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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.
It's not a battery, it's a big ass capacitor that can take a huge charge instantly and let it our slowly.
Instead of changing my oil, I'll have to change my electrolyte.
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.
Don't be stupid and lazy. We will definitely have electric cars that are cheaper to manufacture, cheaper to operate, and cheaper to maintain than ICE's in the very near future (this coming decade, guaranteed).
Any kind of mandates are just going to slow down the industry which is already on trajectory to exceed our ambitious desires.
YOU are not smarter than the people who are building these things, so stop pretending like you have more information than they do.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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.
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.
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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)
That would be a terrible idea, there are many areas where electric cars aren't practical like Alaska. Industries such as trucking don't have electric technology available to them yet. Instead, a small tariff on gasoline a few cents per gallon, and a direct subsidy to cleaner cars would help to equalize the cost or tip slightly in favour of electric or cleaner technology. This would naturally cause many people to switch to the cheaper, cleaner options.
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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.
I think the idea is to just replace the electrolyte. The electrolyte gets charged while you're not there.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
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.
The battery in a Tesla Model S weighs 1,200 pounds. Good luck coming up with a practical way to remove and replace a battery that weighs half as much as a Nissan Versa, not to mention a practical way to store hundreds or even thousands of them while they charge. Sorry, but offline charging of EV batteries is completely and utterly impractical.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Oh and since methane is a significant source of greenhouse gases I assume you want to kill every cow and pig on the planet and outlaw beef and pork.
At least biologically produced methane is carbon neutral and short lived in the atmosphere...
"“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."
In the US it's about (38 liters) 10 gallons per minute, so It would take about 2 minutes (not counting the slowdown period for pre-pays).
But, I think you missed the point.
You would change the electrolyte, not do a rapid electrical charge.
Since you are reusing the electrolyte, you need to take the spent electrolyte solution out, so a "gas station" would have to have at least one holding tank.
The cool part is that you can keep it all contained because the connections need to be sealed and there should be very little loss, as opposed to basically pouring a highly volatile fluid through the air into a container.
You can't take the sky from me
Don't be stupid and lazy. We will definitely have electric cars that are cheaper to manufacture, cheaper to operate, and cheaper to maintain than ICE's in the very near future (this coming decade, guaranteed).
HEY EVERYBODY! LISTEN UP!
Okay, not that I have your attention I have great news to share. It seems that all of our problems are solved.... Well, they'll be solved in ten years. But don't worry. You don't have to do anything in that time. We have it all figured out. Come back here in ten years, with your check books mind you, and we'll be selling planet saving cars for your garage and solar collecting shingles for your roof.
These cars will cost no more than your last car and be just as convenient and luxurious, more likely even more so. These solar collectors will cost no more than shingles and last just as long. The two together means you'll never have to pay another utility bill or visit a filling station. All with the power of the sun.
Thanks everyone for your attention. In the mean time do as you were, there's nothing to worry about.
[/snark]
Is that the message you want to send? Because I assure you that is the message a lot of people are getting right now.
What does your guarantee give me if you cannot provide what you promised? Won't this mean people will be making the problem worse in the mean time?
I have a solution, maybe just part of the solution but it is something we can do right now. We can build more nuclear power plants. Nuclear fission is as clean as wind and solar, as cheap as coal, safer than all the above, and does not require some future technologies to work. If we give the US Navy some money to develop their jet fuel synthesis program then we can produce fuels made from carbon extracted from the air and hydrogen from seawater. I won't guarantee the synthetic fuel technology in ten years because it is possible the Navy wants to keep this for themselves for a while. But the nuclear power we can have right away. We can build a gigawatt scale nuclear reactor in a matter of a couple years. In a couple years later with experienced manpower we can build two in that same time. Then four, then eight. in ten years we could have dozens of nuclear power plants giving us cheap, clean, and safe energy.
We can't stop there though. We'd have to keep going as those nuclear power plants age and need replacement. That's how we keep them safe, by taking them out of service before they become a problem. Don't worry about nuclear waste either. We know how to turn that waste into medical isotopes, portable heat and energy sources for spacecraft, and so on. All that stuff will be used as it decays away to inert elements or get shot off into deep space.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
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.
Ok, I'll bite - demonstrate this - with peer reviewed evidence please, not just "Because I say so" or "Everybody knows"
there are electric trucks.. https://nikolamotor.com/one http://www.wired.co.uk/article... http://www.emoss.biz/electric-...
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Musk did a proof of concept not too long ago showing that this was possible. His robot swapped two model S batteries in less time than it took to fill up a ICE sedan.
Video here: https://youtu.be/H5V0vL3nnHY
Of course building out a traditional charging infrastructure is more important. Given enough time though I can see this as being a premium option.
Japan happens to have the most comprehensive porn market in the world.
Japan also happens to have one of the lowest sex crime rates in the world.
I hope you can bring some facts to support the idea that pornography is "terrible for people".
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?
Many have decided the only solution they will accept is wind and solar, even if it means failure to significantly reduce CO2. The US has greater CO2 reduction in the last 6 years than any other country, but everyone likes to point to Germany as the model, despite spending hundreds of billions with essentially no CO2 reduction, and they expect to see an increase each time they take a nuclear unit offline.
Meanwhile, the French Academy of sciences has made it their official position that France cannot achieve meaningful CO2 reductions without their entire nuclear fleet, based a lot on what they have seen in Germany.
