All "Future" battery technology thread

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GRA said:
WetEV said:
GRA said:
a large dose of cynicism is necessary.

I get into my BEV every morning, and drive to work.

It's nice.

No cynicism needed.
I imagine you were aware that I was referring to announcements of new battery (and Fuel cell) tech, especially those involving major breakthroughs in performance or cost.

I was referring to announcements of new battery technology. Announcements of a few decades ago, not of today.
 
WetEV said:
GRA said:
WetEV said:
I get into my BEV every morning, and drive to work.

It's nice.

No cynicism needed.
I imagine you were aware that I was referring to announcements of new battery (and Fuel cell) tech, especially those involving major breakthroughs in performance or cost.

I was referring to announcements of new battery technology. Announcements of a few decades ago, not of today.
Okay, but this is the "Future" battery tech thread. A few decades back we would all be driving BEVs soon because of soon to appear improved batteries, and we've seen how that worked out.
 
GRA said:
Okay, but this is the "Future" battery tech thread. A few decades back we would all be driving BEVs soon because of soon to appear improved batteries, and we've seen how that worked out.

The present and the past was once the future. And some futures are still in the past, and may always be.
 
WetEV said:
GRA said:
Okay, but this is the "Future" battery tech thread. A few decades back we would all be driving BEVs soon because of soon to appear improved batteries, and we've seen how that worked out.
The present and the past was once the future. And some futures are still in the past, and may always be.
Waaaay too zen for me :cool:
 
http://gas2.org/2016/08/25/tesla-not-one-making-battery-news-week/

Not a lot of technical details. What it got my attention is the high temp operation. Nssan should be interested. And the 30000 cycles with no degradation.
 
Yes, but this part sounds too much like Nissan's battery testing procedure: " “We show that we can operate this material at high temperature for 24 hours straight over more than 30,000 cycles and it shows no degradation,” Wang says."

The bigger test is how well does it do for YEARS at higher temperatures. Dahl's presentation talked about how all the older tests were just basically "beating the clock" when it came to rapid high temperature charges/discharges.
BTW, what is gas2.org? They don't seem too happy that Elon is "fleecing the rich" with the P100D, so he can build the Model 3. Elon has never made any secret of that fact, it was in Part 1 of his public plan. I wonder if the guy also hates Ferrari, Lambo, Maclaren, etal for fleecing the rich? :? A $140,000 5-passenger premium sedan that can beat a $1 million sports car 0-60? Sounds like a bargain. :lol:
 
Here's another article making grandiose claims about low-cost energy storage: Silicon will blow lithium batteries out of water says Adelaide firm:
Signs of the Times said:
1414 Degrees had its origins in patented CSIRO research and has built a prototype molten silicon storage device which it is testing at its Tonsley Innovation Precinct site south of Adelaide.

Chairman Kevin Moriarty says 1414 Degrees' process can store 500 kilowatt hours of energy in a 70-centimetre cube of molten silicon - about 36 times as much energy as Tesla's 14KWh Powerwall 2 lithium ion home storage battery in about the same space.
As always, the key to reading this type of claim is to look for the specification which is NOT mentioned and find out how bad things are in that area. In this case, the missing specification is efficiency.

Basically, the technology being put forth is to melt silicon and store heat in the latent heat of fusion of the silicon. In other words, the electrical energy is converted into heat for storage and then converted back into electricity for usage. Conversion of electricity into heat is 100% efficient and you can even achieve a COP above that if you can come up with a high-temperature heat pump (and have something you want to remove heat from at the same time). OTOH, the conversion of heat into electricity is subject to Carnot's limit on efficiency. At such high temperatures, the theoretical limit is not terrible, but in reality, the numbers are lower.

Looking at the company's website, we find out where this efficiency stands today: 31%. That number is lower than what is achieved today using hydrolysis and a fuel cell for H2 storage. Of course the difference is that this technology is MUCH cheaper than H2 fuel cells. OTOH, fuel cells have the dual benefits of offering long-term storage and the ability to store the H2 in existing natural gas pipelines.

To say that this technology "will blow lithium batteries out of water" is a real stretch. Sure, cheap storage is attractive, but ultra-high-efficiency storage is also extremely attractive since electricity is a much more valuable commodity than heat, especially in the summertime. Where do lithium batteries stand today in terms of efficiency?

- Battery round-trip energy efficiency: 98%
- Inverter one-way energy efficiency (3-phase): >98%

Overall Li-ion electrical-energy storage efficiency: >94%

This efficiency number continually approaches unity and the costs of both the battery and the power converter continue to drop. Cost notwithstanding, Li-ion battery storage has come about as close to ideal as can be achieved. As costs come down, the barrier to entry for other technologies will only get higher.
 
