Solid state battery design charges in minutes, lasts for thousands of cycles::Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a new lithium metal battery that can be charged and discharged at least 6,000 times—more than any other pouch …
Before people jump in here to talk about how battery technology never comes to market… Every single one of these discoveries teaches us something new, sometimes it reveals tech that’s unsustainable, sometimes it’s un-manufacturable, but it always gives us another direction to look for things.
Tech goes relatively slowly from lab results to store shelves, so stuff you read about 10-20 years ago are what are in your devices today. This could very easily be the way that your phone runs in 2035.
This could be as game changing as lithium ion was back in the early 2000’s, or it could go the way of most lab results. We won’t know until we keep poking at it and figuring out what it is useful for.
Sure of course, and this was a good article, but I think it’s absolutely right to ream pop tech rags that pick these data up and make it sound like the battery revolution is right around the corner. It is important to couch this stuff in the fact that battery tech is operating on what appear to be fairly narrow margins and that reliable gains in efficiency are not likely within arms reach. There is an ocean of battery research and very little of it results in marketable changes without dozens of other breakthroughs needed to be made to make the new finds feasible. Curbed enthusiasm is appropriate in this field not journalistic tech hyperbole.
sometimes it reveals tech that’s unsustainable, sometimes it’s un-manufacturable,
Which sustainability and manufacturability are going through their own development. So what was once unsustainable or un-manufacturable, suddenly become one or both with no additional progress in that area.
All in all I love that battery tech is getting the attention it is.
I’m looking forward to what this means for [email protected]
Ok, I am interested in anyone with specific knowledge on this topic indicating whether the first order mental image I have of battery tech is correct?
The way I understand it is that the highest energy density batteries are your non-rechargeable lithium cells like watch batteries. Rechargeable lithium-ion cells have perhaps half the capacity due to the fact that they need to add measures that prevent these dendrites, as mentioned in the article, from forming. So the Holy Grail here is to develop a rechargeable technology that prevents the dendrite problem without sacrificing capacity so that you can get the best of both worlds? And that is what they are working on here with the solid state design. Am I close to the mark?
I’d say the “holy grail” is to move away from lithium entirely and instead move towards capacitors or hydrogen fuel cells. Both are far more promising, however right now they’re quite expensive and heavy.
In the case of capacitors, essentially you have two pieces of metal very close together. The closer they are together without touching the more energy you can store (the size of the metal pieces also matters - larger being better). Capacitors are old well understood technology, and in a laboratory setting you can make ones that are far better than a lithium battery. Getting that out of a lab and into mass production is more difficult and the best we have right now are quite heavy for the amount of power they store. Still, they do exist, and they work very well. A lot of electric trains, for example, will charge a capacitor when the train slows down for a station, take on a bit more charge while stopped at the station, then use most of the energy to accelerate up to speed. They might also get a bit more charge from overhead wires while travelling down the tracks.
In theory, a capacitor can charge or discharge instantly. In practice providing that much charge isn’t really practical, so it’s easier to charge them a little more slowly… but still way way faster than a lithium ion battery which wouldn’t even be able to do regenerative braking on something as heavy as a train - that’s just far too much power coming in.
Hydrogen is actually technically very light. Just 1kg (about 2lbs) is about the equivalent of the battery in a lot of EVs. However the equipment to convert that energy into motion at the wheels tends to be quite heavy and expensive. Costs are coming down however, and the Japanese manufacturers (Toyota/etc) seem to think it’s the right way to go. Time will tell if they’re right… but it seems like right now the biggest problem with those is just that there’s nowhere to buy hydrogen - compared to an EV which you can charge pretty much anywhere. Even in your own home. There are also prototype hydrogen aircraft. Something lithium will never be able to do.
My prediction is capacitors and hydrogen will both eventually displace lithium batteries. It’s more a question of when than if… I wouldn’t hold your breath though.
Capacitors are never going to have the volumetric density of chemical batteries. That kind of tech is not going to work for anything that needs to be small and mobile (which includes cars, which need to be small for the amount of energy they can store).
I know less about hydrogen fuel cells, but hydrogen also has very low energy storage capacity per unit volume (unless you can manage to keep it at very high pressure or very low temperature, which introduces its own challenges).
There will be applications that can use these types of things, but I doubt it will ever be a drop in replacement for chemical storage.
