Plastic Batteries Coming Soon? 200
Roland Piquepaille writes "Engineers at Brown University have built a prototype of a hybrid plastic battery that uses a conductive polymer. The system, which marries the power of a capacitor with the storage capacity of a battery, can store and deliver power efficiently. For example, during performance testing, 'it delivered more than 100 times the power of a standard alkaline battery.' Still, it's unlikely that such a device can appear on the market before several years."
Finally!!!! (Score:3, Funny)
Ouch (Score:5, Funny)
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Actually, the resistance of the tongue would probably limit the current to a safe level, even if the battery were capable of much bigger current than today's batteries.
-- TeknoHog, ruining perfectly good jokes with technical facts since 1978.Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
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GOP: Grand Oil Party / God Onl
Five to ten years... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Five to ten years... (Score:5, Informative)
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Why is it that we keep hearing about this kind of advancement "to be available in five to ten years", and yet the storage capacity of batteries has been stagnated for at least that long?
Your Sig:
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
Isn't that a bit, eh, contradictory?
BTW: batteries are DEFINITELY improving. Remember rechargables a la 1980, these dumb nicad thingies that never really worked all that well? Compare that to today's NiMH batteries that outperform many alkalines, and
Re:Five to ten years... (Score:5, Informative)
P = V*I
100P = V*I
I = 100 (P/V)
For example, most powerfull easy to find rechargeable AA batteries can deliver 2.5A, or 3W, at 1.2V.
P1 = 1.2 * 2.5
P1 = 3W
This battery can power a 3W, or 2.5A, device for an hour.
With an increase of 100 times more power we have:
P2 = 100 * P1
P2 = 100 * 3
P2 = 300W
The new battery could power the 3W device for 100 hours, instead of the 1 hour that the current battery can do, or a 300W device for a single hour.
Re:Five to ten years... (Score:5, Informative)
You're confusing power with energy (which is easy to do, considering your "power bill" is actually a bill for energy used, not power). What it's saying is that its peak power delivery is 100 times that of a normal battery, so at a given voltage, it can deliver 100 times the current of a standard battery. It could well be able to store the same amount of energy, though, which means that if you're running it at its improved full power it dies in 1/100 the time of a normal battery.
Good replacement for NiCd applications? (Score:4, Informative)
- NiCd - low energy, high power, nasty heavy metals - good for driving small motors that need high current for a short time.
- NiMH - about 4-5 times the energy of NiCd, lower power, medium life - they'll discharge in under a month even if you're not using them, so they're not good for some applications.
- Rechargeable alkaline - medium energy, lower power, long life, full 1.5 volts.
For toys like remote-control model cars or model airplanes, Nickel Cadmium is the main choice, because it can dump a lot of power for a given battery weight. If this new technology lives up to its promise, it sounds like a good replacement, and we can avoid the heavy metal toxicity problems of cadmium. The article doesn't talk about what voltage it generates (some things really like 1.5v better than 1.2v), or how long the charge lasts if you're not using it.Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, if you look at the r/c hobby scene, LiPo batteries are the big thing these days. The voltage-per-cell is higher (3.7V per cell) than both NiMH and NiCd (1.2V per cell). But they are considerably more expensive and require special speed controllers as well as special chargers. An improperly charged/discharged LiPo battery can literally result in a fireball.
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From the article: "It had twice the storage capacity of an electric double-layer capacitor."
Sounds like this is just an improved capacitor design. I understand why the reseachers would want to hype it up by calling it a new type of battery (publicity and research grants).
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There's a little more to it though. When you're talking about batteries there are two things to consider (if you're only talking about electricity supply).
First, there's the power it can supply. More accurately, you're probably interested in both the voltage, and the current (multiply them together and you get the power). Most devices, from light bulbs to computers, require a certain voltage to operate. At the same time, you want to be sure your battery can provide sufficient c
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You're missing a LOT, but you'll get modded up for it anyway... The article even says it's only about 2X the capacity of current capacitors, shortly after the 100X notation.
When they say 100X more power, they mean it can deliver current 100X FASTER than a battery at a certain voltage. That actually does very slightly increase the useful life of a battery, but that's not 10
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The power output of an energy storing device says very little about the amount of energy it can store. An ultracapacitor (used in hybrid cars) can deliver huge power but has considerably lower energy density than conventional batteries. See for example this plot [wikipedia.org] from wikipedia.
