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Sulfur Polymers Could Enable Long-Lasting, High-Capacity Batteries 131

MTorrice writes "Lithium-sulfur batteries promise to store four to five times as much energy as today's best lithium-ion batteries. But their short lifetimes have stood in the way of their commercialization. Now researchers demonstrate that a sulfur-based polymer could be the solution for lightweight, inexpensive batteries that store large amounts of energy. Battery electrodes made from the material have one of the highest energy-storage capacities ever reported" Litihium Ion batteries should maintain capacity for about 1000 cycles, whereas Lithium-sulfur batteries traditionally went kaput after about 100. But it looks like they are getting pretty close to something feasible, from the article: "The best performing copolymer consisted of 90% sulfur by mass. Batteries using this copolymer had an initial storage capacity of 1,225 mAh per gram of material. After 100 charge-discharge cycles, the capacity dropped to 1,005 mAh/g, and after 500 cycles it fell to about 635 mAh/g. In comparison, a lithium-ion battery typically starts out with a storage capacity of 200 mAh/g but maintains it for the life of the battery, Pyun says."
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Sulfur Polymers Could Enable Long-Lasting, High-Capacity Batteries

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  • Still a ways to go (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mykepredko ( 40154 ) on Monday March 03, 2014 @11:08PM (#46393553) Homepage

    I saw an interesting graph in Aviation Week some time ago about the energy density of batteries versus the same mass of hydrocarbon fuel. The article was in relation to the idea of creating (plug-in) hybrid airliners.

    The batteries used in the 787 store four orders of magnitude less energy than the equivalent mass of jet fuel.

    I'm mentioning this because it looks like these batteries would bring the difference up to three orders of magnitude.

    Still a ways to go before batteries can compete against hydrocarbon/fossil fuels.

    myke

    • by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 03, 2014 @11:31PM (#46393667)

      I saw an interesting graph in Aviation Week some time ago about the energy density of batteries versus the same mass of hydrocarbon fuel. The article was in relation to the idea of creating (plug-in) hybrid airliners.

      The batteries used in the 787 store four orders of magnitude less energy than the equivalent mass of jet fuel.

      I'm mentioning this because it looks like these batteries would bring the difference up to three orders of magnitude.

      Still a ways to go before batteries can compete against hydrocarbon/fossil fuels.

      myke

      Based on a back-of-the-envelope calculation, that number seems wrong. Could you have misread Aviation Week?

      Jet fuel has an energy density close to 45 MJ/kg. A lithium-ion battery has an energy density of (approximately) 150 Wh/kg, which is 540 KJ/kg. That's about 1.2% of the energy density of the jet fuel, which is more like 2 orders of magnitude, not 4.

      4 orders of magnitude below jet fuel is more in the range of supercapacitors than batteries.

      • Dat envelope (Score:4, Interesting)

        by strack ( 1051390 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @08:27AM (#46395289)
        Lets see what the range on a typical light aircraft would be if you ripped out the full fuel tanks and gasoline engine and stuffed it with a equivalent power electric engine and these new batteries to the same weight. So it says it will store 4-5 times as much energy as todays best lithium-ion batteries. the best li-ion today is lithium cobalt, at about 165 wh/kg. So x4 of that is 660 wh/kg.

        now, lets take a light plane for which I can find enough info to do this with, the jabiru j160D [jabiru.net.au] ok. so the fuel in it weighs (135L * 0.72kg/L) = 97.2kg. Now, the engine in it, the Jabiru 2200cc Aircraft Engine, weighs 62.8kg, and has a max power output of 60kw, and cruises at 75% power, so lets assume 50kw cruise power to account for takeoff and landing. So in total, engine and fuel weight 97.2 + 62.8 = 160kg

        so lets rip that 160kg out and replace it with a EMRAX228 Brushless AC electric Motor with a 100kw power output and weighing in at 11.9kg, leaving us 148.1 kg worth of batteries, with a energy storage capacity of 148.1 * 0.66 = 97.746 kwh. so, at the cruise speed of 100knots = 185.2km/h, your looking at a range of (97.746kwh / 50kw) * 185.2km/h = 362km in about 2 hours.

        The gasoline version can fly at the same speed for 8.5 hours. So, sure, the range is a quarter of the gasoline one, but you could ditch a passenger, chuck another 100kg of batteries in there and get that up to about 3.5 hours and 630km of range. Pretty damn good for a few dollars of electricity, negligible maintainence costs on a electric engine vs gasoline engine. sure as hell beats the $100+ youll pay for fuel alone for that same 3.5 hour trip.

