Cambridge Researchers Present Lithium-Air Battery Breakthrough (google.com) 100
Reuters reports on a tantalizing advance in battery technology described this week by Cambridge researchers, who have made large enough steps toward a practical lithium-oxygen battery to give a laboratory demo of their system. Commercially available lithium-oxygen batteries would be significant because they would
have the potential to deliver the desired power thanks to a high energy density - a measure of energy stored for a given weight - that could be 10 times that of lithium-ion batteries and approach that of gasoline. They also could be a fifth the cost and a fifth the weight of lithium-ion batteries. But problems have beset lithium-oxygen batteries that affect their capacity and lifetime, including troublesome efficiency, performance, chemical reaction and potential safety issues and the limitation of needing pure oxygen rather than plain old air. The Cambridge demonstrator battery employs different chemistry than previous work on lithium-air batteries, for example using lithium hydroxide rather than lithium peroxide. It also uses an electrode made of graphene, a form of carbon. The result was a more stable and efficient battery."
Some more about this research can be gleaned from Clare Grey's web page at Cambridge.
Re: blah blah blah (Score:1)
Name 2 mentioned in the past as breakthroughs, game changers
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Care to cite anything to support your claim?
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If you didn't have the memory of a goldfish you would have noticed that only a few of the many battery improvements written about ten years ago have made it to market at all.
There, FTFY.
The road from lab to product is long and full of speed bumps (or rather: unexpected craters in the road). If you look at actually available products, battery tech is a steadily improving but SLOW moving market. A good analogy is open source software: on a regular basis there's important releases (that actually bring som
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These last few years open source software seems to be taking several seconds backwards. At one time the goal was world domination, now it's apparently windows emulation.
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Damn, steps not seconds. Argh!
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If you didn't have the memory of a goldfish you would have noticed that only a few of the many battery improvements written about ten years ago have made it to market at all.
Let me guess - you hate EV's. Friends and I have a wager about the EV denialist's last reason that they are an "utter failure".
My money is on the color they are painted.
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Re: blah blah blah (Score:4, Insightful)
Any government subsidies to the electric car industry pale in comparison to those of the petroleum industry. Not to mention the ICE auto manufacturers who DID go bankrupt, and were already bailed out by the government. Do you have any citation for Tesla about to go bankrupt?
It's like every other fake outrage for the self righteous, like BENGHAZI! where the hypocrtites get outraged over something that when they do it - its different, and its just fine.
You hate electrical cars? - the subsides for them are socialist, communist, atheist, gay marriage enabling hogwash, and the road to perfidy. You like your GMC Savana 3500? Then Oil subsidies are magically turned into laissez faire capitalism, and blessed by the invisible hand of the free market - Just like it says in the old Testament.
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No, it's huge government subsidies propping them up or rolling disasters like tesla that are about to go bankrupt. That's why they don't work. Not some delusion that particular political parties are 'deniers'
So you're okay with oil industry subsidies?
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Is that how it works now? If you don't agree or like something that others do, then you are a denialist?
Not disagreement, Denial. Denial is refusing to accept basic laws of physics. DEnial is believing that th eCO2 that humans put in the atmosphere has no effect, and willful ignorance of the fact that the CO2 greenhouse effect had better exist, or we wouldn't exist, and if it didn't, what is keeping the world warm enough to support life? Denial is believing that vaccines cause autism, long after it has been proven that the esearch was faulty, actually fraudulent, and done by a researcher, now disgraced and
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they say goldfish got no memory
i guess their lives are much like mine
the little plastic castle
is a surprise every time
it's hard to say if they are happy
when they don't seem much to mind
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If you didn't have the memory of a goldfish you would have noticed that the battery improvements written about ten years ago have gotten out on market now.
Hey, quit carping about my memory!
Re: blah blah blah (Score:5, Interesting)
In case you didn't notice, batteries have dramatically increased in energy density [insidecostarica.com] over time. No, a cell phone is not entirely a battery, but battery sizes have shrunk in conjunction with phone sizes, even while their capacity (mAh) has been rising (significantly) over time.
