Powering Phones, PCs Using Sugar 199
Nerval's Lobster writes "A team of researchers at Virginia Tech University have developed a battery with energy density an order of magnitude higher than lithium-ion batteries, while being almost endlessly rechargeable and biodegradable as well – because it's made of sugar. The battery is an enzymatic biofuel fuel cell – a type of fuel cell that uses a catalyst to strip molecules from molecules of a fuel material. Instead of using platinum or nickel for catalysts, however, biofuel cells use the catalysts made from enzymes similar to those used to break down and digest food in the body. Sugar is a good fuel material because it is energy dense, easy to obtain and transport, and so simple to biodegrade that almost anything biological can eat it. Sugar-based fuel cells aren't new, but existing designs use only a small number of enzymes that don't oxidize the sugar completely, meaning the resulting battery can hold only small amounts of energy that it releases slowly. A new design that uses 13 enzymes that can circulate freely to get better access to sugar molecules, however, is able to store energy at a density of 596 amp-hours per kilogram – an order of magnitude higher than lithium-ion batteries, according to Y.H. Percival Zhang, who studies biological systems engineering at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and College of Engineering at Virginia Tech. "Sugar is a perfect energy storage compound in nature," Zhang said in a statement announcing publication in Nature Communications of his paper describing the battery. "So it's only logical that we try to harness this natural power in an environmentally friendly way to produce a battery.""
sweet! (Score:4, Funny)
Sweet!
A start (Score:3)
Re:A start (Score:5, Funny)
...but wake me up when it can use sucrose.
Why do you hate America? It needs to use corn syrup.
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Why do you hate America?
Because I'm not American?
A free market solution (Score:4, Insightful)
So the free market will do what New York couldn't with taxes...drive the price of junk food up! Sweet.
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drive the price of junk food up
If the cars are all end up running on high-fructose corn syrup, we can just sweeten the junkfood with something derived from gasoline. :)
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Forget derived from gasoline, this is what will happen. [thecomicstrips.com] Bloom Country saw it years ago.
anp hours (Score:5, Insightful)
Watt hours would be more helpful. Amp hours are meaningless without associated volts.
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Problem is it's meaningless if you don't know the potential developed from the chemistry.
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Only when comparing batteries that operate at the same voltage.
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The power density is terrible (sigh) (Score:4, Informative)
Re:amp hours (FTFY) (Score:2)
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It seems rather low... on the order of 0.13V. But if the cells themselves are not of heavy construction, nothing says you can't make stacks of cells in series.
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/.ers are supposed to be technically knowledgeable, at least within our own areas of expertise. (Though we're always loudest and most confident when speaking outside our areas of expertise.)
However, /.ers don't RTFA. No, not even the abstract.
Hell, you're lucky if we read the summary.
YMBNH.
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/.ers are supposed to be technically knowledgeable, at least within our own areas of expertise. (Though we're always loudest and most confident when speaking outside our areas of expertise.)
However, /.ers don't RTFA. No, not even the abstract.
Hell, you're lucky if we read the summary.
YMBNH.
I've seen people reply without even reading the title.
Corn batteries? (Score:5, Insightful)
If this thing takes off, I can imagine in a few years the highly subsidized corn industry trying to sell high concentration fructose batteries, marketing them as "corn sugar fuel cells".
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If this thing takes off, I can imagine in a few years the highly subsidized corn industry trying to sell high concentration fructose batteries, marketing them as "corn sugar fuel cells".
Corn syrup is a complex chemical mixture of sugars, including maltose, fructose, and various oligosaccharides. If you dumped it directly into an enzyme battery, you would likely clog up the battery with partially digested sludge.
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Corn syrup is a complex chemical mixture of sugars, including maltose, fructose, and various oligosaccharides.