    • by Immerman ( 2627577 ) on Monday March 03, 2014 @11:36PM (#46393687)

      First off that's a bald-faced lie: Energy density of:
      Gasoline: ~46 MJ/kg
      Lithium-ion battery: 0.36-0.875 MJ/kg (1/127 - 1/52 times gasoline)
      Lead-acid battery: 0.17 MJ/kg (1/270 times gasoline)

      So even lead acid batteries are only two orders of magnitude less energy dense than gasoline.

      As for the suitability in vehicles - that depends entirely on the application. For aircraft the energy density per both unit mass and unit volume is very important, so I doubt we'll see electric jetliners any time soon. For automobiles and other short-range land vehicles on the other hand batteries are already adequate for a lot of applications, and cost is the primary limiting factor. A measly 5x increase in capacity could extend the range of the 85kWh Tesla Model S from 265 miles to 1325 miles - still not enough for a long road trip on a single charge, but a lot further than most people care to drive in a single day, and overnight charging in hotel parking lots could be extremely convenient.

      And for stationary applications the energy density per dollar is the only particularly important metric, and other battery technologies are probably more applicable to such applications.

    • by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Monday March 03, 2014 @11:51PM (#46393753)

      I saw an interesting graph in Aviation Week some time ago about the energy density of batteries versus the same mass of hydrocarbon fuel.

      the problem with that comparison is that it considers that the engines and motors will have the same efficiency which is not true at all. hypothetically, if your motor is four times as efficient as an engine but your battery has only half the energy storage of the engine's fuel, the motor is still going to run twice as long as the engine.

      it's systems, not components that matter.

      • by dutchwhizzman ( 817898 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @01:53AM (#46394267)

        Airliner turbines are extremely efficient at transforming energy into air movement. Because of expanding gasses in the burn process inside the turbine, roughly 9 times the amount of air being used in the burn process is being "propelled" on the outside of the engine. The mix of these at the back of the engine is also very carefully engineered. This results in an extremely efficient transformation, compared to a combustion engine as used in cars.
        Getting the same amount of efficiency from an electrically driven turbine will be a challenge. Getting the same or better amount of efficiency from the system, including the primary generation of electricity, transporting it, battery losses and converting it in the electrical turbine doesn't sound very feasible at all. It's systems that matter, not components, right?
    • by haruchai ( 17472 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @12:52AM (#46394011)

      Have a look at molten-air batteries - http://phys.org/news/2013-09-m... [phys.org]

      With an iron anode, the energy content is roughly the same as petrol - ~ 10000 watt-hours per liter. But the most you can hope for an a straight gasoline ICE is about 30%, whereas a battery is likely to be 2.5x as efficient. A carbon anode, which is more likely to be developed is nearly double that of iron so if this tech pans out and it looks to be quite affordable, it'll kill the demand for fossil fuels in almost all light-duty vehicles and make it possible to have hybrid long-haul trucks.

      • by Rhywden ( 1940872 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @07:17AM (#46395055)

        Definitely looks interesting, but highly unpractical for vehicles. After all, you have to keep the metal molten all the time. And that means some heavy-duty insulation, something akin to a Thermos bottle with a large volume. The problem then is the fact, that such bottles are not exactly great when it comes to vibrations, abrupt stops and crashes.

        • by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @09:05AM (#46395459) Journal
          They achieve the high densities by using atmospheric air for oxygen. Basically they are rusting iron and reversing the rusting using electrolysis. Which means not only you need to keep the iron molten, you need to vent it to atmosphere too! Other molten metal batteries are sealed, allowing for better thermal insulation.
        • by haruchai ( 17472 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @09:33AM (#46395599)

          There's already the ZEBRA battery, used in a few EVs since 2007. I think insulation isn't such a big problem when the batteries are large as there's a fair bit of thermal mass. The threshold for the ZEBRA is somewhere upwards of 20 kWh but that would depend on the shape.

          The Tesla Model S which used a flat, relatively thin pack on the floor of the vehicle would definitely be a challenge.

    • by inhuman_4 ( 1294516 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @02:03AM (#46394307)
      Aircraft are very sensitive to the weight. But ships are not. I wonder if it would be realistic to have a battery powered ship for cross ocean voyages. Especially for things like tankers and cargo ships. Pull into port and get hooked up with special massive power tx lines and fill up the battery.