People's inability to notice changing technology around them never ceases to amaze me. It's astounding how fast people get used to new technology and forget what old technology used to be like. It's like picking up an old video game that you played as a teenager and being shocked at how bad the graphics were.
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Using spare parts, super glue, duct tape, and a hammer, my parents built me from spare parts in the year of our Flying Spaghetti Monster Nineteen Hundred and Fifty Seven. Often times, I look back at the myriad changes in technology and marvel. So much seemed so trivial at inception yet has resulted in great and dynamic changes. From storage, to compute power, to speed, to communication, and even to input methods - it has been a grand change and a most wonderful show.
Like yourself, I too ponder the lack of r
Re:Could be (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually this is far better (from what I can see of it) than any of the previous work on li-air, which I've always taken a rather long view on. While it's really unfortunate I can't read the paper to see the exact details to get an idea of the manufacturing process and read more about the nature of the testing and the drawbacks mentioned, getting 93% efficiency and 2000 cycles on lithium-air are really staggering figures.
The only drawbacks the article mentions are "because the battery's ability to charge and discharge is too low." Soooooo... does that mean low power density? If so, to that I say so what? Today's li-ion cells have way more power density than is needed for propulsion, that's why you have things like Teslas beating supercars - their peak power is something like 20 times what they need to cruise at highway speeds. You could drop discharge power density by an order of magnitude and still have a fine car (optionally with a supercapacitor or small high power-density li-ion pack for bursts if desired) . And for recharge power density... when you have the absurd energy densities provided by li-air, it ceases to matter any more. Seriously, when you can drive all day on a single charge, who needs rapid chargers? You just plug in and charge while you sleep, so it makes no difference whether you can do it in 30 minutes or 8 hours. The top end of Level 2 charging should be enough to give a reasonably efficient vehicle a whole day's drive, no need for Level 3+.
I'd gladly take way lower power density in exchange for way higher energy density.
From the paper's abstract, I see that the chemicals involved in the battery are LiO2, graphene oxide, LiI and dimethoxyethane. LiO2 is cheap. Graphene oxides vary quite a bit depending on the preparation method, so it depends on what varient she's using, but most are cheap. Lithium iodide is cheap. Dimethoxyethane is cheap. Seriously, unless she's using an unusual rare/expensive form of graphene oxide, or is doing something weird and potentially costly in the manufacturing process, these should be affordable.
I really wish I could read more about the details, as that's where the devil lives, but... damned restricted access, yadda yadda yadda. :P
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Aka graphite oxide. It's made from graphite, and has been around for over a century. It's considered the most promising candidate for producing affordable graphene (most of the other techniques for making graphene do so in rather small volumes at rather high cost), but tends to produce the lowest quality graphene. So it's really promising to see that this is the raw material that the graphene electrode is sourced from.
I wish (Score:5, Funny)
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I wish we had a battery breakthrough for every HUNDRED articles we get on it.
What gets me is that Li-ion, NiMH, NiCd, etc. I heard precisely NOTHING off before I'd bought a product that contained them or they were on the shelves of my local electrical store.
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And, come to think of it, the first time I heard of LiPo cells was someone showing me their drone aircraft.
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No duh? They were all invented and commercialized way before the Internet.
Nickel cadmium batteries were invented in the 19th century and commercialized in 1932. NiMH in 1967, Lithium-ion in the 70s, both commercialized in the early 1990s.
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Great.
So in 20-50 years, we might see one of these many bollocks-battery-techs actually become a product you can buy.
Exactly my point.
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It's a salutary lesson for the internet generation, that screaming "Now! Now! Now! Want toy NOW!" does not actually get things invented any faster.
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I wish we had a battery breakthrough for every HUNDRED articles we get on it.
What gets me is that Li-ion, NiMH, NiCd, etc. I heard precisely NOTHING off before I'd bought a product that contained them or they were on the shelves of my local electrical store.
So tell me, you pissed off at every science and technology report out there?
I mean seriously = what the hell pisses you off so much about news of a possibility? FTA - Scientists have created a battery whose technology in principle could power electric cars and other energy-hungry devices far better than current lithium-ion batteries, but it remains years away from commercial use.
What a bunch of jerks, eh?
