings "Redox reactions in immiscible-fluids in porous media -- membraneless battery applications" at the recent International Society for Porous Media 9th International Conference in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Cushman co-founded Ifbattery LLC (IF-battery) to further develop and commercialize the technology. "Designing and building enough of these recharging stations requires massive infrastructure development, which means the energy distribution and storage system is being rebuilt at tremendous cost to accommodate the need for continual local battery recharge," said Eric Nauman, co-founder of Ifbattery and a Purdue professor of mechanical engineering, basic medical sciences and biomedical engineering. "Ifbattery is developing an energy storage system that would enable drivers to fill up their electric or hybrid vehicles with fluid electrolytes to re-energize spent battery fluids much like refueling their gas tanks." Mike Mueterthies, Purdue doctoral teaching and research assistant in physics and the third co-founder of Ifbattery, said the flow battery system makes the Ifbattery system unique. "Other flow batteries exist, but we are the first to remove membranes which reduces costs and extends battery life," Mueterthies said. Ifbattery's membrane-free battery demonstrates other benefits as well. "Membrane fouling can limit the number of recharge cycles and is a known contributor to many battery fires," Cushman said. "Ifbattery's components are safe enough to be stored in a family home, are stable enough to meet major production and distribution requirements and are cost effective." For the visual learners, Purdue Research Park has uploaded a video about Ifbattery's "instantly rechargeable" method.
Need more info, or else we're just spouting "if my car can start farting magic pixie dust it'll change the game" bullshit.
It's not a battery, it's a big ass capacitor that can take a huge charge instantly and let it our slowly.
We need to ban gasoline powered cars in the United States if we're ever going to combat global warming. We need more government regulation to force the adoption of cleaner technologies. Odumba should have issued an executive order to ban gasoline powered cars prior to leaving office. That would have spurred on the development of cleaner technologies such as this one. As usual, though, Odumba was more interested in pardoning Bruce Jenner (or whatever gender's name he prefers today) prior to leaving office. Thanks, Odumba.
Trump and Obama got caught having sex with each other?
I wonder how the liberal news would spin it.
Instead of changing my oil, I'll have to change my electrolyte.
Its got electrolytes!
It is a flow battery and the idea has been around for a long time.
The biggest problem is the nasty nature and quantity of chemicals used
The new company named Ifbattery is still in it's infancy because they are seeking funding to begin making prototypes. So battery of the future is right because it's at least 10 years off at best.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Been working in the field of battery chargers or power management since I graduated with an EE degree in 1986, and I've only seen tiny incremental improvements. I have never seen any of the "revolutionary" claims actually work. Yes Li batteries are nice, but that was only have they took years of improvements to finally beat NiCad and then later nickel–metal hydride batteries. I'm not holding my breath.
Sooner or later car battery packs will be standardized. Then you will just switch the pack out at the station.
Charging of packs can be spread out through the day to even out load and the full packs can be used for load balancing the local area.
To crazy 300kW connector to your car to charge your 100KWh battery in 20 minutes.
Lemme guess, they solved all the hard parts and now all they have to do is commercialize it? Gonna do the typical 3 to 5 year prediction? Not holding my breath.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
They want to replace the need for home charging, which is half way there already in the USA, with going to filling stations every week or two. I suspect that this will cost more, both for the infrastructure and to the user. It might be better for the occasional long trip but it sounds much worse for day to day travel.
I don't want to go to a filling station. I want to do my everyday charging at home.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
If it takes 5 minutes to fill a 75 liter (20 gallon) gas tank then what will it take to fill (charge) an empty 100KWh battery in the same time? Looks like you'll need a 2500A @ 480v setup or go high voltage 24KV @ 50A changing connection. For just one car you have megawatts of in-rush current. What type of protective equipment do you need to wear to use that? Rather than supercharger you now need a megacharger. If you have a charging (filling) station for multiple cars how can the grid support that? Instead of large underground fuel tanks at corner filling stations, you'll need huge underground "batteries" that will charge all night long so there is on-site extreme capacity storage that can charge all the "little" 100KWh batteries. I guess we need the batteries first and then you can figure out how to charge a large battery.
