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[Engadget] MIT's quick charging batteries could revolutionize the world, maybe

1082 Views 21 Replies 13 Participants Last post by  sudo pudge, 
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Okay, so maybe the headline is a tad on the sensational side, but seriously, this has sensational written all over it. A team of brilliant MIT engineers have conjured up a beltway of sorts that allows for "rapid transit of electrical energy through a well-known battery material," something that could usher in smaller and lighter cells that could recharge in moments versus hours. There's even talk that this technology could be adapted for use in automobiles, and honestly, it doesn't take an electrical engineer to understand how rapid charge / discharge batteries could "induce lifestyle changes." Hey, laptop battery makers -- could you guys look into getting these ready to go in machines by CES 2010? That'd be swell, thanks.
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More like green power suits with a gold visor and an energy shield
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Twinnuke
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Originally Posted by Weedvender View Post
More like green power suits with a gold visor and an energy shield

Arc Reactor.
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yeah, because the charge time of a battery decides how effient the device is... just post news and dont spread such nonsense please.
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CoinLaundry
As long as capital interests don't bury this material and there are no flipper babies, this is it. This material will revolutionize transport and everything else that isn't human. Everyone in this engineering firm is speechless to an extent.
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Originally Posted by ChielScape View Post
yeah, because the charge time of a battery decides how effient the device is... just post news and dont spread such nonsense please.
How about showing a little respect to the OP?

It's better news than the same old "ATI PWNS Nvidia" or the "12 days to TPB"
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Originally Posted by ChielScape View Post
yeah, because the charge time of a battery decides how effient the device is... just post news and dont spread such nonsense please.
?
I do not get what you are getting at. It could revolutionize the 'automobile' industry at least. One of the major problems with electric cars is that they have to be re-charged regularly and this is a problem if it takes a while to recharge it, but if it takes a couple of moments it could be done as easily as 'filling your tank up with gas'.
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Originally Posted by ChielScape View Post
yeah, because the charge time of a battery decides how effient the device is... just post news and dont spread such nonsense please.
I'm sorry. I guess efficiency was not the right word to use there. I meant the products would be able to last longer, thus resulting in an ease of use and more convenience.
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CoinLaundry
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Originally Posted by ChielScape View Post
yeah, because the charge time of a battery decides how effient the device is... just post news and dont spread such nonsense please.
"Smaller and lighter cells..." The notion isn't a lessening of capacity, just an increase in every aspect of efficiency.

A simple version of the story: a generator outputs a stream of electricity at 10w/ms, 4 batteries charge at 2.5w/ms, can hold a 50w charge, then the 4 50w charges can be trickled out as needed, or as fast as you'd like. Your internet connection downloads faster than it uploads, your USB devices do, and batteries do. You have bandwidth you're not using all of the time. So, you have high-bandwidth batteries; overclocked batteries that store more electricity per pound and per square inch than you've seen for many many years now. More devices become portable and/or currently portable devices can be far more powerful.
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my point still stands, but sorry for the way i brought it.
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Originally Posted by CoinLaundry
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As long as capital interests don't bury this material and there are no flipper babies, this is it. This material will revolutionize transport and everything else that isn't human. Everyone in this engineering firm is speechless to an extent.


I don't see it changing anything in the auto world...it MIGHT replace lead acid cells if they can conjure a deep cycle variant capable of the high CCA's needed, but I don't see this making electric cars cool either.

For one, this does absolutely nothing for the range of the battery, nor does it do anything for the output. You still have to recharge it every 50-125 miles or so, whereas even the most inefficient gasoline vehicle can easily enough make 250 miles on a tank of fuel. The only people that will buy these are eco-yuppies and eccentric millionaires. :\\
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Originally Posted by TestECull
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I don't see it changing anything in the auto world...it MIGHT replace lead acid cells if they can conjure a deep cycle variant capable of the high CCA's needed, but I don't see this making electric cars cool either.

For one, this does absolutely nothing for the range of the battery, nor does it do anything for the output. You still have to recharge it every 50-125 miles or so, whereas even the most inefficient gasoline vehicle can easily enough make 250 miles on a tank of fuel. The only people that will buy these are eco-yuppies and eccentric millionaires. :

Well at least it's a start towards saving the environment. I'm sure within 5 years, these new batteries will become more mainstream and efficient.
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Originally Posted by Admiral Mudkipz
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Well at least it's a start towards saving the environment. I'm sure within 5 years, these new batteries will become more mainstream and efficient.


Perhaps in 5 years they'll turn this start into a useful gasoline alternative with a 300 mile average range and a 4 minute maximum recharge time.
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Originally Posted by TestECull
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Perhaps in 5 years they'll turn this start into a useful gasoline alternative with a 300 mile average range and a 4 minute maximum recharge time.