Or do you just want us to protect your precious temper from all news, and wake you up when it's
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Because NEWS is the problem. As pointed out, there are HUNDREDS of Slashdot "news" stories about new battery technologies.
But all the ones that make it are the ones we DON'T hear about in the news section, aren't sending out press releases, etc. They are writing papers, then building the devices, then commercialising them.
Seriously, go search for "battery" on Slashdot. Everything from graphene to oxygen/air to new structures to quantum effects to whatever other bollocks you can imagine.
How many of them m
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Because NEWS is the problem.
No - your crankiness is a problem. It seems you think there is some sort of damage being done by reportage of new technology, unless it's already commercialized. It doesn't hurt anything. These batteries, as I see it, are using lithium hydroxide insted of lithium peroxide. Sounds interesting.
They even note that there are problems with charging/recharging the things as they exist today/
Regardless, I've visited the sites, and done some reearch online. Seems interesting. Been learning some stuff. I know m
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There is an alternative outlet for that battery crankiness. Target that crankiness at government. Why is the government not doing more to drive battery research, solar panel research and wind turbine research. Why is it not a global effort, why are we waiting for individual groups to make tiny step, after tiny step, why are we waiting thumb in bum mind in neutral for low lying coastal cities to flood out. We can actually stop pollution our metropolitan environment against our own health by moving away from
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There is an alternative outlet for that battery crankiness. Target that crankiness at government. Why is the government not doing more to drive battery research, solar panel research and wind turbine research.
The political environment - at least in America, simply isn't conducive to that.
When Solyndra went belly up, the far right went nuts about it.
Mind you, this isn't specifically about Republican versus Democrat, just that one of those groups really really really hates subsidies - except for their own. Here is an example so perfect, it's hard to imagine:
http://www.politico.com/story/... [politico.com]
http://www.washingtonexaminer.... [washingtonexaminer.com] TL;DR version. While ubsidies to sugar producers continued, and the crop insuranc
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Business vs government, let's see, how many times in human history have governments gone bankrupt this versus how many times in the last week have businesses gone bankrupt. Business track record absolute shite.
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have the potential to deliver the desired power thanks to a high energy density - a measure of energy stored for a given weight - that could be 10 times that of lithium-ion batteries and approach that of gasoline.
The fact that we've confirmed that this is even possible is incredible. And don't forget, in terms of existing IC engines, gasoline is only about 30% efficient at converting its stored energy into movement. We've built a few that can do 38%, but thats not even in commercially available stuff, just test bench machines. If we can get even to that, we're doing something amazing. If we're approaching the actual energy density of gas
Re:I wish (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd be happy with one breakthrough battery for all the battery breakthrough stories I've seen on Slashdot for the last ten years...
Re:I wish (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd be happy with one breakthrough battery for all the battery breakthrough stories I've seen on Slashdot for the last ten years...
Lithium batteries have more than doubled in energy density over that period, while dropping in price. That improvement resulted from the research, summarized and discussed on Slashdot, that you are now dismissing.
If you don't want to read about leading edge scientific research, then please go chat on Facebook or some other mainstream forum, and leave Slashdot to the true geeks.
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They've increased in charge/discharge cycles too (Score:5, Informative)
In particular there have been some improvements along those lines recently. Likewise just last year new batteries with silicon electrodes increased energy density over anything seen before, and smartphone manufacturers are already using them for their newest toys.
There has been no revolution in batteries, no completely new chemistry that changes everything, but there has been steady development.
Over hyped (Score:2)
Lithium batteries have more than doubled in energy density over that period, while dropping in price.
If all the advances which were announced had played out as announced though they would probably have increased by a hundredfold or more. It's interesting to hear about the advances I just wish that they were not over hyped to the point where they make grossly inaccurate claims about their impact. Perhaps this will improve battery energy densities by a factor of 10 as claimed but, lacking expert understanding of batteries on which to base my own opinion, I tend to put more weight on the previous record of s
Re:Over hyped (Score:5, Insightful)
If all the advances which were announced had played out as announced though they would probably have increased by a hundredfold or more.
