New All-Solid Sulfur Based Battery Outperforms Lithium Ion 322
olsmeister writes "The new all-solid battery design uses solid sulfur and lithium, and outperforms existing lithium-ion batteries with four times the energy density. The battery can maintain a capacity of 1200 milliampere-hours per gram after 300 charge-discharge cycles. More work needs to be done, but one would think this new technology could have applications in renewable energy storage, electric cars, and consumer electronics."
That is very energy dense (Score:5, Interesting)
I use a 30 amp-hour 12 volt battery when camping, it's about 20 pounds (for fans, lights, bug zapper, , phone charger, electric blanket, inverter for laptop, etc). I've saved a ton of money not having to purchase D batteries and I can expect 5-8 years of use (hundreds of duty cycles).
"1200 milliampere-hours" is 1.2 amp hours. A battery of this type would weight 25 grams, or less than an ounce. If it's at 12 volts, which per the article (I read it!!!) doesn't sound like the case. But I bet a comparable 12 volt version would weight just ounces rather than pounds.
Battery tech is a primary lagging technology in my opinion.
Best hopes for this technology.
Re:...and device runtime with stay the same (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't get me wrong, I like the added features, but I hope nobody expects laptops that can be used for multiple days in a row without recharging (with sleep mode enabled between sessions of course) or next-gen smart phones that can go a week without recharging. They will figure out how to use that extra power somewhere, leaving us at around the same runtime as before.
I'm much more interested in it for electric cars.
Four times the batter life in a cellphone? Meh - mine already lasts for days.
Four times the range of electric cars? World-changing technology.
Re:But do they explode? (Score:4, Interesting)
more smellily for sure
Oh, you discovered the "leakage alert" feature!
Re:...and device runtime with stay the same (Score:5, Interesting)
It may finally be enough to overpower "range anxiety."
Or on the other hand, to make cars lighter and/or cheaper. I considered EV-swapping my sports car late last year but went with another ICE because of the expense and weight. I figured I only needed 30 miles range, but it still would have added about 500lbs to the car and the battery alone would have been over $10k.
Re:That is very energy dense (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:...and device runtime with stay the same (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, no, they tell us in TFA that it's four times the energy density than a Li-Ion battery. We don't use the Li-Ion's native voltage (about 3.8v nominal for most of them) to power electric cars, either. The battery is made up of multiple cells connected in series (or series parallel for a big pack) such that the resulting battery voltage is what you need for your application.
What the article doesn't mention is what the 'C' rating for these batteries would be. Current lithium-ion technologies these days had very good C ratings, but early ones did not. The early batteries couldn't discharge at more than about 1C (so a 1 amp hour battery could only deliver a current of 1 amp without damage) but current lithium-polymer batteries often have C ratings >30. I have a Li-Poly battery for my RC gear that's about the size of two cigarette packs that can output enough current to easily start a car. Can Li-S batteries be built to have high C ratings for both charge and discharge? If not then they are only really useful in portable devices.