It's the Batteries, Stupid!

[JRP3]

Battery startups to watch in 2013: http://gigaom.com/2013/01/14/13-battery-startups-to-watch-in-2013/

 

[dpeilow]

Arkema and OXIS partner to develop the next generation of battery technology

http://www.oxisenergy.com/downloads/ARKEMA.pdf

 

[JRP3]

Somewhat related, jump to the 25 minute mark and Jack Rickard does an extensive discussion of the work being done by Yi Cui, including Lithium Sulfur. It's about a 45 minute segment because of "Jack time".

 

[TEG]

Somewhat related, jump to the 25 minute mark and Jack Rickard does an extensive discussion of the work being done by Yi Cui, including Lithium Sulfur...

Egads. Another "YC" reference. "YC" seems to be the initials of some character in the "Top Menu" game/puzzle.

 

[Norbert]

Solid Electrolyte Enables Higher Energy Lithium-ion Batteries and Prevents Fires | MIT Technology Review

An electrolyte developed by researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory could enable lithium-ion batteries that store five to 10 times more energy and are safer than the ones that recently caught fire on Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner.

The solid electrolyte not only makes batteries safer, it could also enable the use of higher energy electrode materials. As a result, while the rate at which these batteries deliver power may be less than today’s lithium-ion batteries, the total amount of energy they can store would be far higher. A much smaller battery could then be used—saving space and weight on airplanes and greatly reducing the cost of electric vehicles.

The work is still at an early stage. So far, the researchers have only made small, half-inch test cells, And the results demonstrating the compatibility with lithium-sulfur batteries are still unpublished.

 

[JRP3]

Hour long EV, energy, and battery talk, focusing on battery technology. Some of it is a bit basic but he does get into some of the mechanics of battery design and construction, and how computing power should lead to better batteries in the future. Battery stuff starts around the 16 minute mark if you want to jump ahead.

 

[vfx]

How battery improvements will revolutionize the design of the electric car Tech News and Analysis

For car design, “It’s almost as if the properties of steel were improving at a rate of 5 to 8 percent per year,” said Straubel.

 

[JRP3]

More silicon nanoparticle stuff: USC News

 

[vfx]

See The Scientific Accident That May Change The World (Or At Least Your Battery Life)

 

[AnOutsider]

[video=vimeo;51873011]http://vimeo.com/51873011[/video]

 

[Norbert]

Lithium Air Battery Gives IBM Hope of Power Without Fires - Bloomberg

The first step was for scientists to demonstrate the technology can store and release power through 10 charges. Now they’re pushing the unit to work over hundreds of cycles, and build a prototype. That would require further improvements in the materials used for the cathodes, anodes and electrolytes, which form the guts of batteries, Narayan said.

“We could see a radical advance if our prototype excites a manufacturer with a compatible technology,” Narayan says. “We’ll have a prototype ready next year, and then with our partners we’ll look at the engineering timeline. Five to 10 years is a reasonable time to commercialization.”

 

[theganjaguru]

[video=vimeo;51873011]http://vimeo.com/51873011[/video]

I hope this is the future for future Teslas... Especially if these supercapcitors can be made so inexpensively

 

[SteveG3]

I have a basic question. I apologize if it's come up before, but I did search the website (I have not read through all the battery posts).

I don't have an engineering or physics background, but in the charging software and hardware, would it be possible to have an option to artificially partition the battery into two pieces while charging. That is have a setting such that when available two Supercharger connections could be made to the car to fill the battery as two halves, cutting Supercharging time in half? I realize there is vital software that regulates the battery as a whole... just wondering if more software could be added for the specific charging issue. Tesla could make this an option, and use revenue from the option to pay for more charging units at each Supercharger location.

The NY Times article has got me thinking about ways Tesla may be able to reduce charging time (I know they may improve 20-30% just on using full power of Superchargers not currently used).

 

[JRP3]

That won't work because then each battery half will see twice the power that it would on a single Supercharger, and it can't handle that. Not this chemistry at least.

 

[hcsharp]

Somewhat related, jump to the 25 minute mark and Jack Rickard does an extensive discussion of the work being done by Yi Cui, including Lithium Sulfur. It's about a 45 minute segment because of "Jack time".

I finally got time to watch this. Here's the executive summary:

The scientists have developed a way to encapsulate silicone in the anode to allow it to expand 400% when it's charged. This expansion has previously prevented the use of silicone. The result? A 5x increase in capacity (over current technology) for the same weight using materials that are cheap, non-toxic and don't require a lot of energy to manufacture. That's a 5x increase in capacity using materials that cost half as much. Think of a Model S with a range of 1250 EPA miles per charge.

In April 2012 they had a cell with 6x capacity but only lasted 30 cycles due to cathode limitations. It only took until January 2013 to apply the same tech to the cathode, and they demonstrated a cell that lasted 1000 cycles (before losing 33% of it's original capacity). They think it will be easy to improve the longevity and capacity in small increments from there.

The quote I liked: "It won't take a heroic effort to have this commercialized, in cars, in 5 years. It's an easily scalable process."

Thank you JRP3.

 

[JRP3]

Don't forget that's only half of the equation, they are doing something similar on the cathode side with sulfur encapsulated in TiO2. You need both anode and cathode to get the energy density.

 

[hcsharp]

Don't forget that's only half of the equation, they are doing something similar on the cathode side with sulfur encapsulated in TiO2. You need both anode and cathode to get the energy density.

Yeah, I mentioned that in the second paragraph when I said they applied the same tech to the cathode. There's a couple things I hope you can clarify for me. Why do you need to do anything to the cathode chemistry to get the extra capacity? Why can't you just scale the cathode larger to accommodate the anode capacity? It would reduce the power density gains to half but there was more that I couldn't hear. I also didn't understand why the first version in April '12 depleted the electrolyte so fast. I think my second question is related to the first...

 

[JRP3]

Why can't you just scale the cathode larger to accommodate the anode capacity? It would reduce the power density gains to half but there was more that I couldn't hear.

You probably could. I don't remember what the electrolyte depletion referred to.

 

[Zzzz...]

Silicon based anodes for LiB is a hot field with dozens of companies trying to commercialize it right now.

As for electrolyte, usually they use lithium salts with organic solvents. And those solvents decompose as time go by. But that is usual case, do not know what depletion referred to in that particular case.

 

[hcsharp]

Silicon based anodes for LiB is a hot field with dozens of companies trying to commercialize it right now.

As for electrolyte, usually they use lithium salts with organic solvents. And those solvents decompose as time go by. But that is usual case, do not know what depletion referred to in that particular case.

OK, I figured it out. Most of the weight is in the cathode so they couldn't just make it 5x bigger to accommodate the new anode. The problem is Sulpher releases polysulphides into the organic solvents causing them to break down. They solved that with the same "egg and yoke" tech they developed for the anode. Another problem is the Si anode with Sulpher cathode only results in 2.1v nominal (vs 3.7 with most LiIon). So you won't see direct cell replacements for the Roadster or Model S.

While lots of people are working on silicon based anodes and sulpher cathodes, this is the most promising development I've seen. What's slowed battery development has been mostly the discovery of new chemical combinations which takes a lot of time. But this relies on an electro-mechanical solution that's not terribly hard to scale up.