      I seem to recall that large ships are a big source of CO2 emissions. If it is possible I wonder what the trade off is in terms of costs.
      • by Neil Boekend ( 1854906 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @04:23AM (#46394677)
        How big a part of the power requirement of a ship could be covered by solar panels on the deck?
        • by Calinous ( 985536 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @05:10AM (#46394771)

          A supertanker has a deck about 300 by 30 meters, so 10,000 square meters. With an optimistic 100W from square meter, and 8 hours a day of full power, you'd get about 8 MWh (or some of 28,800 MJ) of energy a day. At 43 MJ/kg for diesel fuel, that's the equivalent to some 700 kg of diesel fuel a day.
                Now, ships use heavy fuel oil when outside territorial waters (which is much cheaper), so a full deck of solar panels wouldn't save you very much money. And those panels would be exposed to salt water, storms and so on.
                I haven't found the "common" power generation for ultra large crude carriers (oil tankers), but max power seems to be over 80MW - assuming they're going at a quarter of maximum power, the solar cells would give you at most 1/60 of the needed power per day.

          • by Neil Boekend ( 1854906 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @06:32AM (#46394969)
            700 kg of fuel equals about an hour of usage. However, if the ship is all electric one can assume a 3x as efficient powertrain, so 3 hours. If we combine the solar panels with a skysail [skysails.info] which provides around 2000 kW continuously we would get an additional 48 MWh or 172,800 MJ (depending on shipping routes). This equals to approx 4000 kg/day without efficiency improvements or 5.7 hours. With a powertrain efficiency improvement of a factor 3 (doable when using electric power) this would equal to 17 hours of boating.
            With the 3 hours of solar boating we'd have 20 hours a day of clean shipping. Since required power is approximately related to speed squared, having a bit lower speed would offer a lot less fuel usage. Low speed is already a disadvantage, but with moder consumer wishes a "Sustainable inter continental shipping" logo splashed everywhere would probably increase sales for your customers. Maybe DHL could advertise long delivery time green shipping thing.

            To get back on topic: Batteries. Large container ships are meant for long distances, so we can assume the ship will be on the ocean for months at a time.
            If I assume lithium sulfur batteries have a voltage of 3.5 V (from Li-Ion batteries) I assume 3.5 Wh/g or 12,600J. We need about 30,100,000,000J/day so that's 2,388,888 g or 2.4 metric tons. To go 3 months you'd need 223.2 metric tons of these new batteries.
            Container ships are big, in the order of 50.000 metric tons so it would be possible. However the price of these batteries isn't known yet and it may just be more expensive than a skysail and a deck of solar panels.

            With this back of the envelope calculations I think now that the solution would be in the category of SkySail + solar panels + batteries. Cruise on SkySail + batteries and top the batteries off with the solar panels if you can.
            As for the corrosive environment: Glass doesn't corrode and the rest can be covered in plastic which doesn't corrode either. They should be fully sealed of course so there are no metal parts in contact with the corrosive air.
            I just think the maintenance crews aren't going to like it much. It would require a lot of retraining.

            Note: I am an engineer. However I am not an experienced engineer in this field.
    • by manu144x ( 3377615 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @04:58AM (#46394739)
      Why is everybody forgetting about how much of that energy an ICE Gas engine converts into motion? Roughly 15% ? A diesel goes up to 25% if i remember correctly. An electric engine is easily over 90% even 95%. I agree, the electric solution is still far from being better right now, but the fight is NOT only about energy/kg it's also about energy/actual useful movement too. It's a balance of both these things, makes no point to have 100 gallons of gas if you're gonna throw out 85% of it out.
  • by cold fjord ( 826450 ) on Monday March 03, 2014 @11:09PM (#46393557)

    There have been a lot of materials developments in battery designs over the last year or two. Some of them are providing 10x or better power storage with varying lifetimes. I'm really looking forward to seeing some of this make it into production. It would be better if they could couple improved batteries with some minimalist portable computer designs. People comfortable with Unix would get by with something with much lower specks than is typical today (assuming a minimalist interface), and the battery could probably last for hundreds of hours. I wouldn't mind that a bit.

    Some of the other battery tech could be very useful for emergency situations.