I thought that was a major feature expected for the Tesla Model 3.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Oh no,not again..
I'll stick to using bloody great big lead/acid batteries,they have worked ok for a century for lots of things,they will still be around in 2117..
Anyone,what bats do they use in modern diesel/electric hunter/killer submarines ?
I bet it's good old lead/acids...
I mean, come on, all you need to do is read the summary to know that this is a flow battery - you recharge it by pouring an electrolytic fluid into it to replace the worn out electrolytic fluid.
Recharge speed is essentially as fast as refilling the electrolyte.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
If they can turn this idea into a battery (they haven't yet), then that would get them to proof of concept.
If that battery works for more than a few days without a re-fill, that might allow this scheme to work from a practical point of view.
If the electrolyte can be made to not be toxic, then they might avoid environmental issues.
If I had to guess, this is an SBIR shop, and not a legit company (they're going to be selling research papers to grant managers, not batteries to consumers).
In the USA we still get a large portion of our electricity from coal. Certainly natural gas and nuclear fission provides a good part of it too, and they have contributed greatly to our reductions in carbon output lately. The article mentions the potential for recharging the battery fluids with wind, solar, and hydro but wind and solar are much more expensive than coal and hydro is a resource we've already maxed out. Unless the prices of wind and solar can get below that of coal, or we build nuclear power at a rate that can replace the aging nuclear power plant AND aging coal plants, then we will be building more coal power plants to charge these cars.
I have people tell me all the time, "just you wait, wind and solar will be cheaper than coal any day now". That's great! Only what should we do until that time comes? People will also say that the time has already come for wind power. That's great! Then what are we supposed to do if the wind is not blowing? People will tell me that we should charge up batteries for when the wind is not blowing. Great! Except now with wind AND the batteries then wind is not cheaper than coal any more because it relies on doubling or tripling wind capacity and the cost of the batteries. If instead one claims we use a national smart grid instead of the batteries then the cost is in the wires and other infrastructure.
Any plan to reduce carbon output that does not include the use of nuclear power is a fantasy. Waiting for wind and solar to get cheap enough to replace coal is waiting for a ship that may never come to shore. I won't say it is impossible for wind to get cheaper than coal, only that we don't know when or if that will happen. Waiting for that to happen is not a plan to reduce carbon output. Taxing carbon is not going to make that happen any faster, it will only make us all poorer.
I believe electric vehicles hold promise and I wish all of those developing this technology the best. The problem though is that this is just half of the solution. The other half is either nuclear fission or waiting. I say we should not wait.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
From the looks of it (colored chemicals in test tubes) this is a vanadium flow battery. They are known for quite some time but suffer from low energy density, so they aren't even used for stationary applications where additional weight (and volume) is less of an issue.
How many existing gas stations currently let you offload "spent gas"? ZERO, since the concept doesn't exist.
We've got a pretty good existing infrastructure that let's you put stuff INTO the car but we have virtually no infrastructure to TAKE something from ~every~ car being serviced, which this system would require.
I'm calling bullshit.
"“We are at a stage in the company’s growth that we are looking for additional financing to build large-scale prototypes and subsequently manufacturing partners,” Cushman said."
Sweet, terminal access. Ifbattery bat0 recharge Ifbattery bat0 up Vroom vroom. (So lame... I apologize)
From TFS: "but we are the first to remove membranes which reduces costs and extends battery life"
The battery life of flow batteries is already ahead of all others which is why they are being seen as a potentially better alternative in grid applications.
From TFS: "Membrane fouling can limit the number of recharge cycles and is a known contributor to many battery fires"
As above the recharge cycles of flow batteries are already well above every other type of battery. And fire? Well the fact that flow batteries don't catch fire is one of their key selling points.
Is this just marketing fluff that is using buzzwords to try and get across? The big problem with flow batteries is their energy density at best is currently less than half of an equivalent lithium battery system. This is a far more important problem to fix.