Hydrogen is actually technically very light. Just 1kg (about 2lbs) is about the equivalent of the battery in a lot of EVs. However the equipment to convert that energy into motion at the wheels tends to be quite heavy and expensive.
More than that, the storage tanks required to store an effective amount of hydrogen are insanely heavy and inefficient. A full tank might be only 6% hydrogen by weight, the rest being the weight of the tank itself.
The tanks are kept under extremely high pressures to achieve acceptable storage density, so safety is a concern as well. Unless this problem is solved I don’t see fuel cells replacing batteries in transportation.
the Japanese manufacturers (Toyota/etc) seem to think it’s the right way to go.
A big factor in this is that Japan’s overall energy transition strategy is heavily focused on hydrogen, and has been since the 1970s. Back then hydrogen was considered one of the promising alternatives alongside biofuel and battery electric vehicles. Today battery electric has taken a clear lead and fuel cells are nowhere close, but Japanese industry is already heavily invested in hydrogen tech (and receives substantial government subsidy).
There is some potential for hydrogen still. It’s probably the only feasible means of decarbonising heavy industries such as steel production. It’s a potential option for grid-scale energy storage, given that it’s fairly easily produced using surplus renewable energy.
Ok, so we’re onto capacitors and fuel cells now. Here we go with my mental image of those.
On the pros side, capacitors can charge/discharge in an instant, have nearly perfect energy recovery (almost everything you put in comes back out), and have almost limitless charging cycles with no memory effects or any of that nonsense. On the cons side, even a supercapacitor can’t match battery tech for energy storage density and they tend to be not so great for long-term electrical storage.
Fuel cells are sort of the opposite. Once you’ve sorted out the challenges in producing/storing/transporting hydrogen (these are all non-trivial but not necessarily deal-breakers either?), you’re looking at essentially limitless storage duration since it’s, well, a fuel. Like you can stockpile it for next year. The energy density is enviably high, though with pure hydrogen, you’re doing better by weight than by volume. In any case though, it’s looking pretty good compared to batteries.
But pulling the energy out of them in a timely manner is a major pain. You need either a chemical or thermal catalyst to speed it along for most applications. And the chemical of choice is platinum, which is not exactly abundant. If you wanted a fuel cell in every car, is there even enough on Earth for that? I’m not so sure.
Also, I have read impurities in the fuel can really mess up this type of fuel cell. The thermal type is purportedly more forgiving in this respect, though I picture thermal fuel cells as these hulking things that would work best as stationary power plants? Well, maybe they would be a good fit for large ships? It’s hard to picture some giant container vessel plying the oceans on battery power, at any rate.
Lithium might be the lightest metal but it only has 1 free electron. Aluminum has 3 electrons per atom therefore theoretically it would have a higher density than lithium.
With batteries it’s usually a triangle of features: maximum current, capacity, charge cycles. And you can pick only two. Whole charging in minutes thing is not really an issue. Any battery can be charged fast if you can dissipate the heat fast enough. Also if capacity is low enough then would potentially justify charge cycles and fast charge.
That’s great, but we won’t get it for another 10 or 20 years. So until then, it’s great, but pointless. Solid state batteries have been in the works since at least the early 2010s and we’re just now supposed to be getting the first iterations in electric cars in the next few years.
In the 2000s: this new lithium ion tech stuff sounds great, but it takes forever to charge, costs too much, and doesn’t charge fast meaning we need to buy another battery to charge.
My phone today charges from 10% to 85% in like 40 minutes and gives me about 8 to 10 hrs of use. In that time I’m sure I’ll be near an outlet to recharge.
They said the same thing about solar panels, the electric car, cell phones. Hell, the president of IBM said the world only needed 5 computers. Discoveries don’t mean an immediate push to the public.
Actually, discovery to implementation to market goes really damn fast now. Engineers used slide rulers, paper and pencil, and clay models to design back in the day. It would cost millions of dollars and 10 years. My cousin 3D prints stuff to see if it will work, then CNC if he needs durability. He doesn’t have a degree, he just likes to tinker. Imagine what manufacturing will be like in 10 to 20 years.
Shit, does anyone remember battery power tools from 20 years ago? 5 screws in and they start to die. Now Milwaukee tool itself is essentially an industrial battery pack manufacturer.