That's true, with varying proportions, of just about any natural plant syrup, whether processed from sugar beets, corn, sugar cane, grapes, pears, whatever. If you want a chemically "pure" sugar, such as only fructose, or only glucose, and you don't want other impurities such as colors and such, you need to separate and purify it, which produces what's known as "refined sugar".
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They'll have to mash the corn with some A/B amylase and limit dextrinase!
I'll drink to that!
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No it isn't. "a complex chemical mixture of sugars, including maltose, fructose, and various oligosaccharides" is a fair description of the carbohydrates in all food, not just corn syrup. The human digestive system handles them easily and has a very obvious means of expelling partially digested materials.
What did you think poop was, after all? Evil demons being expelled from your body?
I eagerly await... (Score:3)
...the first commercial example. Until then I'll forget about this annoucement since a laboratory curiosity can take a long time to wind its way to commerical production if it ever makes it that far.
Re:I eagerly await... (Score:5, Interesting)
Never going to happen.
Stuff like this has been done before - and it always sounds good - but they're burying the lead.
Enzymes degrade. They're just made of amino acids - they're not long term structures. It's why our bodies cycle and replace them all the time, and its why every single commercial product based on enzymes is single-use only. With time - and we're talking weeks, not years - they fall apart and stop working due to hydrolysis and self-reactions and what not.
This is why there was a lot of excitement when MIT successfully produced completely solid-state glucose fuel cells. Because a solid-state technology is not enzyme based, and would degrade much, much more slowly (also has other neat properties: like you can implant it).
The big news in...well just about anything, would be if they'd built a battery with a biological component that could self-regenerate the enzymes it needed to operate. That would make me excited - since we'd finally be talking about something you could actually build a useful and long-term product out of (also creating some hilarious new failure modes - 'sorry, your battery has developed an infection - please bring it to tech support for antibiotic treatment').
Re:I eagerly await... (Score:4, Insightful)
I imagine the enzymes would be recharged whenever the fuel (sugar) is. Not that there aren't other practical issues to deal with, of course...
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It depends on their system. It's conceivable you could replace the enzyme solution if it was freely circulating, as the article notes, from from looking at the abstract it seems they still depend on a surface-attached enzyme system as well. So that's still functionally like replacing the battery anode and cathode every few weeks as well - so in practice you can't do it at all (since if anything gets into that solution it'll destroy the enzymes very quickly - say, some discarded skin cells).
This puts you bac
New meaning to Type 2 Battery (Score:4, Funny)
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Enzymes and temperature? (Score:5, Insightful)
Finally, a safe use for HFCS (Score:2)
Maybe we can use High Fructose Corn Syrup for something other than making people obese.
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Oh, good. Just what the world needs, more food being used as fuel for machines. That's never had any horrible consequences.
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The world isn't short of food. The world just lacks a distribution system that makes sure everyone can get it. Free markets can be very powerful things, but providing universal access is one area they fail.
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I'd argue that it isn't a failure of our distribution system so much as it is a failure of unchecked capitalism. For example, US consumers' demand for quinoa has pushed the price up so far that the people who used to survive on it (Peruvians, Bolivians) can no longer afford to eat it. http://www.theguardian.com/com... [theguardian.com]
The rich will always exploit the poor to whatever extent they can get away with. In this case, it means that a small group profits from foreign demand while the laborers suffer. It's the same a
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But you're not accounting for the reduced human suffering on the other end. Perhaps the First World benefits from quinoa, so the suffering balances out.
Blood diamonds help the situation of
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I do.
Are you actually arguing that not getting a blowjob is as bad as the estimated 3 million deaths due to "conflict diamond" mining? Like, I know you're trying to joke... but that's what you're saying.
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The international aid organizations no longer ask for food. They ask for money that can be converted to food. But the shipping com panties hate that because they are no longer paid to ship food.
Even the Daily Show covered it [thedailyshow.com]
Turn up the drip, doctor! (Score:2)
Looking forward to when I can stop buying all these temporary phone chargers in convenience stores and just set up an IV!