The right answer is a mix of technologies that include wind, solar, and nuclear, and even replacing coal with nat gas in the near term. Its the only one that we know for certain will work and doesn't depend on some miraculous breakthrough in storage or other. China gets its, and they are moving faster than anyone because they don't get caught up appeasing the solar-wind or bust crowd.
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?
Replacing goal with gas is good, but when the gas runs out, will you switch back to coal ?
We have fixed or improved so many of our environmental problems already in just the last half century. It's not magic, it's steady technological progress plus regulation. You might as well be standing here saying unleaded gasoline can never be competitive and the only way to fix the lead problem is to ban all cars. Absurd as well as impossible.
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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
There are some extensive systems that recycle huge volumes of liquids such as spent motor oil generated at car dealerships and oil change locations (Jiffy Lube and such) and the spent deep fat frying oil from fast food places and other restaurants. Both of these sources of liquid waste are recycled into useful products.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
I would assume that any gasoline ban would apply only to manufacturers... not owners. It would likely take no more than a generation for electric to be utterly dominant. Used gasoline cars would continue to be available in used car lots, but as more charging infrastructure is continually added to enable the installation of rapid charging pump facilities throughout the country, the demand for gasoline cars would continually drop.
I'm not saying I would advocate such a ban, only illustrating how, I think, such a ban could feasibly work. Kinda like how DVD's and then Blu Ray ultimately all but completely replaced VHS.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Crap! I meant to hit "Preview", and I hit "Submit". I know full well that VHS was never banned.... I was using that as a comparison for how, over time, one would replace the other, not because I thought that VHS was ever outlawed.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Why would we switch back to coal? I did clearly say 'in the near term'. Do you think giving ourselves more time to find other workable and more economic solutions while very quickly reducing our CO2 output for lower cost is a bad thing?
Why would we switch back to coal?
Because it's cheap and available.
Do you think giving ourselves more time to find other workable and more economic solutions while very quickly reducing our CO2 output for lower cost is a bad thing?
Of course not. As long as you don't lose the sense of urgency, which is a real risk.
As long as you don't lose the sense of urgency, which is a real risk.
Urgency is the main reason to replace coal with gas, it is the fastest and lowest cost move to make the biggest dent in CO2 emissions. But unfortunately many don't like that approach.
If your meeting doesn't happen while driving, that seems a perfect time for the car to be charging. And if you can't make the one way trip without charging with a modern long range electric vehicle, you also probably can't make it without at least 1 meal break, and probably 2 bathroom breaks, which are also good times to charge.
Modern long range electric vehicles don't have a problem with range, and they don't have a problem with recharge time.
The only real remaining problems are:
- lack of charging infrastructure in some specific locations.
- refusal of most car companies to build any compelling models.
- initial cost (mostly because of the above refusal to build any)
Nobody can imagine it because nobody would be crazy enough to do that at 220v.
There's a reason that current fast charging stations work at almost 400v, and why future standards are looking at even higher voltages. If you double the voltage you halve the current.
Also, why pick 1 minute? that's much faster than you refuel a gasoline car, and everyone says that they are fast enough.
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.
You can pry my gay little miata out of my cold, dead fingers.
Just because you can do it in a one-off demonstration with a single battery on a single car doesn't mean it would be practical to scale the concept up to a gas station that handles eight cars a minute all day. The power requirements alone would likely make such an arrangement infeasible, not to mention designing some sort of storage rack that could safely store that many batteries weighing more than half a ton each while charging them.
If you assume that in the worst case, you have one car coming in every minute and that it takes an hour to charge the battery, that means that in the worst case, you would need to store sixty batteries per "pump". A typical gas station has eight to twelve pumps, so you're talking about storing 480–720 batteries. That's 288–432 tons of batteries taking up roughly 6,400–9600 cubic feet. To put that in perspective, that's anywhere from two to six times the size of the gas tanks that gas stations have now, and that doesn't include space for lift equipment, storage racks, power infrastructure, etc. Basically, you would have to start by digging a hole and building a basement that's twenty feet deep under the entire parcel. This is, not to put too fine a point on it, utterly nuts. Possible, yes, in theory, but....
And remember that it would require 120 kW of power per battery, times 720 batteries. This is approximately 86 megawatts of power. If you wanted to power that by solar panels, it would take approximately 200 acres, or a little less than a quarter the size of New York's Central Park. For one gas station. Or a typical coal power plant would power approximately six gas stations. The roughly 13,500 gas stations in California, then, would require approximately 1.161 terawatts, or 560 Hoover Dams, or 295 Palo Verde nuclear plants running at full tilt.
Mind you, they wouldn't require that all the time—only during the hour or so when demand is at its peak—but unless I'm off by a couple of zeroes, that would basically mean a peak power capacity that would greatly exceed the feasible power production that the United States could ever hope to build in the next several decades, just to cover California's car needs alone. That's why mass use of electric cars is only feasible if the vast majority of cars are charging slowly at night rather than rapidly during the day. The numbers just don't work otherwise (and maybe they don't anyway).
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How would that work in practice with ten-year-old cars and batteries that have been pulled out and pushed in thousands of times? How many batteries per car do we have to have to make it work?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
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
It was about the same speed as filling a gas tank. While it looked good, and worked perfectly for the demo, it has all kinds of problems in the real world, which is why it never went anywhere.