Toshiba To Launch "Super Charge" Batteries

ozgood writes in to let us know about Toshiba's announcement that it has developed a new type of rechargeable battery dubbed the Super Charge ion Battery, or SCiB. Toshiba claims the new battery will mainly target the industrial market, though they hint the technology may eventually find a home in electric vehicles. The SCiB can recharge to 90% of total capacity in under five minutes, and has a life span of over 10 years. "Toshiba also says the battery has excellent safety with the new negative electrode material having a high level of thermal stability and a high flash point. The battery is also said to be structurally resistant to internal short-circuiting and thermal runaway."

awesome!

[Kranfer (620510)]

Awesome, I would get one of these. I hate sitting in an airport recharging my laptop battery for eons at a time. 10 minutes to get 90% of the charge back eh? I want one now! ::jumps up and down::... Now if only my cell phone could do this too... and my Digital camera, and camcorder too... I like how they point out that it has more safety features too. Although, I am wondering if we will still see these batteries exploding at the most inopportune time... like a presentation on how awesome it is...?

Re:awesome!

[by Anonymous Coward]

good luck lugging around the power cord you'll need to charge these things

it won't be that small travel charger and 5A cord

these things will need power cords roughly the size of the ones you use to connect to a generator or dryer (100A+) to move that many joules of energy that quickly without melting the cord itself. And the AC/DC transformer won't be a little travel wart either.

in other words, don't hold your breath

Re:awesome!

[evanbd (210358)]

So the random laptop battery I have handy is rated 10.8V, 4.8Ah -- 52Wh. 5 minutes for 80% charge (from 10% to 90%, you're unlikely to let it go all the way to zero) is just shy of 500 watts. Your average wall outlet is easily capable of that (12A at 115V is a nice, conservative estimate). The power brick to handle that won't be huge -- think about a 500W computer power supply, and then remember that this will be noticeably smaller and more efficient because it only has to provide one output voltage instead of the mess your average computer wants. It'll need some cooling (even at a mildly aggressive but reasonable 95% efficiency, that's 25W of waste heat), but the fan will still be reasonable.

At first glance it would appear that the cable from power brick to laptop would be huge and awkward, but that can be solved fairly easily by having the connection be more like a docking station cradle. That would also let the charger supply additional airflow for the battery with a larger fan that you'd find on the laptop itself -- the battery will get rather warm during this process, and battery heating is probably one of the limiting factors on charge rates for something like this.

Re:awesome!

[retiredtwice (1128097)]

Not exactly.

TFA says it can take 50 amps. It is a lithium cell, therefore 3.6 volts.

That is 1.6 amps at 120volts. Not a big deal (and yes, I didn't account for conversion losses so say 2 amps max at 120v). Now this is for your cell phone or PDA.

So, while your wall wart will grow some and will probably end up close to the unit being charged instead of being plugged into the wall, the power cord is fine and you won't be blowing any house breakers.

Now for your laptop at 20volts which is 5 or 6 cells, you will need 8.8 amps at 120v so say 10 amps total. Still not a deal breaker but you may need 18 ga wire in the power supply to wall connection instead of 20 or 22 ga. The thing that gets big here is the wire ga to the unit itself. Now THAT could be a problem so we will probably not see a full 50 amps into the unit itself. The physical space for the leads inside the cell phone, computer, etc, get a bit large.

Re:awesome!

[mh1997 (1065630)]

I am wondering if we will still see these batteries exploding at the most inopportune time

I'd think anytime that you have an unscheduled explosion would be the most inopportune time.

I can't ever imagine myself saying "I think I'll have a beer, watch the game, and let the battery in my computer blow up."

Re:awesome!

[Takichi (1053302)]

Well, it could explode in the pocket of someone who is about to kill you. I don't think that would be the most inopportune time.

Re:

[djasbestos (1035410)]

"Next on the Violence Channel...an all new episode of 'Ow! My Balls!'"

Re:awesome!