And the computer I buy in 2020 will have an artificial circulatory system.
Or was it then you get your iPhone? (Score:4, Funny)
Then you get the power
Then you get the women.
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Power implantable devices? (Score:4, Interesting)
This sounds like it would be prefect for implantable devices, that could leach off excess sugar in the blood.
With the high sugar content in western diets, one could both power implanted devices, plus prevent and treat diabetes by keeping blood sugar levels down to reasonable levels. It could act like an artificial pancreas, plus power a pacemaker, and maybe let you use a computer in your head. (Why isn't the NSA funding this, to stop thought crimes?)
Seems to me a much easier solution than forcing the political powerful processed food and fast food industries to cut back on sugar and syrup that are poisoning consumers.
More answers please (Score:3)
Re:More answers please (Score:5, Interesting)
How long do the enzymes last? is probably the question at the front of my mind... related to life and charge cycles, sure, but if you don't "feed" it, do they deteriorate?
The bigger problem, I would think, is how practical is it to handle these? Last thing you want is ants getting into your 500Ah battery and blowing the crap out of it. Do they have to be "cleaned"? Do the enzymes have to be replenished (a nice little sideline for the battery company selling you replacement enzymes - until you fill it with cheap Chinese enzymes and then it stops working)? Does it have to be *cleaned*?
See, to me, the prevelance of a battery is highly dependent on its maintenance. Sure, we used to have to maintain lead-acids, but nowadays they are throw-and-replace or sealed anyway. All household batteries are maintenance-free, even the rechargeable. All coin batteries. All large batteries for UPS, car starters, solar systems, alarms, etc.
Hell, even "electric" cars have a maintenance-free battery that you have to swap out because the maintenance is ridiculous.
Honestly, I'd rather have a battery I can "recharge" with sugar that only does 5Ah instead of 500 and doesn't require any other maintenance (i.e. a fuel cell). But, ideally, I'd rather just have a battery that I don't ever have to do anything with but plug it in and then, years later, throw it away.
You can say that we have to be environmental etc. but lead-acid batteries can recycle extremely well. Until this gets close, it's not even worth an article.
And, sorry, but every battery technology that was ever succesful, I had never heard of it until I was holding one in my hand that came with a product (Ni-Cd, NiMH, Li-Ion, etc.). All the thousands of "new" batteries that make the news? I've yet to see a single one hit the stores in even the most limited fashion. As such, I ignore all battery technology until it's available for me to buy, preferably in 12V or AA versions.
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So what are the disadvantages compared to a LIon battery? Does it need much maintenance (such as replacing the sugar)? Can you just plug it into the wall to charge like a normal rechargeable battery? How is the lifespan (cycles) and how quickly does it charge? ...
This is a fuel cell, not a secondary battery. You recharge it by putting more fuel (in this case, sugar) in. Of course it has better energy density than secondary batteries (as a rule, fuel cells do), but it's mostly not very applicable to the same uses.
Comparing it to Li-ion (as in TFS, and I presume TFA) rather than to existing fuel-cell technology is not only not useful, but harmful, as it causes people to get the entirely wrong impression about it, as evidenced by the questions you ask. But that's tech
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Lions are far too dangerous and getting their daily allotment of raw meat is expensive and can be problematical. Sugar, on the other hand, is what little girls are made of, therefore much more pleasant to work with, although it can be moody and can turn on you. At least little girls (and sugar) don't have claws.
It's not a battery. (Score:5, Informative)
It's not a battery. It's a fuel cell. The reaction is not internally reversible. Once all the accessible sugar has been oxidized, you need new sugar to refuel it. It doesn't recharge. Most likely you wouldn't bother to refuel it at all. You'd treat it as a disposable that you simply replace, like an alkaline cell. The quoted 596 Ah/kg compares very favorably to the 92 Ah/kg of an alkaline. Of course, that's comparing a theoretical charge density calculated from lab equipment to a product. By the time you squeeze the lab equipment into the AA or AAA form factor, you can expect that quoted 596 to suffer rather badly.
