Faster lith charge rates coming?

[casebomber]

Just saw this article over at ars!

http://arstechnica.com/science/news...s-lithium-batteries-charge-in-two-minutes.ars

Checking it out currently myself, thought I'd share.

Thanks for everything cpf!!!

 

[CKOD]

Definitely looks interesting. Wonder what the time to markert from lab demonstration is for battery stuff. As mentioned to in that article, finding the power to actually charge stuff in 2 minutes would be quite a task. Even a 1200mAh cell phone battery charging at 30C would need 130W at it nears 3.6v in the charge cycle. A 13.2v 3.8AH LiFe battery pack (50WH, for a laptop) would take upto 1.6kW! Obviously there is no need to charge either of these devices in 2 minutes, stretching it out to 10 would make the power draw a lot more bearable. A 15KWH automotive battery (330v, 45.5AH) would eat upto 491KW (1/2 megawatt!) for 2 minutes.


But, if the batteries can charge at 30C, I wonder if they will be able to discharge at 100C+! Could be very interesting for automotive use. I could see an electric "fill up station" possibly coming to life with a technology like that for electric cars(( big catch 22, yay!) . The station would have a large (1-5MWH or bigger) battery bank of the same sort of cells (put it underground, like in a transformer vault sort of structure instead of a gas tank) And charge it from the grid at a steady rate with a nice power factor. It could be charged at night, using off-peak power ((possibly if the charger can work as an inverter too, the station owner could sell back power to the utility when the price is over a certain amount. )) Using computer logging, you can come up with a model of when power for fillups will be needed, and when the lows in usage are, so the battery bank is full when the station needs it, but minimize buying power on-peak.

Battery technology is whats been holding up portable devices and many other technologies, so hopefully we can keep seeing advances in it.

 

[BoarHunter]

Indeed this the key point that makes the "battery powerd electric car" a non sense. To be able to refill it at the same speed as a gas tank, you need a MEGAWATT power station ! Plus battery dead weight, life span, cost and possibly a lithium shortage

 

[LeifUK]

Indeed this the key point that makes the "battery powerd electric car" a non sense. To be able to refill it at the same speed as a gas tank, you need a MEGAWATT power station ! Plus battery dead weight, life span, cost and possibly a lithium shortage

It isn't a nonsense. Today you can get a battery powered car which can recharge a significant portion of the battery in 30 minutes, which is the time to stop and have a coffee. Okay, it's not as good as a petrol car, but there may come a time when petrol is too expensive. At the moment electricity is cheap, but I am sure the UK government will find a way to tax electric cars to compensate for the short fall in petrol tax.

 

[BoarHunter]

It isn't a nonsense. Today you can get a battery powered car which can recharge a significant portion of the battery in 30 minutes, which is the time to stop and have a coffee. Okay, it's not as good as a petrol car, but there may come a time when petrol is too expensive. At the moment electricity is cheap, but I am sure the UK government will find a way to tax electric cars to compensate for the short fall in petrol tax.

It is a nonsense, period. Were does electricity comes from ? Expensive oil means expensive eletricity. What is the energy density of rechargeable compared to gas, liquid hydrogen ? try to compute the electric power required for an electric refill station equivalent !

significant portion in 30 min you said ? although not very scientific, I let you imagine the parking lot required for the filling station. Ah no more filing station, huge coffe shop ! :) every 100km of highway because of the limited range on one "almost completed"charge.

But again the issue is the power required and although it would be great to recharge in a short time, the shorter the more megawatts you need and unless you have a nuclear power station just around, you may end up requiring huge batteries to serve as "fuel tanks"


One could imagine to have the car gets its electricity from some wiring above the highway and why not hook upcars to share one big engine ? You could even drive faster than 300km/h :) Yes, there you can reduce your oil bill.

 

[Russel]

[...]But, if the batteries can charge at 30C, I wonder if they will be able to discharge at 100C+! Could be very interesting for automotive use. I could see an electric "fill up station" possibly coming to life with a technology like that for electric cars(( big catch 22, yay!) . The station would have a large (1-5MWH or bigger) battery bank of the same sort of cells (put it underground, like in a transformer vault sort of structure instead of a gas tank) And charge it from the grid at a steady rate with a nice power factor. It could be charged at night, using off-peak power ((possibly if the charger can work as an inverter too, the station owner could sell back power to the utility when the price is over a certain amount. )) Using computer logging, you can come up with a model of when power for fillups will be needed, and when the lows in usage are, so the battery bank is full when the station needs it, but minimize buying power on-peak.

Battery technology is whats been holding up portable devices and many other technologies, so hopefully we can keep seeing advances in it.

It will be interesting, and possibly painful financially, to see how we switch from cheap fossil fuel to other fuel forms as oil sources are depleted. Electric vehicles are definitely an alternative. Along with the push to recharge as quickly as possible. I wonder how the future “filling stations” will work. [Mind wandering] High voltage electrical power to a large capacitor bank, with the recharge of your vehicle more like a camera flash than today's battery chargers. [Back to reality]


Well, it was once believed that the world was flat, and the universe revolved around the earth...

 

[KiwiMark]

I can see a good market for electric cars that can be charged overnight using off-peak electricity and with enough range to transport a person from home to work and back to home again. The use of such a car would save the valuable and limited fossil fuels for the 2nd car that would be used for longer trips. I guess that we are all hoping to see some really impressive developments in battery technology that will see the charging times reduced and the range increased, but in the meantime a good electric commuter has to be worthwhile to a lot of people.

If these new batteries work out and it becomes possible to get your car >80% charged in under 5 minutes then that could open the way for much more widespread use of electric vehicles. Maybe one day almost every vehicle on the road will be electric, who knows?