    This might be one to keep an eye on: A Battery That Runs On Sugar Could Soon Be Powering Your Electronics [businessinsider.com]

  • by Freshly Exhumed ( 105597 ) on Monday March 03, 2014 @11:10PM (#46393565) Homepage

    FTA: 'The best performing copolymer consisted of 90% sulfur by mass. Batteries using this copolymer had an initial storage capacity of 1,225 mAh per gram of material. After 100 charge-discharge cycles, the capacity dropped to 1,005 mAh/g, and after 500 cycles it fell to about 635 mAh/g. In comparison, a lithium-ion battery typically starts out with a storage capacity of 200 mAh/g but maintains it for the life of the battery, Pyun says.' So, situations in which a massive blast of current is required could benefit quite well from these batteries. I'm thinking like sitting at light on Mulholland and turning a knob on the Tesla's dashboard that is graduated in 1960's TV Batman style: Low-Medium-High-Zowie!

  • by turkeydance ( 1266624 ) on Monday March 03, 2014 @11:25PM (#46393633)
    where's my flying car?
    • by Required Snark ( 1702878 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @05:58AM (#46394859)
      First, you have to prove that you deserve a flying car.

      Then you have to prove that you can be trusted to dive/pilot a flying car.

      Given how the vast majority of people drive, almost no one passes the second test.

      I'm not claiming that I do either. I also know that I should not ride a motorcycle because I don't have the right kind of attention for it.

      • by causality ( 777677 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @10:37AM (#46396009)

        First, you have to prove that you deserve a flying car.

        Then you have to prove that you can be trusted to dive/pilot a flying car.

        Given how the vast majority of people drive, almost no one passes the second test.

        I'm not claiming that I do either. I also know that I should not ride a motorcycle because I don't have the right kind of attention for it.

        With a motorcycle your main problem is the other drivers.

        What you would discover (or be reminded of) is that average people don't put any thought or attention energy into anything that isn't directly in their selfish interests. George Carlin called it stupidity and consumerism, Erich Fromm called it alienation, I call it spiritual infancy. Regardless, that's the deal. The SUV driver doesn't see your little motorcycle as a threat and isn't likely to spend much time looking out for you (meanwhile they can't move out of the way fast enough for a merging tractor-trailer - see how that works?). You have far more to lose in such a collision.

        If you actually talk to motorcycle riders (at least in the US) you'll hear the same thing over and over.

    • by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @07:44AM (#46395121) Homepage

      at the airport, go get your recreational pilots license and then get ready to pony up $250,000 for it, or less if you will accept used, but only poor people would buy used.

      Cessna and other companies have several choices for you.

  • by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Monday March 03, 2014 @11:38PM (#46393695)

    1) are these expensive to make?
    2) can they be scaled up to be used as batteries in an electric car?
    3) where are my keys?

  • by no-body ( 127863 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @12:22AM (#46393883)

    Some kind of modular system where a standarized batterypack is used which can be refurbisched with material (sulfur) reused?

  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @12:30AM (#46393935)

    Smells fishy to me.

  • by Radtastic ( 671622 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @12:47AM (#46393991)
    Sulphur Batteries?!!!? The exhaust is gonna smell like rotten eggs!
  • by riverat1 ( 1048260 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @01:10AM (#46394091)

    ... they're taking out of gasoline for them.

  • by erroneus ( 253617 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @01:19AM (#46394133) Homepage

    Well, if Moore got his own law, I'm going to go ahead and call it erroneus's law. "batteries will get better."

    I made it more simple and easier not to fail in the future too. So is it me or are they creating batteries out of just about everything?

  • by cowwoc2001 ( 976892 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @02:44AM (#46394417)

    We need devices that consume less power and batteries that last longer (retain the same charge across multiple cycles).

    Any other formula will lead to devices that waste power and burn through batteries with increasing speed. I'm not looking forward to garbage lots filled to the sky with used batteries.

    • by Neil Boekend ( 1854906 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @04:33AM (#46394685)
      You recycle batteries. The elements are not wasted, usually they lost their specific shape or a not intended molecule is being formed once in a while, and that molecule does not release electric energy. All these things are reversible.
      In fact, never ever throw a battery in a landfill. Most are quite bad for the environment when not recycled properly.
    • by Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @04:40AM (#46394701) Homepage

      I'm not looking forward to garbage lots filled to the sky with used batteries.

      Is it as bad is the air being filled to the sky with CO2?