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From the article:
The sugar battery is rechargeable, but also refillable.
Where did you get the idea it isn't rechargeable?
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Where did you get the idea it isn't rechargeable?
Chemistry. Many enzymatic reactions are not reversible at all. For those that are reversible, the reaction is not reversible simply by applying a charge. It's an equilibrium reaction, so concentrations of the reactants are what's important. The article is paywalled, so I haven't seen the exact sequence of 13 reactions, but let's quote again from The Fine Article:
The primary byproducts of the process are water and electricity. “We are releasing all electron charges stored in the sugar solution slowly step-by-step by using an enzyme cascade,” Zhang said.
That is not reversible. Some number of the 13 steps may or may not be, but some of them definitely are not. If you dismantle a sugar molecule
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Also, there's my default assumption that journalists are idiots.
:)
Food from mains power: Electrosth of maltodextrin (Score:2)
The reaction is not internally reversible. Once all the accessible sugar has been oxidized, you need new sugar to refuel it. It doesn't recharge.
Where do you get that?
Though the detaied description of the reaction in The Fine Summary of the paper is in terms of the maltodextrin + oxygen -> water + carbon dioxide direction, there's no inherent reason that it can't be run backward with a power input, and the descriptive article speaks as if it can.
I've checked one part: The two enzymes at the start - whic
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I saw no mention of the usual platinum catalyst, and the summary specifically disclaims the use of such in this method. Of course we all know how trustworthy TFS usually is, but I saw no mention of it in the abstract, either.
In any case, assuming the process is reversible, I suspect trying to run this sequence in reverse by applying power is even more inefficient than the well-known inefficiency of photosynthesis.
Hopefully some organic chemist with an institutional subscription to Nature Communications wil
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I saw no mention of the usual platinum catalyst, and the summary specifically disclaims the use of such in this method.
Look at the right edge of the diagram [nature.com]. You'll see an oval labeled Pt on the surface of the cathode, serving as the site of a reaction where hydrogen leaving the cell is reacted with atmospheric oxygen to form atmospheric water vapor - achieving the necessary hydrogen gradient to pump the electricity generation. (Alternatively, with the charging current pumping protons IN, the same catalys
Technology should be used asap (Score:2)
If its so great, why arent we using it right now. Given the non-renewable nature of metal batteries, this is sort of a godsend. I was reading one article about the sugar batteries and the developer of the batteries said "Well it won't hold its charge for the duration of shipping so people won't want it". This is the dumbest comment I have ever heard as most people would be fine with charging the batteries at initial use and most cell phones, people are already used to charging every few days anyway so this
Re:Technology should be used asap (Score:4, Informative)
Or: 4. it's just been invented. Jeez! (Score:3)
1. it doesn't work
2. it can't be produced (= it can't get cheap enough)
or
3. someone has a deep interest in blocking it (think NiMH)
Or:
4. It's just been invented.
Jeez, guys. There's still some substantial engineering to do between finding a reaction that works and deploying it as a product.
Look at how long it took for Edison to turn electric-driven incandescence into a practical light bulb - and how rapidly that deployed once it was finally done. Or look at the several generations of automobiles between t
Stop posting about non-existent fuel cells (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember reading stories about fuel cells for laptops (powered by alcohol) during the first year of Slashdot. And, supposedly, such cells were going to be sold for popular laptop models in "a few months." Twenty or so years later, I'm still waiting.
If a fuel cell idea is still completely, and totally, lab-bound, it is unlikely to become a product in the next 15-20 years or so, if previous progress on the subject is any guide.
Orders of magnitude (Score:2)
A team of researchers at Virginia Tech University have developed a battery with energy density an order of magnitude higher than lithium-ion batteries
Bloody scientists. Why can't they just say "about ten times"?
