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A new battery technology.


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It seems that new "game changing Battery technology" statements are popping up pretty much weekly at the mo. I have a read and find that it isn't really all that new, nor all that game changing. What i have been seeing is just improvements on the same ole stuff. Which is great in itself, but simply rehashing what is already in offer is never going to get the gains the World really needs.
Kind of like the computer world where Moores law of CPU power doubling every 18months, Batteries also see improvements in both Power increase and Price decrease. Lithium technology has a rule of thumb of 5%. Back in 2015, the Us department of energy threw US$120 million into the pot for development. They wanted to see what they termed the 5-5-5 Plan. They wanted to see Batteries improve to be 5x more powerful, 5x less expensive in 5yrs. OK, so I guess they still have a couple of years to go, but I haven't seen any great changes yet.
Well, not just yet, but something exciting is on the horizon that will not only meet that call, but perhaps far exceed it. In fact, it could be the Holy Grail in energy storage. And it was stumbled upon by accident. Which is what I always feel brings the best and biggest changes in technology. Accidental finds.
Elon Musk made a very interesting statement some years back. He said that the future of energy storage would be Super Capacitors. Clever dude that guy. A capacitor is a very simple device and is found in pretty much all electronic devices. They take many forms, but the way they operate is all the same. There are two plates with a dielectric between them. An electric charge can be stored on those plates. The charge can be applied very quickly and discharge just as fast. But the Dielectric very slowly discharges the plates and so long term storage is not possible.
Or wasn't.
Till now.
In the 1970s, Dr Donald Highgate found a way to make contact lenses more comfortable. I won't go into that. This post is long enough now, but it is a polymer matrix that absorbs water.

Superdielectrics CEO Jim Heathcote and Highgate have been working on a process of improving their polymer matrix more electrically conductive to improve Hydrogen Fuel cells. Just recently, with an eye on biomedical applications, they were trying to make a better interface between nervs and artificial limbs. They had a piece of the polymer and measured it's capacitance and it didn't make sense. Highgate remembers scribbling some rough figures on the back of an envelope.

"I did the calculation and I thought, 'Bloody hell, that's ridiculous,'" he recalls. "The capacitance was 100 times what it ought to have been for a little thing a square centimetre. I thought I'd made a mistake."

They had stumbled on a material with dielectric properties between 1,000 and 10,000 times greater than existing conductors. Over the last 14 months Superdieletrics hahave been working with researchers at the universities of Bristol and Surrey to determine whether their polymers work in real world conditions. They released their results this week.

The scientists have created small devices that can power a fan or an LED for a few minutes, and claim that with further work the material could eventually reach energy densities of up to 180 watt-hours per kilogram, compared to 10 Whr/kg for the best currently available supercapacitors.

That would bring supercapacitors in line with lithium-ion batteries. It could mean smartphones that charge in seconds, and cheaper, safer electric vehicles that you can power in the same amount of time it takes to fill up a petrol car.

I guess we all have to wait a little longer to see a battery of this technology, but maybe, just maybe they might have something before 5yrs is up.

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Can't come soon enough.That will make IC cars cheap and petrol cheaper. Meantime electricity generation will have to be multiplied by xxxx. Wheres that coming from.? Greenies won't allow nuclear or coal generation. Maori won't allow hydro. Oh dear. All those electric cars stranded. Don't overlook other infrastructure costs either.There's no such thing as a free lunch folks. One way or other you pay

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Wheels isn't it interesting the things discovered "by accident". A good argument for spending public money on pure research.

Yep I reckon the biggest advancements are when we have the accidental ones. It is too easy to have your head down looking to improve what you have in front of you, rather than standing back at looking at possibilities. If we want changes in technology, we have to think outside the box. Because inside the box there is nothing really new. Only small improvements on efficiency can be made, but the same ole " engine" is the heart of the technology.

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A question (searching the net, no answer). I looked up lead crystal only to find there are others. Lead carbon and lead silicon too. Are they all the same? Which one best for a boating situation?