[afidel (530433)]

Do you have a P4 based laptop or something, or are you running Linux with no power management and doing compiles? Most of my laptops draw 45W peak and the majority of that is for the LCD backlight, the CPU doesn't draw enough power to heat much of anything.

Re:awesome!

[Rei (128717)]

Bah, this is nothing. EEStor's EESU [freepatentsonline.com] ultracapcitor prototype gets charge times like this, a leakage rate of 0.1% per month, virtually no degradation over time, and has over twice the energy density of the best lithium-ion batteries on the market, with half the cost of lead-acid. The science behind it is sound (a lot of these titanates have crazy permittivity from the perspective of individual crystals, and if you can eliminate the voids traditionally left by sintering, as they appear to have done, it can't arc discharge through them when you make bulk ceramics). The economics looks sound, too (nickel electrodes aren't that expensive, nor is anything needed to produce barium titanate). The only real question is whether they can actually commercialize them rather than just make and operate them in the lab (the typical sticking factor). Their mass production facility has hit its milestone for barium titanate purity, as tested by an outside lab, but they haven't yet hit their mass produced ceramic permittivity testing milestone. The company is abnormally tight-lipped; both scammers and legit companies are typically shouting about how great they are in order to get more money, but EEStor is being so quiet that the only way you can generally get info about what's going on is to talk to the company that gets their first units, ZENN Motors.

Either way, here's to hoping. :) Something like that would basically change the world. Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Beyers (the main funders, a major investment firm famous for early buys on tech companies that made it big -- Amazon.com, AOL, Compaq, Electronic Arts, Google, Intuit, Macromedia, Netscape, Sun, etc) calls it their "highest risk, highest reward" investment. Its a shame that ZENN has the initial exclusive rights to their capacitors for electric vehicles; I find ZENN's vehicles to be the ugliest, least interesting electrics being put on the market.

Another article on SCiB

[Lord Byron II (671689)]

http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/11/toshiba-launching-scib-batteries-in-march-5-min-charge-10-year [engadget.com]

According to this article, hybrid cars will be the first use for these batteries.

As long as the energy density is comparable to current Lithium-ion batteries, then this will be some pretty cool tech.

How exactly do you get that much power IN?

[effigiate (1057610)]

If these are large batteries with many AH, how big of a power supply would you need to charge 90% of the battery in ten minutes?

Problem: top current

[mangu (126918)]

TFA says "The SCiB batteries can recharge with as much as 50 amperes of current", which puts a limit on how fast you can charge it. If the capacity is, say, 10 Ah, then you would need 120 A current to charge it in five minutes.

Re:Problem: top current

[AKAImBatman (238306)]

Presumably, the battery cells of say, a car, could be charged in parallel. So let's say that a recharge takes about 15-20 minutes. Seems that the "pumping station" of the future would take the Convenience Stores of today to their logical conclusion.

Instead of a few pumps, you see a small parking lot. You pull into a space and hook up the charger. Then you go inside and get a meal, some coffee for the road, or just make a pitstop. You then go to the counter to check if the charge is complete and pay for the electricity you used. Go back out to your car, disconnect the charger, and you're ready to hit the road again.

Re:Problem: top current

[WinterSolstice (223271)]

Automotive companies have repeatedly stated that in order to "meet expectations" a car needs to travel roughly 300 miles per "fueling" and the "fueling" needs to take 5-10 minutes at most.

I think you hit the nail on the head - if they can get a charge down to under 10 minutes and the range up to 200+ miles, it will be quite popular.

Personally, I'd like to see some sort of inductive charger for batteries like this that I can use for a laptop. Rather than cabling everything up, you just rest your laptop on the mat within range for 10 minutes, and you're good to go.

Amps without volts

[Dan East (318230)]

The article makes reference to amperage, but without voltage that value is basically meaningless. Now if they were talking wattage then we would know exactly how much power these batteries produce (and consume during charging).

