New Electrode Lets Batteries Charge In 10 Seconds 348
Al writes "A new lithium-ion electrode allows batteries to be charged and discharged in 10 seconds flat. Developed by Gerbrand Ceder, a professor of materials science at MIT, it could be particularly useful where rapid power bursts are needed, such as for hybrid cars, but also for portable electronic devices. In testing, batteries incorporating the electrodes discharged in just 10 seconds. In comparison, the best high-power lithium-ion batteries today discharge in a minute and a half, and conventional lithium-ion batteries, such as those found in laptops, can take hours to discharge. The new high rate electrode, the researchers calculate, would allow a one-liter battery based on the material to deliver 25,000 watts, or enough power for about 20 vacuum cleaners."
Re:charging (Score:5, Informative)
1.6 Horsepower vacuum cleaners? (Score:3, Informative)
I'm fairly surprised to hear that vacuum cleaners use that much power - 1.25kw each is about 1.6 horsepower each. That should be enough for your vacuum cleaners to do 0-60 in the 10 seconds worth of battery you've got...
Re:charging (Score:5, Informative)
>Sure, as long as you can find a 25000 watt outlet.
I don't think so...
Typical Miles per kilowatt hour is 4.
A 100 mile fill-up = 25 kilowatt hours = 90,000,000 watt seconds.
If you want that in 10 seconds, you'd need a 9 Megawatt outlet.
Re:20 vacuum cleaners... (Score:3, Informative)
yeah, wtf with the strange units?
This article is mis-quoted (Score:2, Informative)
Improved Lithium-Ion Battery Charges in Seconds (Score:1, Informative)
Because of the electronic punch that they pack, gram for gram, lithium-ion batteries are the most common rechargeable batteries found in consumer electronics, such as laptops. However, they take a long time to charge and researchers have assumed until now that there was a speed limit on the lithium ions and electrons that pass through the batteries to form an electrochemical circuit. The problem with existing lithium-ion batteries is the way ions passed through minuscule tunnels [bbc.co.uk], whose entrances are present at the surface of the material. The team discovered that to get into these channels, the ions had to be positioned directly in front of the tunnel entrances - if they were not, they could not get through. The solution found by Gerbrand Ceder at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was to engineer the material such that it has a so-called "beltway" that guides the ions towards the tunnel entrances. A small cellphone battery can be recharged in just 10 seconds [google.com] thanks to the improved ion flow and a large battery that would be used to power a plug-in hybrid electric car could be recharged in just five minutes, compared to up to six or eight hours at present. Because there are relatively few changes to the standard manufacturing process, Ceder believes the new battery material could make it to market within two to three years.
Re:1.6 Horsepower vacuum cleaners? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:fast enough for a (Score:5, Informative)
You probably would want capacitors for those, with other pulse-shaping devices. In fact, this is what they actually do. Ten seconds of discharge is way too slow for a rail gun.
Re:20 vacuum cleaners... (Score:5, Informative)
Lots of loads pull a lot of current initially or periodically. One example would be an electric motor since they talk about applications such as hybrids. The stall current is limited by the resistance of the windings but once it spins up, reverse voltage in the motor limits the current to much lower values. If it was a motor under a heavy load, the current could be much higher.
Another point is that in any high current circuit, the power wasted in the circuit as heat can be very high. It's current squared times resistance. With batteries that have a high internal resistance, that power heats the battery and is also power that's wasted. With a high current delivery capability, these would have very low internal resistance and under heavy loads, the batteries would run cooler and would be able to deliver more power to the actual load instead of throwing it away as heat.
This really is an accomplishment and a valuable one.
Just to illustrate battery self heating - if you ever get stranded in extreme cold because your battery doesn't have the power available to turn the engine over, just turn on the headlights for a while. It's a medium load but will heat the battery from the inside due to internal resistance and make the battery better able to start the car. This really works.
Re:20 vacuum cleaners... (Score:5, Informative)
what the heck is the point of a battery can run 20 vacuum cleaners, for only 10 seconds?
But it also means that you can *charge* it in 10 seconds. How nice it that. One problem for plug-in electric cars is that they take long to charge. If charging it doesn't take longer than filling up a tank of gas, that would be a step forward.
Re:25,000 Watts (Score:3, Informative)
No, watts are correct. The thing that's special about this battery isn't the capacity, it's the rapid charge/discharge.
Re:charging (Score:3, Informative)
So it sounds like fast charging has been developed, and it's just a matter of taking orders and tooling the factories at this point.
ELECTRODE used EXPLOSION! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:charging (Score:2, Informative)
Re:20 vacuum cleaners... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:20 vacuum cleaners... (Score:3, Informative)
I see the electrical equivalent of load balancing coming into play to address that issue. Just because a battery is physically capable of accepting a full charge in a few seconds doesn't mean that it must.
I'm sure that's also awful for battery life - a lot of NiMH batteries at least (I can't speak for other types as I have no idea) can accept fast and slow charges, but the 15-minute rapid chargers take a lot of lifetime off the battery as compared to a four-hour trickle charge.
Before anyone gets overly excited... (Score:2, Informative)
"Ultimately, the energy capacity of lithium iron phosphate is lower than that of other lithium-ion battery materials, making Ceder's advance of limited value, says Jeff Dahn, a professor of physics at Dalhousie University, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. This battery is good for acceleration, but not as much for long range."
Emphasis mine. As has been pointed out above, the practical use for rapid-discharge is in conjunction with other types of high-density storage. I envision it as analogous to the RAM and HDD paradigm.
Re:20 vacuum cleaners... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:1.6 Horsepower vacuum cleaners? (Score:5, Informative)