      • by jbmartin6 ( 1232050 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @10:38AM (#46396019)
        We need something to displace all the nitrogen. That stuff is dangerous!
      • by cowwoc2001 ( 976892 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @12:52PM (#46397475)

        One is proven by science. The other is "proven" by Al Gore :)

        What I resent about the latter is that there was plenty of scientific evidence before/after Al Gore's stupid movie, but that bit of "science" only got momentum because of the movie. We shouldn't make decisions based on what's popular. We should make decision based on scientific fact.

        So to reiterate: I'm not arguing whether Global Warning exists or not, but rather that it's stupid that people only began saying it exists because that movie came out.

        There are plenty of non-controversial gasses that we know for a fact kill people every day, but instead we're pouring billions of dollars into something controversial for popularity reasons.

        • by romanval ( 556418 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @03:36PM (#46399839)

          The scientific consensus for AGW/climate change was pretty darn clear even before Al Gore's movie: He just made it more popular. The only people making it controversial are the old school energy companies and everyone associated with it.

        • by crunchygranola ( 1954152 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @03:46PM (#46399979)

          ...

          So to reiterate: I'm not arguing whether Global Warning exists or not, but rather that it's stupid that people only began saying it exists because that movie came out.

          ...

          I am tempted to say something is indeed stupid here, but it is not what you are claiming is stupid.

          Three dates:

          • 1992: Due to the growing scientific consensus on the reality of anthropogenic global warming the UN establishes the Framework Convention on Climate Change, which leads five years later to:
          • 1997: the Kyoto Protocol on limiting greenhouse gas emissions being negotiated;
          • 2006: An Inconvenient Truth, narrated by Al Gore comes out.

          "People began saying it exists" well more than 15 years before "that movie came out", and it was a political hot topic in the U.S., frequently discussed, for a decade before the movie. Your notion that "that movie" somehow created this out of nothing is so profoundly ignorant that it leaves one gasping in awe.

  • by imsabbel ( 611519 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @03:17AM (#46394529)

    What matters, in the end, is the amount of energy a battery can store.

    With Lithium Sulfur cells, the voltage is a little more than half as high as for Lithium Ion batteries, so the initial advantage is not as large as it might seem from the mAh numbers.

    • by Donwulff ( 27374 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @04:47AM (#46394721)

      Well, amount of energy per mass. But amount of energy per volume will come a close second, and unless they have unlimited charge cycles with no degradation, energy per dollar will be sharing that close second position. Charge efficiency is probably around third most important, and whether it's prone to exploding randomly in a fiery conflagration is up high there as well. In short, almost anything else than what was actually provided in the summary :)

    • by Twinbee ( 767046 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @06:24AM (#46394937)
      Are you saying..... wow... we should (god forbid) measure, energy capacity in....... watt hours (or joules)? How dare you recommend such a statement!

      Honestly it amazes me the number of people who think volts or amps alone constitute energy. It also saddens me that watts and watt-hours are not more commonly stated in products such as on battery labels.
      • by wvmarle ( 1070040 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @08:20AM (#46395263)

        When looking at electronics recently, specifically little ICs, they always specified the power usage in units of current.

        It seems that the reason is that semiconductor ICs can handle a broad range of voltages, like 3V-15V, and use roughly the same current at the whole range. As long as your supply voltage is in that range, the components are happy. The same when powering LEDs, they need a certain current, and any supply voltage will do as long as it is high enough (you always have to add a resistor to regulate the current).

        So giving power capacity of a battery used for supplying power to semiconductors in mAh is not exactly strange.

    • by Big_Breaker ( 190457 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @10:58AM (#46396243)

      Compressed air has volumetric energy density similar to lead acid (about half lithium ion) but extremely high power density. Energy density by weight is dependent on scale - bigger is better - because the weight scales as the surface area of the container while the energy scales with volume. But

      If you are looking for a power boost on take off, compressed air is totally viable. Doubly so because it would naturally drive a propeller with an air motor which is more efficient at low speeds. Fix the expansion cooling by burning a bit of fuel in the expansion stream.

      I won't want to be near a high pressure tank like that if it ruptured though! Maybe its a system that works better for cargo than human transport.

  • by multi io ( 640409 ) <olaf.klischat@googlemail.com> on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @03:57AM (#46394615)

    Batteries using this copolymer had an initial storage capacity of 1,225 mAh per gram of material.

    At what voltage? mA*h isn't a unit of energy. V*mA*h is.