Dan East

Re:Amps without volts

[Polysick (926605)]

There is link the article that states the nominal voltage for a module is 24V: http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2007_12/pr1101.htm [toshiba.co.jp]link to toshiba's website

Re:Amps without volts

[pclminion (145572)]

Whatever voltage the batteries naturally operate at is going to be close to the charging voltage. Besides, you can always do a worst case estimation. Suppose they charge at 20 volts, which would be insanely high. 50 amps * 20 volts = 1000 watts. Beefy for sure, but that's an overestimate. A residential circuit can handle 1000 watts no problem. The actual value will be less than that.

Cordless contractor equipment

[afidel (530433)]

I would think one of the first uses for this type of thing would be for contractor grade cordless powertools. With current battery tech any heavily used battery lasts less than 2 years with the kind of abuse construction guys give em. Of course you're going to need one heck of an extra alternator to charge em that quickly, more likely a separate generator.

Poor energy density

[loshwomp (468955)]

Disclaimer: IAAEVE (I am an electric vehicle engineer), so my analysis is biased toward vehicle applications.

According to the specs on their own website [toshiba.co.jp], the energy density for their modules is about 50 watthours per kilogram (24V * 4.2Ah / 2.0kg). At 50 Wh/kg they're barely competing with lead-acid batteries, and competing quite poorly with Nickel-metal batteries, which are near 100 Wh/kg and have proven safety and durability in vehicle applications.

Modern Li-ion cells (the ones that aren't even remotely pushing the safety envelope) are over 200 Wh/kg.

Energy Density 180kJ/kg

[DanielRavenNest (107550)]

I calculated the energy density from Toshiba's specs for a module containing multiple cells plus some charging electronics. This works out to about twice the figure for a deep-cycle lead-acid car battery.

Batteriy capacity is NOT why the burn

[BlueParrot (965239)]

Ok, over and over again I see the same nonsense. "Lithium batteries burn because they contain lots of energy".

If this was the case a discharged battery would be safe, yet it contains just as much lithium as when it was charged, meaning it is still a fire hazard. The problem with lithium ion batteries is NOT their electrical energy density, it is the low activation energy of the chemicals they are made of.

To really put this in perspective, your cutlery and pots all contain A LOT of chemical potential energy. Burning iron in air releases vast quantities of it. Of course, because steel has a very good heat conductivity, and as the activation energy is high, you can't really set a piece of steel on fire at normal temperatures. If, on the other hand, you were to grind that iron into a fine powder, then you better make sure not to bring it close to sources of ignition as it will explode into a fireball.

Similarly, iron oxide doesn't burn in air because it is already oxidised, but if you mix it with aluminium powder, a strong reducing agent, then you got a Thermite mix which will burn at such a high temperature that it is little you can do but wait until it has completed. Even choking it doesn't work since it contains its own oxidiser.

The reason lithium ion batteries can catch fire is simply that lithium is easy to ignite. If the energy recoverable from a battery was directly related to how strongly it burns, then you would most certainly see batteries made from titanium or aluminium, and not lithium ( which releases a lot less energy when combusted than does many other metals ).

Re:

[pclminion (145572)]

What about storage density?? That's the big question.

Storage density is not as relevant, when you can recharge in 5 minutes.

If you're traveling somewhere you won't be able to recharge, then use an older, higher capacity battery. Otherwise, who cares if you're recharging every 2 hours (or whatever) if it only takes 5 minutes to do so?

Re:

[Kohath (38547)]

So I have to stop every 2 hours for 5 minutes of charging? That's going to be a fun cross-country drive.

Re:Storage Density??

[techpawn (969834)]

But the PP point is that these are going to be applied to hybrid vehicles. It would do us no good to have to stop every 2 hours of driving to charge for 5 mins. Your case works well for conventional Li-on battery uses. Their point is about proposed rapid charging for future uses. In their case, yeah, storage makes a large difference

Re:Reassuring to know...

[BuckBundy (781446)]

Hmm, what kind of device are you using that puts batteries next to your crotch?...
WAIT A MINUTE!
Boys, we have a woman posted among us! Oh, dear Slashdot...