Super powered battery breakthrough?

[Ettica]

BBC News - Super-powered battery breakthrough claimed by US team

Interesting reading.
Batteries 10 times smaller - same power? or
same size 10 times more powerful?

Could this be a breakthrough ebikers have been hoping for?

 

[flecc]

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[Scimitar]

"You could replace your car battery with one of our batteries and it would be 10 times smaller, or 10 times more powerful. With that in mind you could jumpstart a car with the battery in your cell phone."

I was about to call BS on that; but actually, it's not far off.
It will be interesting to see where it goes in the next few years.

 

[Ettica]

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No.
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Er....
What are your waiting for then flecc?
Never seen a one word one syllable answer from you before.

Everyone, what are we waiting for?
If anything?
Godot?

Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk 2

 

[amigafan2003]

"You could replace your car battery with one of our batteries and it would be 10 times smaller, or 10 times more powerful. With that in mind you could jumpstart a car with the battery in your cell phone."

I can already start my Westfield with a couple of paralled 3s lipo packs.

Weight of 2 3s 5ah packs = 800g

Weight of 12v 44ah lead acid battery = 12.7kg

 

[Scimitar]

I can already start my Westfield with a couple of paralled 3s lipo packs.

Weight of 2 3s 5ah packs = 800g

Weight of 12v 44ah lead acid battery = 12.7kg

Ignore the LA, it's nothing to do with this.
Factor the cellphone battery by 10 and what weight does that give?

 

[oigoi]

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No.
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just made me think of this

Grumpy Cat - no

 

[Geebee]

I think some of us are a bit jaded by the constant promise of a super battery that never arrives.
I still hope but no longer get excited unless they are in production.

 

[amigafan2003]

Ignore the LA, it's nothing to do with this.
Factor the cellphone battery by 10 and what weight does that give?

Ok, so a Samsung S3 2100mah battery is 36g in weight. You'd need 14.28 batteries to equal the voltage/capacity of the Lipos mentioned in my post - so 14.28 *0.036 - 514 grams - 286g less than the lipos.

However, the Samsung battery is only rated for a max discharge of 1c. To equal the 70c discharge of the lipos you'd need top paralell up 70 of those cell phone groups - so 514g x 70 = 35.98kg.

So, to sumarise, for cell phone batteries to have a cranking power equal to that of the lipos (700cca) the battery wieght would be 35.98kg. To even equal the 380cca of the lead acid battery a cell phone battery would still weigh 19.53kg.

Cell phone batteries are only high capacity/light weight because they are low c rated (i.e. they don't need to release that energy very fast). The 2100mah rating of the Samsung battery for example is only for a 0.1c discharge - or 210mah per hour. If you discharge it at 1c you'll be luck to get half the rated capacity out of it.

 

[GaRRy]

Gues we will all know if this is just bull or a real posibility by end of year as to quote

"Prof King added that he hoped to have the technology ready to be trialled as a power source for electronic equipment before the end of the year."

 

[flecc]

Er....
What are your waiting for then flecc?
Never seen a one word one syllable answer from you before.

Everyone, what are we waiting for?
If anything?
Godot?

Revolutionary new battery announcements are a regular feature of the modern world, a bit like the once a week medical breakthroughs that are always said to be five years away from routine use but which never appear.

So every battery announcement is for me just another yawn.

As I've so often observed, with high discharge batteries we've effectively made zero progress for around two centuries, as witness the largest application for these on earth, vehicle starting, still using the oldest of all, lead acid. Nothing since has been up to the job.

Newer types can be lighter and/or more compact, but they always have one or more severe disadvantages, short life, high cost, operating temperature limitations, unwelcome discharge or charge characteristics, safety problems etc.

The fact is that we are up against some fundamentals of the physics of the universe here and that places limitations. The closer we get to a fundamental limit, the more certain it becomes that a large step forward is impossible. Put bluntly, there wont be any sudden big overall improvements.

 

[Scimitar]

"I am utterly certain we will never see an improvement on the steam train, for it is most assuredly the pinnacle of perfection of mechanical transportation."

 

[amigafan2003]

"I am utterly certain we will never see an improvement on the steam train, for it is most assuredly the pinnacle of perfection of mechanical transportation."