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There are dozens of Chemistry types. But not all are made into batteries that we are familiar with. The two big markets that many of the players are trying to design for are the EV and Industrial scale energy storage for Grid back up. This is because the "RV" market which is what boats fall into is actually quite small in some respects and that these new technologies often require specialised charging equipment. eg, lithium compared to Lead Acid. Because the equipment is expensive, it limits the number of units likely to be sold and so the market becomes smaller.
Then add to that, many different technology names are not all that different as far as the actual batteries are concerned. It becomes a marketing ploy to make the punter think they are looking at something different or even better than the oppositions.
For instance, for many years now, we have had on the market the Calcium Lead Acid, sometimes called Calcium Calcium batteries. Which makes one wonder how you can have Calcium in an Acid. Well actually, Calcium is added to the Molten lead as a filler and was done by the Chinese to reduce the amount of lead, which is expensive, used.
There are several Lead Carbon batteries. One is using activated Carbon around the positive post. Another is using Carbon nano tubes and another Carbon electrodes in every plate set.
There is another technology that has reportedly (by the manufacturer) huge advancements. But so far much of it is being kept under wraps, so much so, that it is unsure if it is hype to get investors or if they are trying to keep the thing secret. Check out EEstor.https://eestorcorp.com/ The battery is based on a modified barium titanate ceramic powder and claims a specific energy of up to 280Wh/kg, higher than lithium-ion. One-tenth of the weight of a NiMH battery in a hybrid application; no deep-cycle wear-down, 3–6 minute charge time; no hazardous material; similar manufacturing costs to lead acid; and a self-discharge of only 0.02 percent per month, a fraction of that of lead acid and Li-ion. https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2018/01/24/1304382/0/en/EEStor-Announces-Several-Key-Technological-Improvements-to-Its-Energy-Storage-Products.html

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So, is that yes they are basically the same battery design or totally different? Sorry, a bit confused Wheels. I know the only comparrisons on the net are with SLA or AGM which isn't that hard to beat so I am assuming lead crystal, carbon and silicon are all the same? Lead carbon seem to be cheaper to buy.l

Haha, yep. I remember years ago a guy on tv :" this will revolusionise the motor industry!" and started an engine that wont wear out, needs no oil and half the weight of a conventional engine...ceramics! Why didnt it catch on!? Turns out to cast and kiln the components to an accurate size is impossible. Oh well...neat idea and lots invested!?

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Turn back now, this is one rabbit hole you dont wanna go down lol.

 

I haven't seen EEStor in a while, they should be cellmates with Andrea Rossi by now, If EEStor with Lockheed Martin involvement couldn't produce a product for the US military with all the funding it entails in nearly 15 years then it's 99% vaporware.

 

CH That battery is 54watthours, For perspective that's the same amount of juice you have in 5-6 cellphones, It's benifit is the fact it can dump what little juice is had in a 114kw burst which is about 20 households average peak power usage 

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CH That battery is 54watthours, For perspective that's the same amount of juice you have in 5-6 cellphones, It's benifit is the fact it can dump what little juice is had in a 114kw burst which is about 20 households average peak power usage

 

I did electronics (a radio tech and amateur) worked on high (120kw) transmitters for the ABC and never heard of any device that can output, burst or otherwise, 114,000 watts when its capacity is only 54 watts! If so, theyve cracked it!!!!

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54watthours :P

 

It's about 194,400 joules, which when drained over 1.7 seconds equates to 114kw output. High pulse cap's have been around for a while, The news with that unit is it's 166 Farad capacity

 

ZL1EMI :)

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Supercapacitors have been around for years. General Electric invented it in the 50's, but they had no known use for one back then.
Cracked it? no, sadly,  not as a battery replacement that is. Not yet. But the current range of super capacitors are used in conjunction with chemical batteries, where high current is required for a few seconds and then high current is absorbed again in a few seconds. Something as of yet, no chemical battery can do. So for example, an EV Truck may need high current to get moving. Then when the brakes are applied, the brake is actually a high current generator that shunts the charge back into the SC ready for acceleration again. The normal road speed being handled by the chemical battery.
The big problem with them is that they do not maintain a Voltage level. The voltage decreases at a linear rate as the current is used. Where as a chemical battery maintains a reasonable voltage level till the battery is nearly exhausted, then drops away. And as noted by you guys already, they still do not have large energy storage. 54Whrs. But oh boy, you would never want to short the thing eh. 9700A short circuit current. That would be unbelievably dangerous. A cable would vaporise instantly. 
Also, at the moment, super capacitors are hugely expensive. Something like $10K or more per KWh

Re your earlier question Crazyhorse, sorry I don't know that level of detail. I think there is a general design of a technology, lets say the Lead Carbon for example. Then the various players add their own additional tech to it. Like Nano tubes or activated carbon and so on. I think this is likely what gets them around Patents. But I am guessing.
 

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Thanks Wheels. I am tempted to get a 100ah lead crystal battery. 18 years, rapid charge, seems to good to be true but the price! I realise bulk charging requires a bit but we have a 120 amp alternator, just thinking aloud.

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