Watt-hours, amps, density... (Score:2)
All we want to know is, how long does a five pound bag of sugar last?
(corollary question, will McDonald's et al stop putting those little sugar packs out for anyone to take?)
Vapor (Score:4, Insightful)
If anyone ever develops an energy source powered by vaporous product claims, we'll be good forever.
Good! (Score:2)
Then we can resurrect that sound fragment from an old video game I used to play (I forget the name), which would periodically threaten "I Hunger..."
I can see far more entertainment value in people's phones moaning "I Hunger" from their pockets instead of displaying a low-battery indicator. :D
SiniStar (Score:2)
I love that game!
Great news for the sugarmotor (Score:2)
That's great news for the sugarmotor!
Doomed to failure (Score:2)
See the example in Brazil, we extensively use ethanol from sugar cane to fuel cars, more than 95% of cars produced in Brazil can use any mixture of ethanol and gasoline.
Since Brazil also uses sugar cane to produce sugar, and the global demand for food is increasing. Most producers of sugar cane prefer to sell their production to sugar mills, instead of to ethanol plants, raising substantially the ethanol price at a rate that it's not economi
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Correct. That's not energy density. They need to state it in Watt hours per kilogram, or state the voltage they are assuming.
Re:Amp hours per kilogram (Score:4, Interesting)
The voltage is immaterial. The energy density stage same regardless of the voltage, since amp-hours s au it of charge, indent of how much current or voltage is actually used. If you hold voltage and current constant, you can always do more work with more charge, so charge/kg is a reasonable representation of energy density.
You're talking about comparing across battery types, then your statement holds only when voltage is the same. Also, for EVs the only metric that really matters is energy per volume. kWh-hrs (or MJ) per liter, eg. Energy per mass isn't a constraint. Show me a significant boost in this metric, including the size of the "sugar sack" needed to go 120 miles, then we'll talk.
Re:Amp hours per kilogram (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not sure where your thinking process is broken, but I'll give it a try.
Amp-hours isn't a statement of energy. For example, you could have 2 '5 amp-hour' batteries, but because one is 12V and the other 6V, the amount of energy each contains is very different, with the 12V one being able to supply twice as much energy before becoming exhausted. Because this is a new battery technology, we don't know what the voltage of the battery is.
Watts are a statement of power, Joules are a statement of energy, or power over time. Amps are mostly a statement of volume of electron flow. Without knowing the force behind them(voltage), you can't say how much work you can do with them.
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With more charge, you can do more work. It is as valid a gauge of how much work you can do as knowing how full your gas tank is tells you how far you can get without refueling
Yes, but only in the context of you knowing how many gallons your gas tank can hold and what your average mpg is. Half a tank on my motorcycle is 100 miles if I'm lucky. My car, 150, my truck 200.
We were told the mpg; not the size of the tank.
Power is the rate at which we can do work, Energy is how much work we can do. We were given neither for the battery.
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So half a tank of gas is the same as half a tank of water?
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Charge is as much a measurement of quantity of electricity as volume is a measurements of a quantity of matter.
When we're defining 'quantity' in terms of mass in this context. Let's say we're looking at 1 cubic meter. How many kg is your matter? The quantity depends on what the matter consists of, it will change radically depending if the matter is air, water, sand, iron, or lead.
We're not arguing with you that amp-hours can be used as the equivalent of a gas gauge. What we're trying to tell you is that we can't actually compare this battery with other batteries in terms of energy capacity, IE amount of work ava
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Ampere-hours is a unit of charge (3600 coulombs) that provides an estimate of how much energy can be produced in about the same way that a gasoline tank's size can provide an estimate of how far a car can go without refueling. Even though they are not the same units, there is a direct correlation and one can be computed from the other by multiplying by a constant.