Most research doesn't pan out. Not in batteries, or in any other area of scientific endeavour. That doesn't mean we should stop doing science. It also doesn't mean that we should stop reporting on science. If you don't want to read about science and technology, then GO SOMEWHERE ELSE. Go watch cat videos, or whatever. Good riddance. I am sick of all the SJW articles and other crap on Slashdot, so it is very annoying to read people like you whining about articles reporting real science and potential technological improvements. Articles on things like battery research are exactly what Slashdot is for.
Correcting a few misconceptions (Score:2)
Most research doesn't pan out. Not in batteries, or in any other area of scientific endeavour.
I don't know where you got that from but it simply isn't true. In my own field of particle physics it is extremely rare that an experiment does not work. It's true that some experiments work better than others and an experiment might not find new and exciting physics but in that case you learn that your existing laws of physics work under conditions where nobody had ever tested them before.
Mind you we also don't go around telling people that our next experiment will find an easy way to convert matter to
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The difference is that articles like this claim dramatic increases, in this case 10 fold, that never seem to appear. Doubling over ten years is not a breakthrough. It is incremental refinements. The cost decrease is mainly due to economy of scale and refinements in manufacturing.
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The difference is that articles like this claim dramatic increases, in this case 10 fold
Except they don't claim that. The very first sentence in TFA makes it clear that this is years away from commercial application. The "10 fold" statement only refers to one characteristic of a battery, and TFA states that there are other tradeoffs that may diminish any improvement.
If you think this article is telling you that you can buy a $10K EV with a 1000 mile range next week, then that says a lot more about your reading comprehension and lack of familiarity with the nature of scientific research, than
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From the article:
Lithium-oxygen batteries, also called lithium-air batteries, have the potential to deliver the desired power thanks to a high energy density - a measure of energy stored for a given weight - that could be 10 times that of lithium-ion batteries and approach that of gasoline.
Energy density is the main overall measurement for the efficiency of a battery. It is the most important characteristic.
The "10 fold" statement only refers to one characteristic of a battery, and TFA states that there are other tradeoffs that may diminish any improvement.
Then why make the outrageous claim in the first place if there is little possibility of it coming true?
It also claims that lithium oxygen batteries are the same as lithium air batteries with they then contradict by stating that regular air does not work in the battery and that it needs pure oxygen.
the limitation of needing pure oxygen rather than plain old air.
This article spells of over promising to get research grants for something
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Energy density may indeed be "the most important characteristic," but charge time, available power, and reliability over repeated charge cycles are also things consumers care about.
I am making entirely wild speculations, here, so dismiss them as such:
- Perhaps with further research, their 10x energy density with 100% oxygen can translate into a 1.5x energy density in normal open air. I'd still be pleased with that.
- Perhaps there isn't an obvious application for a battery with their characteristics, but the
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Energy density may indeed be "the most important characteristic," but charge time, available power, and reliability over repeated charge cycles are also things consumers care about.
The biggest limitation on electric vehicles is the energy density of batteries. The other factors are important too but if there is not enough energy density the other factors are meaningless.
Perhaps with further research, their 10x energy density with 100% oxygen can translate into a 1.5x energy density in normal open air. I'd still be pleased with that.
It might be equally likely that the other components of air will make the batter not work at all. Even if they get a 1.5x energy density that is an incremental change and nowhere near their claim.
Have you ever heard the story of the boy who cried wolf [storyarts.org]? By making unfounded, sensationalist statements like this so often w
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"I wish I had an actual breakthrough battery for every battery breakthrough story I've seen "
To put it another way: If I had a nickel for every one of those stories, I would have my own asteroid by now.
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Moderate you up, or comment...... I'll take comment.
Yep yep and yep.
Even if 1/10 of these stories became real products, we'd be brimming with ridiculously powerful batteries.
As it stands right now, cell phones continue to have meddling batteries that last 6 hours of continuous use or 1.5 to 2 days at best on standby (and that's for customers who turn off BT, Wifi, GPS when not used)
I don't need a miracle battery that'll make the phone run for 19 weeks. I'm cool charging it now and then. However a phone whi
Graphene (Score:2)
I sometimes get the feeling that graphene is like the discovery of semiconductors (or possibly of semiconductor doping). It's got revolutionary applications, making the formerly impossible (or at least impractical) practical, and the formerly expensive affordable. On the other hand, at this point in its lifetime it gets used far more in the research lab than in the manufacturing plant, and for all the times it appears in the scientific literature it is slow (or at least, it feels slow) to appear in consumer
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It sure is making a lot of vaporware news releases possible. How many revolutionary products are available today because of graphene?