Re:Five to ten years... (Score:5, Informative)
You've introduced three units in your calculations:
* Power (P, in Watts W)
* Voltage (V, in Volts V)
* Current (I, in Amperes A)
However, these units only measure energy at a single point in time. But we're dealing with finite energy sources. We need to introduce another unit:
* Time (T, in Hours h, or in Seconds s)
Let's take a new look at your formula, adding a variable for time:
P * h = V * I * h
Now, let us consider a the same NiMH AA battery that you looked at earlier. To know how powerful that battery is, we need two know two things:
* Its cell voltage: 1.2V
* Its capacity rating: 2.5Ah (normally quoted in mAh / you'd see 2500mAh in the specs)
* It's maximum power drain: 2.5A
These two numbers tell us that roughly, this AA battery can deliver its quoted voltage of 1.2V for one hour if the current drain is 2.5A.
P1 = 1.2V * 2.5A * 1h
P1 = 3W * 1h = 1.2V * 2.5Ah
P1 = 3Wh = 1.2V * 2.5Ah
This battery can power a device with a power draw of 3W (equivalent to a current draw of 2.5A at a voltage of 1.2V) for one hour. It has a capacity of 3Wh (equivalent to a capacity rating of 2.5Ah at a cell voltage of 1.2V).
Let's assume that these are the specs for our new battery:
* Its cell voltage: 1.2V
* Its capacity rating: 2.5Ah
* It's maximum power drain: 250A
Now, this is where you get it wrong. What we're doing is increasing the power drain by 100, not increasing the capacity by 100.
P1 = 3W * 1h = 1.2V * 2.5A * 1h
P2 = 3W / 100 * 100 * 1h = 1.2V * 2.5A * 100 * 1h / 100
P2 = 3W * 1h = 1.2V * 250A * 0.01h
P2 = 3Wh = 1.2V * 250A * 36s
P2 = 3Wh = 1.2V * 2.5Ah
So, the new battery could power the 3W device for 1 hour, or a 300W device for 36 seconds.
Now, in reality, this new battery/capacitor hybrid is likely to have a far lower capacity rating (quoted in mAh on the box) than your typical NiMH AA cell. Also, the typical AA cell has a higher maximum power drain, which can be increased further by cooling the battery as you discharge it.
Also, in the real world, things don't work out quite as nicely as in these equations - there are power losses that vary based on a lot of factors. How fast is the battery discharged? How hot is it - and the more quickly you discharge it, the hotter it becomes, the less efficient it becomes. Is it a continuous discharge load or are we looking at spikes that give it time to cool down?
Anyway. This battery isn't quite the revolution your flawed calculations would indicate.
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So if you did the same with something that had the ability to deliver 100x the power, you would probably end up in the hospital (if, for instance, it was in your pocket and the bridge was your keys which has happened to me a couple times).
On the other hand, it would be a great boon for electric cars. The batteries (if really
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"It had twice the storage capacity of an electric double-layer capacitor. And it delivered more than 100 times the power of a standard alkaline battery."
The plastic "batteries" can deliver energy fast over a short period of time, like a capacitor, or they can deliver it slowly, like a battery. Bu
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I'd also point out that if they don't return everything, including the batteries, they have to pay to replace them.
You are correct: (Score:3, Informative)
For example, the first cell phones were the size of a laptop, weighed a ton, and worked for about twenty minutes (did they even have a standby mode?)
fast forward to today, where cell phones are the size and weight of a multivitamin, last for hours of talking, weeks of standby, and taste like candy. (unlike the vi
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week. It's just a conspiracy to get more money from me when all my gizmos run out of juice on a weekly basis.
Don't tell anyone I told you this, but I haven't had to change the battery in my watch for over a year.
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So, I
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I've heard this argument in various forms for 30+ years, and it's as big a load of nonsense as it's ever been. Let's start with cars. How, exactly, does General Motors (or any other car maker) benefit by selling you a car that gets worse gas mileage? They are not in the oil business, and even the slightest hint of collusion
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This probably has something to do with the fact that british petrol costs about the same per litre as american petrol does per gallon.
Incidentally, there are cars here that do 80mpg. Not by using some magic carburetor technology, but by things like not being the same size as
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Some of the major auto makers still build carburetor based designs in their labs now and then, looking for one
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http://archive.greenpeace.org/climate/smile/tech/t able.html [greenpeace.org]
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People were able to duplicate the vapor carb trick by running their fuel feed around the rad a few times - it worked because carbs back in those days were notoriously inefficient (8 to 10 mpg for a car!) and anything that let more fuel be vaporized before it entered the combustion chamber meant more fuel burnt, hence more efficiency.
Of course, on a hot summer day - vapor lock.
Because of the way carburetors work (lowering air pressure by speeding up air flow through a restriction) they can actually have
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The engines canna take it no more! (Score:5, Funny)
Scotty: The engines, they canna take it no more, they'll blow for sure
ENERGIZER BUNNY INTERRUPTS: *clang* *clang* *clang*
Announcer: Compared to regular dilithium crystals engines powered by new Energizer Polymer crystals last twice as long.
ENERGIZER BUNNY: *clang* *clang* *clang*
[fade to black, Enterprise exploding in the background]
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilithium [wikipedia.org]
Average time-to-market? (Score:5, Insightful)
I ask, because I've been reading slashdot for over 4 years, and it seems like there's a healthy number of "revolutionary power supply" breakthroughs, or "batteries that will change your life (for cheap!)," and today, my new laptop still dies after an hour and a half.
I don't mean to be a cynic, but it really feels like these ideas never make it out of the lab.
Re:Average time-to-market? (Score:5, Interesting)
1. It opens the door for a truly practical electric car, one that uses a far smaller battery pack (which means more passenger/cargo space and less battery "dead weight" to lug around) with very long range and recharge times about the same as one refilling the fuel tank in a passenger car.
2. It makes it possible for large-scale storage of electric power, meaning power generated by wind turbines and/or solar cell farms can be stored for future use when the wind speed is low and during the night.
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Hey, if the batteries are small/light enough, even if the recharge times are measured in hours, surely recharge stations could simply give you a fresh one in exchange for your empty one... If necessary, they could make sure t
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So then it would be just like a gas tank, right?
Re:Average time-to-market? (Score:5, Interesting)
Gas tanks don't explode in the real world like they do on movies & tv. Gasoline needs to be in a fine mist to become explosive--a puddle of gasoline will only burn as quickly as it can breathe in oxygen. A capacitor on the other hand can release all of its stored energy instantly. A big enough cap to power a car would go off like a bomb.
Obviously they'll have safety circuitry to prevent that from happening in the event of a short . . . but I still haven't heard how they intend to make them safe in a car crash, when the capacitor itself might get ruptured or crushed.
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We still have the technique we use today to make safe batteries... Encapsulate several little batteries, and use them toghether to make a huge one.
The strenght of the container you put your battery on decreases proportionaly to its size, but the ebergy it contains decreases with the third power of the size. So, the real question is: How long until we are able to manufactur
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Re:Average time-to-market? Actually (Score:2)
Actually, during the night is when power consumption is the lowest also. You've turned your lights on, but you've shutdown your factories. That's why hydro systems pump water back uphill suring those hours to store it for peak daytime usage.
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At some point, if you want supply your entire electricy requirements from things like solar, wind, tidal and hydro, then you need some way of storing the electricity until it is needed.
Hydro can do this to a certain extent, but certainly in Brita
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Ni-Cd was a "wow, this is cool and will be on the market in 2 to 3 years" technology once. So was Li-Ion. Heck, so was Alkine (a long time ago).
Your laptop still dies after 1.5 hours because some engineer decided that 1.5 hours was all you needed. Some of today's laptops draw 2 or 3 times as much current as older
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You were there for that, in the 1800s? Just how old ARE you?
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Also, there is the replacement cost of a laptop battery, they fail after a few years of use. By that time, the new laptops have increased in power and performance, so I tend to want to weigh the cost of a new battery vs just getting a new laptop. New battery, delivered, perhaps less than 15-20% of the cost of a new laptop, but consider this:
summary is pretty bad, this is not a revolution (Score:5, Informative)
This is neat, but not a revolution, it's exactly the hybrid of a battery and a capacitor - it has some advantages of both.
This device has similar or less storage capacity than a battery, but can deliver its power much faster.
It has similar or less power delivery abilities than a capacitor, but twice the storage capacity.
In MANY devices, the real problem is that the batteries drain. This doesn't help that in the least bit. This will not make your electric car go farther. This only helps the situation with ultra-high-drain requirements, where a normal battery just wouldn't work.
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And in many devices (camera flashes, high-power or small-size flashlights, etc.) normal batteries just don't work well because the power requirements beat the hell out of them and they only deliver a small fraction of their nominal capacity (usually r
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Coming to mind:
Camera Flashes
Quick Robotic Movements
Stun Guns
Short Burst Radio Transmissions
Most applications that involve hydrolics
Cutting Lasers
Ignition Sparks (stoves, cigarettes, cars, etc)
And in high-drain circumstances, the batteries would behave better overall. Standard alkalines waste a lot of capacity when trying to satisfy high-drain situations.
The form factor seems more interesting, however. As thin as a transparency s
Re:summary is pretty bad, this is not a revolution (Score:4, Informative)
This has more storage than a low-storage capacitor and more power than a low-power battery.
It does not in any place, at all, say that it has more - or even as much - storage as a battery or power as a capacitor. If it had 100 times the storage of a battery it would change a lot of things.
Remember MIT's nanotube supercapacitor? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is a potentially huge breakthrough, since unlike regular batteries this new power storage unit can be recharged hundreds of thousands of times and the recharge time is measured in minutes, not hours. That makes it possible for truly practical all-electric car and also as a truly practical means to store power generated by wind turbines and solar cell arrays for use later.
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Electric cars have been 'practical' for a long time given the technology of 20 years ago. Don't believe GM.
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Practical as in 'Economical', no.
Practical as in having no disadvantages over gasoline? Not yet.
Practical as in having enough advantages over their disadvantages, as compared to gasoline power? Not Yet.
Look at the spread of CDs, then DVDs, No longer did you need to worry about rewinding, can instantly chapter forward, no worry about magnets, overall smaller form factor, etc...
Then look at the popularity of LCD monitors. While say the color accuracy is w
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It's much better than that. Supercapacitors could not only power our cars, but they can solve a lot of the problems with renewable energy sources for generating the electricity in the first place. i.e. what good is a solar power plant at night. When automobiles start running off of grid power exclusively, the incentives for renewable power sources go up dramatically--especi
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Hydrocarbons as a component are not the problems. H. as energy source are. Oil is basically stored solar energy. If we have replacements for the primary energy source (like solar energy, wind, geothermal, maybe even fusion someday) hydrocarbons can be created synthetically if needed (but even when Oil is useless as an energy source, it will be still around).
In fact, this is the future almost all car manufacturers envision: the electric car. Why?
First, because electrical engines have a huge torque com
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1) You store quite a lot of electrical energy in a supercapacitor pack. This means potentially drastic reductions in the size of the battery pack on an all-electric car, reducing the "deadweight" of the car and providing cargo/passenger space comparable to a regular car now. You could sacrifice a little cargo/pax space for a larger supercapacitor battery pack and get driving ranges as much as 600 km (372 miles),
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In real life pra
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Presumably we'd charge the things with electricity from something renewable. Even if we didn't, concentrating production of energy at large facilities would likely make it more efficient and easier to scrub the exhaust.
polypyrrole (Score:2)
Yes! Because we all need a good jolt once in a while during the day, and the coffee doesn't always do the trick.
On a more serious note, this polypyrrole material is just too much like the PyrE [wikipedia.org] stuff and we all know how that ended up.
Quotith TFA (Score:2, Interesting)
Uh, maybe I'm behind on my knowledge of current capacitor technology, but I'm under the impression that twice as much storage as a capacitor is not saying a whole lot. So, basically the thing can juice a large amount of amps, for what?
If you want to use battery-like capacitors, I'd recomment the mu
So what the difference between... (Score:3, Interesting)
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Yeah, but... (Score:2)
Bad news - it uses a gold strip as one of its components.
Time to market - take a wild guess...
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A strip of gold, while it might be expensive, has to be looked at in the context of expense. If it's worth it, it'll be used in a moment.
CAPACITY, not power, is important... (Score:5, Interesting)
An alkaline battery might have a capacity of (say) 2000 mAh, meaning that it could power a three-watt bulb for about an hour. This device, if it lives up to the claims, could do so for about two hours.
An alkaline battery couldn't power a 100-watt bulb at all, because it can't deliver more than a few amps. This device apparently _could_ power a 100-watt bulb... but only for about four minutes.
The ability to deliver power, that is to deliver energy in a short, intense burst, might be very useful for some applications. But it wouldn't let you recharge your laptop once a week or anything like that.
(There's another question I have. A battery hold an almost steady voltage for a long time, then declines fairly rapidly. Almost a square wave. This is one reason why it's hard to measure discharge state. Presumably these ultracapacitors have a smooth, exponential voltage decline, like radioactive decay. That probably means that you need tricky circuitry to exploit them... and there is probably always a significant amount of power in the device that you can't use, because the voltage has dropped too low).
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It wasn't even that. The device had double the capacity of a traditional capacitor, which traditionally suck for capacity (hence why we use batteries). It's really what it claims, a hybrid. It's between a battery and a capacitor in terms of both storage capacity and power delivery.
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Also, it doesn't have double the capacity of an an alkaline battery, but double the capacity of an electric double-layer capacitor. So, it may infact even have less then the capacity of an alkaline battery. But there isn't much info on the density of the material, so I'm not sure why you think it would be a good idea to
never in consumer devices, maybe in military (Score:2)
High energy density is dangerous. As it is, we're seeing laptop computers vent with flame.
This thing? Gee, it's basically a bomb. Even better? What, you want to rip apart the whole airport?
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Actually, if you figure out the energy density of the notebook itself, it's pretty high. E=mc2 you know. It's just that the energy is in a really stable form. It's not density, but stability that matters.
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High-density capaciters are damn bad. Damage one little film, and you get an arc. This then damages yet more, and so on, until all of the stored charge has been used to rapidly heat the capaciter.
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Roland the Plogger again (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, Roland the Plogger again.
First, this isn't about a battery with a 100x higher energy density. That would be a major breakthrough. It's about one with a high peak power, for surge applications. That's a specialty item.
It's also been done. Flat batteries with high peak-power outputs were invented over 25 years ago at Polaroid, for the PolaPulse [photobattery.com] battery. One of those was in every Polaroid film pack for years. It could put out 15 amps for a brief period, providing plenty of power to run the camera mechanism. (Since, in that camera, the battery had to power the mechanism that squeezed the film between the development rollers, substantial power was required for about one second.) The battery chemistry wasn't rechargeable, although there's no reason a rechargeable chemistry couldn't have been put in that packaging.
PolaPulse batteries are still available, and turn up now and then when a flat battery with a high peak current is needed. One amusing use of PolaPulse batteries is StartMeUp [manufacturingcenter.com], which is a pocket-sized unit with six PolaPulse batteries used to restart a car.
Several other manufacturers [ecnmag.com] claim to make flat batteries, some of which are rechargeable. However, none of the manufacturers mentioned in that article actually seem to be shipping product.
Short term only? Not so. (Score:2)
First, this isn't about a battery with a 100x higher energy density. That would be a major breakthrough. It's about one with a high peak power, for surge applications. That's a specialty item
This new battery/capacitor hybrid can be used for long term usage. It is not only for short surges. I quote TFA:
The result is a hybrid. Like a capacitor, the battery can be rapidly charged then discharged to deliver power. Like a battery, it can store and deliver that charge over long periods of time. During perfor
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The PolaPulse can do that, too. You can draw 15 amps for a few seconds, or a few microamps for years to keep a clock alive.
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Regardless of how long you're storing the energy, you'd only use this technology (as described) in surge applications. If you don't need 100x the power, then use an alkaline because it'll la
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conducting polymer supercapacitors (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/dep_chim/prof/belanger
Other examples include:
http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServ let?prog=normal&id=JESOAN0001510000070A1052000001& idtype=cvips&gifs=yes [aip.org]
Nothing new to see here, folks! Sorry!
(Yes, I am an electrochemist)
two questions, one serious (Score:3, Interesting)
2) How long until all plastics are banned from commercial flights, because they might be illicit power sources for bombs or weapons?
(I'm not telling which is the serious question)
New Standards (Score:3, Informative)
What I really want to see is "plastic" catalyst membranes in these fuelcells. That will make the cells cheap and easily replaceable, lowering the TCO consistent with the cheap fuel. It might need to be "new standard" plastic, carbon fullerenes with nanoscale features catalyzing the process. But if we can avoid the rare earth and precious metal elements fuelcells often require, we can more easily switch our power systems over to the cleaner, smaller, cheaper systems. Someday, a phone that can talk longer than I can.
Badn journalism.... (Score:3, Informative)
Charge time (Score:2, Insightful)
Research Fraud (Score:2, Insightful)
Oops (Score:2)
Hate to short this puppy out by accident.
Digital Cameras (Score:2)
BOOM (Score:2)
With these polymer batteries you've got the high voltage and high current. if these get shorted not only will there be a violent bang but surely the huge current would result in melting/igniting the immediate surroundings or creating an EMP.
Many Years (Score:2)
And many, many years before they are common.
As someone who has moved almost all standalone devices to rechargeables, I'm sensitive to what little incentive the battery manufacturers have to scale down their business. Outside of specialty battery stores, a computer store and Target the only place I've seen "standard size" rechargeables sold is SuperAmerica and I give them credit for that.
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How do you like them napples?
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Yeah (Score:2)