  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @05:36AM (#46394829)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by afidel ( 530433 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @03:08PM (#46399481)

      Look into low self discharge batteries, the Eneloop second generation batteries maintain 75% of their charge after 3 years without use and can be fully charged for 1500 cycles. The third generation cells go to 90% after 1 year and 70% after 5 years but they're enough more expensive at this point that they're not worth the extra cost for most applications, they've also increased the stability a bit to 1800 cycles.

  • by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @08:14AM (#46395235) Homepage

    They'll have to use some pretty strong casing on these things if they want to use them in cars because if they leaked in a crash things could get really nasty as free sulphur burns quite easily and creates SO2 which would kill or severely cripple anyone trapped nearby quite quickly.

  • by wvmarle ( 1070040 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @08:24AM (#46395275)

    The total amount of energy stored is much larger per cycle - about five times as much. So 200 recharges for a LiS battery would give as much play time on your phone as 1,000 recharges on a Li-ion battery (the typical lifetime of such a battery). With the loss of capacity that may be 250 recharges for the LiS battery, with it still going strong after all that time.

    So what're they waiting for? Life time is more than good enough already! I want one of these batteries! Much better than having to recharge my phone every single day!

  • I wonder if people are working on charged liquid electrolytes based batteries. If I could drain the electrolyte from the discharged battery, refill it will charged electrolyte much like filling gasoline into a tank. Must be a dumb idea because I have not seen any excited posts about it. May be the energy density is so very poor for these charged electrolytes.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @09:00AM (#46395439)

    It should be possible to group 2 for these together with an advertised capacity of ~1200mAh and then add some smart discharge circuitry to keep the total capacity at ~1200mAh. e.g as the first cell nears half capacity, take it off-line and put a fresh one on-line; after that one degrades (you've already gone 1000 cycles now) put the two "half capacity" cells on-line and run them into the ground (maybe get another 500 cycles). You'd need 6 standard Lion cells to get the same capacity; so still a 3x improvement. More cells and more smarts would smooth-out the capacity curve over time; electric cars already have sophisticated battery management systems.

  • by Whumpsnatz ( 451594 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @11:47AM (#46396707)

    "Batteries using this copolymer had an initial storage capacity of 1,225 mAh per gram of material. After 100 charge-discharge cycles, the capacity dropped to 1,005 mAh/g, and after 500 cycles it fell to about 635 mAh/g. In comparison, a lithium-ion battery typically starts out with a storage capacity of 200 mAh/g but maintains it for the life of the battery, Pyun says."
    So, the lithium sulfur battery, after a mere half as many cycles as a lithium ion battery can substain, only has THREE TIMES the charge of a new lithium battery. At what point does it fall to less than a lithium ion battery at the same number of cycles?
    Regardless, I think I could live with a battery that holds from 3 to 6 times as much charge as the typical lithium ion battery, even if it only lasted half as long.

  • by peter303 ( 12292 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @01:20PM (#46397827)
    Telsa and others have shown the interesting kind of electric vehicles you can build. Batteries still limit cost and distance. Another factor of 2-5 performance cost will clinch it.
  • by foxalopex ( 522681 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @03:35PM (#46399831)

    Technically we could easily make a high powered battery pack using Lithium Polymer batteries due to their high energy densities. The downside of course is your car turns into a bomb if the battery pack malfunctions or is punctured. I wonder if these high density Sulphur batteries are as stable as some of the Lithium Phosphate Manganese batteries that are used in modern electric cars? Otherwise we'll never see them in large applications because they would be considered to be unsafe.

  • by AndrewFenn ( 1449703 ) on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @09:49PM (#46404185)

    even with just a 100 charges a battery that has 1.2 A per gram sounds awesome for RC flying.

  • by XNormal ( 8617 ) on Wednesday March 05, 2014 @03:36AM (#46405843) Homepage
    In the 1960s there was research into sulfur-based polymers but apparently ran into some problems:

    "Recently we found ourselves with an odour problem beyond our worst expectations. During early experiments, a stopper jumped from a bottle of residues, and, although replaced at once, resulted in an immediate complaint of nausea and sickness from colleagues working in a building two hundred yards away. Two of our chemists who had done no more than investigate the cracking of minute amounts of trithioacetone found themselves the object of hostile stares in a restaurant and suffered the humiliation of having a waitress spray the area around them with a deodorant."

    http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/06/11/things_i_wont_work_with_thioacetone.php [corante.com]

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