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Oh come on... If it weren't for graphene, Duke Nukem Forever would never have been released!
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What I find interesting is that the paper says that they used a "reduced graphene oxide electrode". Graphene oxide was first produced in 1859. It's a rather cheap, mass-produceable material, not at all exotic. However it was only first reduced to graphite in 2012 as it was difficult to find a pathway. It's seen as a promising route to cheap mass-produced graphene compared to other routes, with the downside that the resulting product is usually lower quality (although they've made lots of improvements in the
10x density, 1/5 cost - another breakthrough. (Score:1)
10x the energy density!
1/5 the cost
1/5 the weight.
I mean, why do reports write these stories when they would never write the same story about any other tech with the phantom results?
Tesla needs 1,200 amps+ *today* Liion can deliver that *TODAY*... in a package that's not too crazy. This is what matters, usable battery tech in a real world application. Let's start having scientists write these breakthrough stories. The only time I see scientists use words like the ones in the article are when they are trying
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Sorry, but you are wrong. What matters is that the technology available for a $130k car today can be improved on to the point that we may see a $35k car with more power, longer range, lighter weight, etc.
Research is about what comes next. There are organic improvements and step changes (like lead acid->lithium ion)-- both are important but the step-changes are what changes the world.
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I would prefer to get estimates in Wh/kg, Wh/l or $/Wh. Factors against an unknown baseline just adds confusion.
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I'd get ecstatic about a 2X breakthrough. That would be fucking fantastic.
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It's impossible to make a battery close to the energy density of gasoline. We're talking a thousandfold increase, not 10x.
The Energy density [wikipedia.org] of gasoline is 32 MJ/L. The energy density of the best batteries is about 4 MJ/L. That is 8-fold less, not 1000.
But a gasoline engine is about 15% efficient, while an electric engine is about 90% efficient. So even if the energy density of a battery is 1/6th that of gasoline, it will give you the same range.
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Close ... meanwhile gasoline engines are around 20% efficiency (not for the 20 - 30l per 100km racing SUV, though) and electric engines are in the 98% - 99%,efficiency range since over 100 years.
Does not change your argument, though.
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Sure, but what matters is the performance of *systems*; and if you set aside battery one one hand and gas tank on the other, an electric powertrain is much, much lighter than a gasoline powertrain. If you got a 10x increase in energy to weight in battery technology, that'd come right off what is by far the electric car's heaviest component. The result would be dramatic improvements in the car's performance and efficiency.
If it also comes with the kind of cost reductions they're imagining, you could be tal
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Wrong the energy density of gasoline/petrol is 46.4 MJ/kg. The energy density of aluminium is 31.0MJ/kg and lithium is 43.1MJ/kg. So theoretically both aluminium air and lithium air batteries would have a comparable energy density to gasoline/petrol.
When you figure that internal combustion engines are like ~20% efficient and decent electric motors are over 95% efficient you would understand that you don't actually need to get the same energy density from a battery as you do from liquid hydrocarbons.
increasing mass?? (Score:5, Interesting)
OK, correct me if I'm wrong here, but. . . Won't a lithium-air battery (or an aluminum-air battery, which is also discussed from time to time) actually increase in mass as it discharges? It's pulling oxygen from the air and then binding it into oxides which then have to be carried around until the battery is recharged, right?
energy density approaching gasoline will ... (Score:2)
No, I am not spinning some dark conspiracy theory about Big Oil. Simply this, if it had not been grandfathered out of product liability laws and hazardous substances regulation, gasoline and diesel will not be approved for use as automobile fuel. All other hydro carbons with the same energy density (42 MJ/Kg), volatility and flammability are strictly regulated.
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I'm not sure why you make that claim. Natural gas (55.5) is piped into a great many homes for heating and cooking. Propane (46.4) is used in grills on many home decks and torches in many home workshops. Butane (46.