Fastest passenger steam train in the UK = 126mph, the Mallard.

Fastest passenger train on the same line = 162mph, Intercity 225.

So only a 29% improvement.

 

[Croxden]

I have a Makita cordless drill over twenty years old. The Ni-Cad battery is now only beginning to show signs of failure.
The NMH battery in my car is no different after six years of continual charging/discharging. It seems to me batteries today are not improving.

 

[morphix]

BBC News - Super-powered battery breakthrough claimed by US team

Interesting reading.
Batteries 10 times smaller - same power? or
same size 10 times more powerful?

Could this be a breakthrough ebikers have been hoping for?

There's been similar reports coming out of UK uni's over the last few years, but nobody has got anywhere near getting the technology close to market ready due to safety issues. Every time we see stories like this it raises hopes they're getting close, but even so, will it lead to cheaper prices and smaller more powerful batteries for us ebike owners...probably not, they'd patent the technology and license/restrict it to some big Japanese manufacturer no doubt!

I wonder if the State-owned/financed Chinese factories are working on similar technologies..

 

[mike killay]

The basic problem is that of chemistry. To make a battery, you need a chemical reaction.
Unfortunately, all these have been found and all we are now getting is tinkering around the edges.
Sure, they may be some better alternatives using boiling caustic soda, fuming nitric acid etc. but from a safety point of view, most of the advances were conceived in the 1890's.
What we need is not a breakthrough in battery technology but a breakthrough in fuel cell technology.
Electric boats are fine with lead acid technology because weight in a boat contributes to stability and is a positive advantage.
Unfortunately for us, weight in a bike is a positive disadvantage

 

[flecc]

"I am utterly certain we will never see an improvement on the steam train, for it is most assuredly the pinnacle of perfection of mechanical transportation."

But that was a silly thing said at the time since there was no fundamental physical limit in place. Battery chemistry is a very different thing in which we only have the elements that exist, new ones that we've created having impossibly short lives. We've already exhausted the options for what to use, for example the best element by far as a cathode is iron, and we already use that in LiFePO4 batteries. All we are left with now is development, and that doesn't produce great leaps forward, only steady progress to a limited ultimate gain. We need to look for other solutions, for example fuel cells as Mike mentioned above, or others like pick-up of external supplies.

More sensibly though, perhaps we need to halt our frenetic desire to always be on the move and learn to live and work in one place as we once did eons ago. That alone could better preserve this planet for our future.

 

[Ettica]

That alone could better preserve this planet for our future.

I think the word 'preserve' should be replaced with 'prolong' because we are sucking this beautiful planet dry and I would suggest that within 5 generations it will be 'spent' and man will cease to be the dominant animal on this planet. If indeed life will be able to exist at all.

My sad view of our future has even made me think about the use of lithium for my ebike.
We don't know how much there is and how long it will last so what would happen if that ran out.... and it will ... someday. Just hope I can get fit enough just to pedal unaided. If there is enough food to fuel my old muscles.

Right. Enough 'ettica'. The sun is shining. No wind. Pleasantly warm. Get out on your bike and smile!

 

[Scimitar]

More sensibly though, perhaps we need to halt our frenetic desire to always be on the move and learn to live and work in one place as we once did eons ago. That alone could better preserve this planet for our future.

I absolutely agree with that last point and have been saying so for decades. Our society in the West is built on a crazy upside-down pyramid, at the apex of which is cheap energy. Remove that, and everything comes tumbling down.
I don't want to go back to living in medieval wattle and daub, with rough homespun, like some demented greenies would like, but there is a longer-term solution and that's to live with much less of an impact or energy demand. Ironically enough, it's the frenetic drives of the near past that have brought to fruition the very devices that would enable a large part of this, with IT now being nothing like as energy demanding as it was (at least in display and processing) and home/factory lighting coming on in leaps and bounds, consuming a fraction of the energy it did.
One could live off-grid now, quite comfortably - I'm not advocating this, just pointing it out.

 

[mountainsport]

Er....
What are your waiting for then flecc?
Never seen a one word one syllable answer from you before.

Everyone, what are we waiting for?
If anything?
Godot?

Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk 2

He's waiting for the next generation

Mountainsport.