My point being that a given application for electricity generally demands a specific amount of power to operate it, and with more charge avail
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No. If the old battery does 5A-hr at 5 volts, mine beats it by and order of magnitude providing 0.05A-hr at 5000V.
So voltage is immaterial at a constant voltage, but different battery formulations typically have a different voltage. Neither TFS nor TFA claim that voltage is constant.
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That's not how it works. Power (ability to do work) is current times voltage. One amp at 110V is more power than 1 amp at 12v.
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When the potential difference is constant. having more charge available in a battery means that it will run longer and thus will have been able to do more work before it is depleted.
Often, however, the total available charge ends up translating directly to how much voltage you can actually produce in the first place, so you end up being able to push out more energy that way. If you regulate the voltage to a smaller fixed amount, then you end up with something lasting longer, as mentioned above.
Either
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whatever
Look it up or don't.
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I discounted that possibility since we are comparing different batteries that will have different voltages, rendering all of that moot. It isn't even logical to consider.
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Actually, no. For example, 1A at 120V = 10A at 12V = 120W. Power is was and always will be current multiplied by voltage. Multiply that by time and you get energy. You really need to review basic electricity. You may be getting confused by the effects of internal resistance causing a voltage drop at high currents (for the source in question), but that is immaterial to this discussion.
As it turn out, the cell voltage is only 0.13V, so it's actual energy density (capacity/kg) is lower than Li Ion.
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When the potential difference is constant. having more charge available in a battery means that it will run longer and thus will have been able to do more work before it is depleted.
True, however when you're comparing batteries of different chemistry the potential difference is unlikely to be constant. Ergo, when you go comparing a .13V sugar cell(source elsewhere in thread) to a 3V li-Ion cell, you need 23 times the charge in the former to match the latter.
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And it even if they had the energy part right, it wouldn't be the most useful measure of energy density where batteries are concerned. When it comes to batteries, energy per kilogram is a less useful measure than energy per liter. For example, Hydrogen has a very high MJ/KG but a comparatively lower MJ/L. Batteries made with heavier metals will likely still store energy more efficiently into a small space than a biofuel cell like the one in the story.
Most of the applications of batteries require fitting as
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Scientists measure energy in joules, economists and (for most purposes) the everyday public in watt-hours. For reasons of practicality: Watt-hours make calculating bills easier.
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Now if the voltage was specified, we might manage to convert amp-hours into energy. Otherwise there is little point in giving a figure at all.
Perhaps the full article mentions that somewhere but there's no way I'm paying $35 just to find out.
Re:Amp hours per kilogram (Score:4, Informative)
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No wonder they didn't want to just state it. It looks like it's 0.13v.
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Re:Amp hours per kilogram (Score:5, Informative)
That's still quite a problem when the cell voltage is 0.13 (remember, the cm^2 terms cancel). You'd need to stack 28 cells to get to the nominal LiIon voltage.
Converting the impressive sounding 590 Ah/kg to to the more useful Wh/kg, we get a much less impressive sounding 76 Wh/kg. LiIon is 100-250 Wh/kg depending on exact formulation.
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I've wanted that from time to time myself.
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We already know that using ethanol is a big resource wasing flop
It is only resource wasting when made from corn. Ethanol from sugar cane is very sensible. But America has high tariffs on cane sugar, and the ethanol derived from it, to keep it from competing with corn. We will not have a sensible bio-fuels policy until the first presidential caucuses are moved out of Iowa.
avoids distillation (Score:3)
"We already know that using ethanol is a big resource wasing flop, where do you think the ethanol comes from? Yeast and sugar. Going one step up isn't going to help,"
The energy cost of distillation would be avoided with a corn syrup fuel cell. That's worth quite a bit economically.
avoids using a heat engine (Score:2)
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Where's the "-1 Earworm" option?
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You are a first-class bastard.
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The Educational Institute of Engineering and Industrial Operations
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The Educational Institute of Engineering and Industrial Operations
Isn't that where Old McDonald had a farm?