3 ms·

The problem isn't that we don't know how to make more powerful batteries right now, the problem is safety. The more powerful your battery, generally the more da

The problem isn't that we don't know how to make more powerful batteries right now, the problem is safety. The more powerful your battery, generally the more dangerous/flammable/explosive it is when it fails. The only reason we can even use lithium ion batteries as much as we do is their exceedingly low failure rate. So not only does any new and better batteries need to hold more power, they need to be more stable and have more graceful failure modes.

ianai 8y ago
Agreed, which is why I always look to see stories about solid state lithium batteries. The documentary I saw on them made them look ready for use.
- barney54 8y ago
  Sadly solid state is not currently ready on a large scale. There is still significant work to be done in large part to use a solid state electrolyte.
sov 8y ago
> The problem isn't that we don't know how to make more powerful batteries right now, the problem is safety. No, this isn't the problem. The problems are weight, volume, energy density and cost, and the fact that there's no single catch-all battery solution w.r.t. dis/charge rates, capacity, and the aforementioned values. Safety, while very important and somewhat costly (engineers time--mechanical and certificates), is something the big battery companies understand very well. > The more powerful your battery, generally the more dangerous/flammable/explosive it is when it fail There's a concept called single-cell isolation that basically obviates this.
audunw 8y ago
"The more powerful your battery, generally the more dangerous/flammable/explosive it is when it fails." No, that's not really a thing at all. Li-ion batteries burn because they contain a combustable electrolyte. The initial explosive reaction doesn't have that much to do with the energy in the batteries. The long term reaction is related to the energy in the battery, but only because the electrolyte burned off letting the anode and cathode short out. There are plenty of demonstrations of solid state li-ion batteries that have way higher power density, but that can be cut in two without any explosive reaction at all. The challenge with most of these is cycle life btw. In the extreme case, you can get insanely high energy density out of aluminum-air batteries, but as far as I know they're perfectly safe. Making a safe battery with high energy density is easy. Getting all the other parameters right is hard.
Nasrudith 8y ago
I don't think that follows given that we already use hydrocarbon fuels which are far worse for flammability and explosiveness. The higher retrieval efficiency by definition makes an equivalent volume of batteries lower energy density and thus safer than an equivalent amount of fuel. If you need to extract X energy at 25% efficiency you need to store 4X. If you can extract X energy at 70% efficiency you only need to store 1.25X. Both could wind up exploding but you want the one with only 1.25X the stored energy not the one with 4X.

ianai 8y ago

Agreed, which is why I always look to see stories about solid state lithium batteries. The documentary I saw on them made them look ready for use.

barney54 8y ago
Sadly solid state is not currently ready on a large scale. There is still significant work to be done in large part to use a solid state electrolyte.

sov 8y ago

> The problem isn't that we don't know how to make more powerful batteries right now, the problem is safety. No, this isn't the problem. The problems are weight, volume, energy density and cost, and the fact that there's no single catch-all battery solution w.r.t. dis/charge rates, capacity, and the aforementioned values. Safety, while very important and somewhat costly (engineers time--mechanical and certificates), is something the big battery companies understand very well. > The more powerful your battery, generally the more dangerous/flammable/explosive it is when it fail There's a concept called single-cell isolation that basically obviates this.

audunw 8y ago

"The more powerful your battery, generally the more dangerous/flammable/explosive it is when it fails." No, that's not really a thing at all. Li-ion batteries burn because they contain a combustable electrolyte. The initial explosive reaction doesn't have that much to do with the energy in the batteries. The long term reaction is related to the energy in the battery, but only because the electrolyte burned off letting the anode and cathode short out. There are plenty of demonstrations of solid state li-ion batteries that have way higher power density, but that can be cut in two without any explosive reaction at all. The challenge with most of these is cycle life btw. In the extreme case, you can get insanely high energy density out of aluminum-air batteries, but as far as I know they're perfectly safe. Making a safe battery with high energy density is easy. Getting all the other parameters right is hard.

Nasrudith 8y ago

I don't think that follows given that we already use hydrocarbon fuels which are far worse for flammability and explosiveness. The higher retrieval efficiency by definition makes an equivalent volume of batteries lower energy density and thus safer than an equivalent amount of fuel. If you need to extract X energy at 25% efficiency you need to store 4X. If you can extract X energy at 70% efficiency you only need to store 1.25X. Both could wind up exploding but you want the one with only 1.25X the stored energy not the one with 4X.