That would be amazing, and I wouldn't doubt it for a second considering how fast technology is traveling these days.
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Sorry for double post, but I was able to get more info on these new batteries from techpowerup.com:

Quote:
MIT engineers have created a kind of beltway that allows for the rapid transit of electrical energy through a well-known battery material, an advance that could usher in smaller, lighter batteries -- for cell phones and other devices -- that could recharge in seconds rather than hours. The work could also allow for the quick recharging of batteries in electric cars, although that particular application would be limited by the amount of power available to a homeowner through the electric grid.
The work, led by Gerbrand Ceder, the Richard P. Simmons Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, is reported in the March 12 issue of Nature. Because the material involved is not new -- the researchers have simply changed the way they make it -- Ceder believes the work could make it into the marketplace within two to three years.

State-of-the-art lithium rechargeable batteries have very high energy densities -- they are good at storing large amounts of charge. The tradeoff is that they have relatively slow power rates -- they are sluggish at gaining and discharging that energy. Consider current batteries for electric cars. "They have a lot of energy, so you can drive at 55 mph for a long time, but the power is low. You can't accelerate quickly," Ceder said.

Why the slow power rates? Traditionally, scientists have thought that the lithium ions responsible, along with electrons, for carrying charge across the battery simply move too slowly through the material.

About five years ago, however, Ceder and colleagues made a surprising discovery. Computer calculations of a well-known battery material, lithium iron phosphate, predicted that the material's lithium ions should actually be moving extremely quickly.

"If transport of the lithium ions was so fast, something else had to be the problem," Ceder said.

Further calculations showed that lithium ions can indeed move very quickly into the material but only through tunnels accessed from the surface. If a lithium ion at the surface is directly in front of a tunnel entrance, there's no problem: it proceeds efficiently into the tunnel. But if the ion isn't directly in front, it is prevented from reaching the tunnel entrance because it cannot move to access that entrance.

Ceder and Byoungwoo Kang, a graduate student in materials science and engineering, devised a way around the problem by creating a new surface structure that does allow the lithium ions to move quickly around the outside of the material, much like a beltway around a city. When an ion traveling along this beltway reaches a tunnel, it is instantly diverted into it. Kang is a coauthor of the Nature paper.

Using their new processing technique, the two went on to make a small battery that could be fully charged or discharged in 10 to 20 seconds (it takes six minutes to fully charge or discharge a cell made from the unprocessed material).

Ceder notes that further tests showed that unlike other battery materials, the new material does not degrade as much when repeatedly charged and recharged. This could lead to smaller, lighter batteries, because less material is needed for the same result.

"The ability to charge and discharge batteries in a matter of seconds rather than hours may open up new technological applications and induce lifestyle changes," Ceder and Kang conclude in their Nature paper.

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation through the Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers program and the Batteries for Advanced Transportation Program of the U.S. Department of Energy. It has been licensed by two companies.
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This builds on the rather sparse introduction to the original post and talks about the scientific aspect of the batteries, for any interested to read about it.
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Originally Posted by TestECull View Post
I don't see it changing anything in the auto world...it MIGHT replace lead acid cells if they can conjure a deep cycle variant capable of the high CCA's needed, but I don't see this making electric cars cool either.
...
We are moving towards plug in hybrids so this actually does a lot. They should have stated car batteries in general IMO.
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M
Psssht, old news, Tony Stark was able to build this in a cave! With a box of scraps!
But seriously, there are so many applications for such a technology, good read, I'm excited to hopefully see this tech in action in the future.
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Originally Posted by Somenoob View Post
We are moving towards plug in hybrids so this actually does a lot. They should have stated car batteries in general IMO.

Hybrids will be the downfall of society. Their production pollutes worse than the SUV's they're intended to replace, and they make their owners soooooo stupidly smug...:\\

I'd LOVE to see them come up with a deep cycle variant tho. I hate these lead acid batts...so heavy, so toxic, and rather dangerous to trickle charge. Good god if you try to force feed one at 90 amps....you'll be able to make your own Hindenburg from all the H2 gas it produces. Unsafe unsafe unsafe...
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sudo pudge
This will make electric cars more viable, so instead of burning nasty fossil fuels in our cars, we burn them elsewhere to produce electricity and use that electricity to power our transportation. With less efficiency than just burning the fuel in the car.

Next thing you know, people will be proposing to use large amounts of farmland to produce biodiesel, all to reduce fossil fuel usage by a piddly amount.
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0rion
Lets for a moment imagine that cars didnt have to have tons of muscle to be cool... A 100% electric vehicle that had a charge time of say 5-10 minutes to go 100 miles or so wouldnt be a bad deal. Instead of gas stations, you'd have charge stations at closer intervals (maybe, maybe not?) and you'd pay for electricity rather than a fossil fuel. I know, electricity is made sometimes by fossil fuel, but at least you can get electricity from renewable sources rather than non-renewable. For people who have a short drive to work, or driving around towns this would be fantastic. A cross country trip wouldnt be fun at all having to recharge that often, but with quick charge times it wouldnt be out of the question.

Laptop batteries, RC toys, wireless accessories, all sorts of electronics with batteries would benefit. I for one cant wait to see what they can do with technology like this.
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