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The really important bit, comparison to lithium ion: >She did say that large battery banks that might be spun off from this research stand to not only have hig
by wlesieutre 7y ago
The really important bit, comparison to lithium ion:
>She did say that large battery banks that might be spun off from this research stand to not only have higher capacity, but also be substantially lighter than lithium ions. Although, she adds, perhaps the greatest weight savings will come not from comparing one battery cell's mass with another. “The biggest difference would be that you don’t have to have the same stainless steel bunkers in each of the cells,” she says.
Not flammable is a big deal in battery tech. We try to pack more and more energy into smaller and smaller cells, so continuing to improve the capacity makes inadvertently releasing all that energy even more dangerous.
Here's another cool project working on that problem with a solid polymer electrolyte. Video shows it continuing to provide power while being sliced into pieces with scissors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9-cNNYb1Ik https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9-cNNYb1Ik
- agumonkey 7y agoI'd love to know what's wrong with the polymer electrolyte, the demo is so amazing..
- simcop2387 7y agoCan't find any details myself but the usual issue is energy density or number of charge cycles.
- kickopotomus 7y agoOr prohibitively expensive production cost
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y agoA Venn diagram with the labels 'production cost, 'energy density', and 'number of charge cycles' with 'Ideal Battery Technology' in the centre.
- Dylan16807 7y agoOnly if you declare the center as infinitely perfect in every way. If you allow each axis to trade off with the others, then there is no single ideal. Fixed storage would rather have better prices and cycles in exchange for worse density. Mobile devices would rather have better density in exchange for higher prices. (You can look at it like a path through the solution space. If you keep letting someone pick which attribute to improve, over and over, you eventually hit infinity/infinity/infinity, but different users will take very different paths to get there. At any particular count of improvements, their ideal batteries are significantly different.) And with regard to kickopotomus's comment, you can get away with a much higher cost if you're targeting the right niche.
- mycall 7y agoI would think glass is easy to break under heavy vibration or worse. How is that concern handled?
- ricardobeat 7y agoHaven’t read the paper, but it seems to use glass powder.
- de_watcher 7y agoYou mean sand? :D