Mind you I do like what they are talking about. One of the big problems with electric cars is the grid connections for fast chargers. It makes the highway rest stop model of petrol stations difficult to convert to electric. All you need is 3 fast chargers in use at once and you're using more power than the currently biggest petrol station in Europe, and many of the highway stops are in the middle of nowhere which don't lend themselves to easy electrical infrastructure upgrades.
I can't comment on the physics, but I can comment on the impact of something like this.
I am searching for my next car and have been looking at various electric or hybrid options. Most of those fail because they only cover 95% of my use cases, and that's due to the charging time. For example, I sometimes drive a distance for meetings that would not let me get there and go back on one charge of the battery. Which means I have to charge the car somewhere. I also drive to other countries in Europe and that's just not something you really can do in those cars.
The Toyota hybrids sort of solve the problem by charging with a petrol engine. But I don't like the way those feel when driving them - and I have had Toyotas as my last four cars, so it's not that I have anything against them.
If I could get a normal, electric family car with an almost instant charging system, I would definitely buy it. Sure, we would need to have the charging stations built first and other issues. But when fully implemented, this is what solves the problem for me.
I really hope they or someone else can pull this off, so I can stop burning stuff when I drive.
Just do without one.
Nobody is forcing you to buy a new car. Do or do not, there is no force.
It's technology like this that will eventually make electric vehicles commonplace. Since the batteries are safe enough to be inside a home, maybe they could store electricity generated during the day from solar panels for use at night.
I wish whoever made the video for Purdue Research Park had left out the background music. It's very hard to hear the speech over the music. At least make the volume of the music such that the people speaking can be heard.
It's June 3rd and we only have one super battery story so far this month? What's up with that?
Power is energy per unit time. And pumping unleaded into your Toyota represents about 15MW of power. If you have an electric car charging setup that charges as quickly as you pump gasoline, you will have approximately the same power transfer.
So what is the connector going to look like? Are you going to want to be anywhere near it while your car is charging?
Which leads to another question. Charging a battery is not one hundred percent efficient. Even with very efficient designs you are probably going to have ten percent power loss. That would represent approximately 1.5MW of waste heat. Enough that you could easily use the passenger compartment of your car as a kiln. Where would that waste heat go? And how do you keep your car from melting?
Brawndo
I presume the used electrolyte can somehow be restored to its former usefulness in these batteries. Can that be done at the "charging" station or must it be stored in large tanks and then transported to some nearby industrial plant? Otherwise, it will need to be disposed of as hazardous waste.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
Tesla 100 kWh battery to be reachrged "instantly" let's say in 1 minute (60 seconds) using 220 V DC infrastructure would require only 30,000 A current. Does anyone imagine electronics and cables capable to control 30,000 A 220 V currents?
A relatively small car battery stores around 50 amp-hours of charge.
That means to fully charge it, you would need to input 1 amp of current for 50 hours. Or 50 amps for 1 hour. Or 3000 amps for 1 minute. Or 180000 amps for one second.
The average house wiring is capable of carrying 10 or 15 amps. 3000 amps, much less 180000 amps, is beyond anything imaginable for a local charging setup.
A relatively small car battery stores around 50 amp-hours of charge.
At 12V, so the stored energy is only about 0.6 kWh.
The average house wiring is capable of carrying 10 or 15 amps.
At either 120V or 240V, depending on the country, so energy can be delivered at a rate of around 1.8 to 3.6 kW from a standard 15A output. If internal resistance were not an issue, you could draw enough energy to fully recharge that 50 Ah car battery in 10-20 minutes. Or with a dedicated 50A 240V appliance outlet, about 3 minutes.
A Tesla Roadster has a 54 kWh battery capacity (90x as much), so a full recharge would require at least 4.5 hours even with the dedicated 50A 240V outlet. That would be a significant improvement, but still well short of "instantaneous".
Of course in this article "instantaneous" refers not to the time required to recharge the battery, but merely the time to replace the electrolytic fluid. The old electrolytes still need to be recycled or processed to restore their original charge before they can be reused. It would be fairer to compare this process to physically replacing an electric car's batteries with pre-charged spares, which could be done in moments if the car was designed for it.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat