A Chinese Startup May Have Cracked Solid-State Batteries (engadget.com) 97
hackingbear writes: According to Chinese media, Qing Tao Energy Development Co, a startup out of the technical Tsinghua University, has deployed a solid-state battery production line in Kunshan, East China. Reports claim the line has a capacity of 100MWh per year -- which is planned to increase to 700MWh by 2020 -- and that the company has achieved an energy density of more than 400Wh/kg, compared to new generation lithium-ion batteries that boast a capacity of around 250-300Wh/kg. Details beyond this are sparse. The headline news here, if accurate, would be that the company has managed to put solid-state batteries into high volume production, but it's not clear how Qing Tao Energy Development has achieved this, nor what price points are involved. Furthermore, while a capacity of 100MWh is not to be sneezed at, it still only equates to fewer than 2,000 long-range EVs per year. Nonetheless, the news demonstrates that progress is happening in the solid-state battery arena. We might not feasibly yet be at high volume production, but we're on our way.
easy how they do this (Score:5, Insightful)
like with the quantum radar claim, it's B.S. to lure investors
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Re: Solid state = high capacitance? (Score:2)
Re: Solid state = high capacitance? (Score:4, Informative)
"Ching Dao." Geez.
If you are going to be pedantic, at least get it right.
The modern standard pinyin spelling is: "Qingdao".
The Wade-Giles romanization is: "Tsing Tao"
"Tsing Tao" is what is printed on the bottles, for reasons of tradition and marketing.
"Qingdao" is the name of the city in Shandong where the beer is brewed, and is what the Chinese call the beer.
"Ching Dao" is not correct under any romanization scheme. "Ch" and "Q" may sound the same to monolingual English speakers, but they represent different phonemes that are distinguishable in many languages.
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since they throw rice into the mash now it doesn't matter what we call that dilute piss.
Re:easy how they do this (Score:5, Informative)
It's not BS, but it is hype. The founder and CEO is this guy [acs.org], who just recently published this paper [acs.org] on their tech. The cells reportedly lost 25% of their capacity in just 50 cycles. They also reported a "high" ionic conductivity of 3.15e-3 S cm-1, which is an order of magnitude less than traditional liquid electrolytes. They conducted their discharge tests at a mere 0,1C.
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You seem knowledgeable about battery tech -- I understand the capacity issue, but how exactly do the ionic conductivity and discharge rate figure into the ultimate performance? The much lower ionic conductivity corresponds to slower discharge even if it could still hold 400Wh/kg? Would this still be useful although not for something like an electric car where fast charge/discharge matter?
Re:easy how they do this (Score:5, Informative)
This would not be useful for electric cars, although mainly due to the cycle life issues (and presumably cost issues, but we can't know that yet). This would be most interested for various "specialty" applications - applications where power is drained only slowly (thus rendering the ionic conductivity issue moot as well as the cycle life issue). Perhaps remote sensors or the like. I'd think they'd also be quite desirable in military drones designed to circle over a given location for as long as possible. For applications like that, you don't need a huge number of cycles out of the batteries, and cell cost is not a limiting factor, but what you need above all is energy density.
For the mass market, though, it's more of an issue of how the tech (particularly cycle life and cost) evolves. Hopefully investors in this company realize that they're betting on where this tech might go rather than where it is as things stand.
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that is my very definition of marketing B.S. to lure investors. Exaggerations are lies. this stuff can't be used practically
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Too easy to define BS as being the exact equivalent to hype.
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This paywalled paper. [acs.org] Ties in with this article. [newscientist.com]
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The cells reportedly lost 25% of their capacity in just 50 cycles.
So? That's Planned Obsolescence already built-in! That just raised the potential stock value by 1/3rd.
Re: easy how they do this (Score:2)
I think it's entirely apropos that they'll soon be entertaining us with fireworks displays.
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If you remember that Edison patented the light bulb way before it was ready, this approach has a long tradition. Anyways, even if they are just close, they have beaten the rest of the world in a very important research area.
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This outfit is building a production line before it's ready. They say.
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I for one believe them that they've created cracked solid-state batteries.
If you gave them enough money, maybe they'll even think of how to make working ones!
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Call me when I can test it myself. (Score:4, Interesting)
I've seen enough regular batteries from China, that claimed way higher energy densities than they really had. Let alone after a few usages. (Usually, batteries are supposed get better after being broken in, before getting worse.)
I also want to make sure they don't start to bulge and catch fire or something after a few months.
Then we can talk.
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Call me when any of the major car companies adopt the cells.
That is when you know for sure that independent testing in both the lab and in the field has deemed them both safe and long lasting.
Until then, it is just more hype ... or worse ... a scam ala Theranos
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i would moderate it as insightful instead of interesting.
Questions (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's not fair, they also make some damned fine movies over there.
Everything it's cracked to be. (Score:4, Funny)
Isn't a cracked solid-state a bad thing? :-D
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I thought a cracked crystal was what gave us sold-state in the first place.
Another battery story? (Score:3, Funny)
I'm tired of all of these fake and unproven battery tech stories Can we just get back to political infighting and slasdot member flaiming?
Still better (Score:4, Funny)
No Generators (Score:3)
Long term new battery tech will replace oil and whichever country gets there first owns the future.
Ummm, no. Batteries are for STORAGE not GENERATION. That's one of the reasons they've invested in solar cells as well.
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Ummm, no. Batteries are for STORAGE not GENERATION.
And any fuel is for both storage AND generation - batteries just decouple the two from each other. Regardless of how the electricity is generated, the first battery that's able to reliably store enough charge to power an automobile for 1,000 miles over an extended number of recharging cycles has the potential to put an awfully big dent in the fortunes of oil companies.
Re: No Generators (Score:2)
600 miles is more than enough provided it can be recharged from flat to full in 6 hours. It is beyond the legal limit for a professional driver in a single 24h period in the EU, and consequently an excellent bench mark for what is safe. Anything more requires tag team driving. I would have never in my entire life to date been constrained in my ground based vehicular journeys with those parameters. In fact you could dial it down to 450 miles.
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You don't say (Score:3)
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If you only want to hear about completely finished products on shelves then read a catalogue, not /.
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
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It's almost impossible to tell in advance between Arthur C Clarke's "sufficiently advanced technology" and "rigged demo", so if you want to know about the possibilities several years out of the catalogue then you absolutely have to be hearing about a little "fake news" and do your own filtering.
Whining about having to think helps no one.
Rgds
Damon
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Solid-state (Score:2)
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Batteries usually have a liquid electrolyte, solid state batteries use a solid instead.
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Not necessarily. For instance flow batteries (of which the most promising is the vanadium redox battery) depend on the continuous movement of the electrolyte.
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Sounds like somebody fibbed, and somebody believed them.
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Recyclable & Non-toxis? (Score:2)
Inquiring manufacturers want to know.
No details, you say? Hmmm, sounds then like another pyramid scheme.
Funny thing about the Tesla shorts. (Score:3)
The same gang, is now praising to high heaven this Chinese company announcement as though it is the Word of God revealed directly to them. That people who are that so extremely skeptical on one side are so very credulous on the other side is so mind boggling.
If the Chinese company is right, good luck to them. I can't wait to rid the world of diesel and gasoline engines. It is always nice to have plan B, another basket to keep the eggs in. Cant depend totally on Tesla.
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Anyway, I dont trade any individual stock, so got not horse in the stock market race one way or the other.
All I want is the death of diesel and gasoline engines. That is all. That day is coming. Already, existing known battery tech has batteries at 120 $/kWh. If this technology lowers the price even more, it is great. Even
Meanwhile (Score:2)
Gasoline is 13,000KW/kg
We've still a ways to go, sadly.
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Not realy a relevant comparison as we can't extract the energy from gasoline in a very efficient manner (best we can do is about 35% efficient compared to over 95% efficient for batteries) additionally electric motors are a lot smaller and lighter than gasoline engines.
If looking at it from a pure energy to move a vehicle vs weight to do so stand point, solid state batteries would be quite likely to tip the scales in favor of electric over gasoline.
Overall though, we're already past "good enough" for energy
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35% of 13,000 compared to 95% of 400?
I'd say less than an order of magnitude of efficiency difference isn't relevant that that level of disparity.
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Except it's ok to carry more weight of batteries offset by less weight of engine (which was not taken in to account in the original comparison)
Electric motors weigh a fraction what gasoline engines do, and take up a lot less space too.
50l of gasoline weighs 37.5 kg and contains about 475kwh (it's actually about 9500wh/l) add on the engine, about 400kg, and you're at 438kg for 475kwh, but can only extract 35% of that, or 166kwh. For an effective density of 400wh/kg
Meanwhile for electric, we carry 100kwh of b
Re: Meanwhile (Score:2)
Kilowatts per kg? Really?
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yea, sorry, unit fail
13KWh/kg vs 0.4KWh/kg
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More like 12. (But can we please use MJ/kg instead?) But you also need to take into account that you only convert about 25% of the energy in gasoline to useful work, and that you need to carry all the mass of an internal combustion engine to extract the energy.
oh good! (Score:4, Funny)
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Good for you that you've never had a battery leak its (moving) electrolyte into your equipment, nor had to run an equalization cycle on a lead-acid battery to stir up its electrolyte, nor had to deal with the complexity a flow battery.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Convert to specific energy (Score:2)
To convert Wh/kg to Si specific energy in joules/kg, just multiply by 3600, the number of seconds in an hour. So now we can compare to this table [wikipedia.org] and find that the claimed specific energy is 65-300% more than Li-ion and about 20% less than Li-metal. About 32 times less than gasoline, but of course gasoline is not rechargeable or renewable.