When designing for solar powered homes, efficiency is the cheapest way to increase your "capacity" instead of increasing generation or storage. Thus, inefficient storage will not be attractive unless solar generation becomes STUPID cheap.
 
RegGuheert in February 2016 said:
BioSolar is developing a novel Super Battery cathode material which uses an advanced, low-cost polymer to replace the intercalation cathode material in a LI-ion battery. Here are their claimed characteristics:

chart-5-may-6.png


Add to this very high cycle life and you have an extremely attractive battery. Here is some of the verbiage from their site:
<snip>
The only thing I don't see mentioned on the website is efficiency. Since current intercalation chemistries achieves very nearly unity efficiency, it is hard to imagine a redox-based approach achieving similar performance. OTOH, I'm not sure how they could hope to achieve charge rates over 5C if efficiency is significantly lower. We'll see.
Following up a year later, I see that the above image is no longer shown on the website (though the link obviously still works), but the verbiage which I quoted is there and roughly the same.

What is interesting is that they are now highlighting work that they are doing on silicon-metal alloy anodes at the Super Battery link. There is quite a bit of interesting discussion of what is holding back Si-based anodes for Li-ion batteries:
BioSolar said:
Silicon (Si) is one of the most promising anode materials being considered for next generation, high energy and high power lithium ion batteries (LIBs). Graphite is currently the most widely used anode material, but Si has attracted great attention because of its natural abundance, non-toxicity, and very high theoretical specific capacity of nearly 4200 mAh/g – about 10 times more capacity than conventional graphite anodes.

However, Si anodes suffer from large capacity fading and tremendous volume changes during lithium-ion charge-discharge cycling. The strains due to the huge volume changes actually pulverizes the Si material and eventually lead to electrode shattering and delamination, which adversely affect the battery performance and cycle life. These are the primary challenges to the commercial use of Si for battery anodes, which BioSolar intends to overcome.

oct-26-1.png


oct-26-2.png


They have tested a Si-metal alloy anode recently, and report that while it is inexpensive to manufacture, it is slightly better than what they purport to be the best Si anode product currently on the market:
BioSolar said:
One of the significant parameters that can project battery performance is the capacity retention after 200 charging and discharging cycles. At identical loading, prototype batteries with BioSolar’s Si-M anode retained 78.1 percent of the original capacity whereas the benchmark silicon anode retained just 76.6 percent of its original capacity.
It is good that they achieved an improvement, but that is far from being an Earth-shattering result.
 
Here's a variant on battery swapping I haven't seen before, via ABG:
Tanktwo has the weirdest EV battery we've ever seen
http://www.autoblog.com/2017/04/05/tanktwo-has-the-weirdest-ev-battery-weve-ever-seen/

Still vaporware AFAICT and would seem to have weight and volume issues, but an intriguing idea.
 
It's a really dumb idea from at least two years ago. Not sure why Autoblog dug it up again.
 
JRP3 said:
It's a really dumb idea from at least two years ago. Not sure why Autoblog dug it up again.
Can you give a source? I don't recall seeing it before, although I often only skim new battery claims as they're legion. I do think it's interesting from an engineering standpoint, and looks far cheaper than building Tesla-like swap stations. Doesn't mean that it would work, of course, and replaceable liquid electrolyte/flow batteries would still be preferable as far as solving the charge time issue.
 
I remember reading about this when it first came out, and the video in the "new" article was uploaded to youtube in March 2015. The concept is obviously flawed regarding energy density and cost, the two most important parameters for EV batteries. As charging times drop and charging locations increase the "problem" this system pretends to solve won't exist.
 
JRP3 said:
I remember reading about this when it first came out, and the video in the "new" article was uploaded to youtube in March 2015. The concept is obviously flawed regarding energy density and cost, the two most important parameters for EV batteries. As charging times drop and charging locations increase the "problem" this system pretends to solve won't exist.
I agree wityh you that there would be a cost issue, however, I;m not so sure that energy density would be as big a big deal given rapid refueling. Although it's always nice to have, you don't need as much range if you can be on your way again in 3-5 minutes. I suspect 2 hours of freeway range would be acceptable to most people other than real road warriors. Whether such batteries could do that with acceptable weight/volume, I have no idea.
 
LindsayNB said:
The Phinergy/Alcoa Aluminum-Air "battery" looks like a potentially good technology as a range extender. I put battery in quotes because it seems more accurate to describe it as using aluminum as fuel and it isn't electrically rechargeable.
That sounds like a battery or possibly a fuel cell. A primary battery is a non-rechargeable battery such as alkaline, zinc-air or aluminum-air batteries. Secondary batteries are rechargeable such as lithium-ion, nickel metal hydride and lead acid batteries. If you can replace just one element of a primary battery in order to "recharge" it it becomes a fuel cell.
 
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