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Australia first to test new lithium-sulphur batteries
- riazrizvi 7y agoFour decisions to make on cookies before being able to read the article? Are you trying to break the internet?
- davidhyde 7y agoI'd recommend using using "I don't care about cookies" and "Cookiebro" to restore your sanity. Basically you want to automatically accept all cookies, say yes to all cookie banners, then remove all cookies when you close the browser except the ones you explicitly want to keep (for staying logged into certain sites). Those two firefox extensions facilitate that.
- close04 7y agoI'm using just uBlock Origin and since I haven't seen any cookie dialog I assume it did the job just fine. YMMV.
- hanniabu 7y agoUnless you're on mobile and then you're helpless and it's even worse because the dialog takes up 30% of the screen, and the top sticky ads take up the top 15%, and then you have autoplay video ads at the top of the page filling up the rest of the viewable area, then you go to try and scroll the page and then a new well engineered ad has a delayed load to pop up right where you're about to click....
- deepersprout 7y ago> Unless you're on mobile and then you're helpless uBlock Origin is very reliable on my Firefox on Android. You know, Safari and Chrome are not your only options on mobile.
- everdev 7y ago> Basically you want to automatically accept all cookies I don't.
- betoharres 7y agofunny how I saw many posts about Amazon fires and while Australia is burning to the ground(which is showing to be much worse than Amazon fires), I can only see a post about some battery; this makes me question this website..
- nrzd 7y agoIt’s Monash University, not a news website, so doesn’t seem odd to me.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- TheCraiggers 7y agoFirst of all, it's hacker news, not a general news site. And while the width of breadth of the type of news you'd find on here is larger than just coding and other hackery, it's still at least usually based in technology. Like batteries. Still, the official guidelines say anything "a hacker might find interesting" and we seem to be a environmentally-minded bunch, so maybe it would fly. Second, it's based on use submissions. You think we should know something interesting about the AU fires? Submit a good article about it I guess. If I and others learn something interesting, it'll get voted up. That's how it works.
- lolc 7y agoSounds too good to be true! Did I read right? A fourfold increase in capacity with no downside? Going to production this year? How did I miss this until now?
- rasz 7y agoYes, definitely fourfold, shipping in 5 years!!1 Meanwhile Li-ion batteries were invented in seventies, it took 20 years to commercialization. First cells had 100W h/kg, and 30 years later we are slowly approaching 300W h/kg.
- glutamate 7y agoThis is a much better article with more technical details yet accessibly written: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2228681-a-new-battery-could-keep-your-phone-charged-for-five-days/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2228681-a-new-battery-c... Publication link: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/1/eaay2757 https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/1/eaay2757
- mtgx 7y agoThat first article title is so bad, mainly because those who have been following the smartphone industry for years know that if given access to such battery technology smartphone manufacturers would just add 8k screens, Threadripper-level CPUs, and hardware accelerators for mind-reading AI (so they can better target ads at you, not for anything remotely useful, obviously...) - all likely resulting in slightly less battery life than your phone has today, or at best a little more.
- dang 7y agoChanged from https://www.monash.edu/news/articles/supercharging-tomorrow-australia-first-to-test-new-lithium-batteries https://www.monash.edu/news/articles/supercharging-tomorrow-.... Thanks!
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoLithium-Sulphur has high energy per kilogram which makes it good for transportation. Also high energy per dollar to manufacture which makes it good for grid storage (where weight and size don't matter too much, but cost does). At the nominal rate of 750 amp hours per kilogram for lithium-Sulphur is well above normal lithium-ion batteries. But compared to gasoline, it raises the bar from 1% vs gas, to 2%. Do I have that right?
- AnthonyMouse 7y agoWhat makes electric cars viable isn't that batteries have anywhere near the energy density of gasoline, it's that if you use them, you get to replace half a ton of engine, transmission, alternator, fuel pump, emissions and exhaust with a <100 pound electric motor, and have that cost and weight budget to use for batteries instead. This naturally makes battery improvements a huge win. If you double power density you can cut the weight of the battery by more than half for the same range, since not only do you get the same power from a lighter battery, now the car is lighter and requires less energy to accelerate.
- hanniabu 7y agoThat's a good point, I wonder what the adjusted energy density calculation compared to gas is when considering the amount of weight removed. Something like this: new weight for energy density calculation = (total battery weight) - (ICE component weight) + (electric motor weight)
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoNowhere near. The Tesla battery pack is 1000 lbs. There are entire cars that don't weigh that. Race car engine is 200lbs. And battery packs have cooling systems too. So no savings there. Specific energy (watts-hours per kilogram) is the entire ballgame with batteries and transportation.
- AnthonyMouse 7y agoCan you name a modern production car sold in the US that weighs less than 1000 lbs? Lightest available appears to be the Smart Fortwo at ~2000 lbs. The curb weight of a Model 3 is in the same ballpark as a BMW 3 Series or Ford Taurus. Lighter cars exist but mostly because they're significantly smaller or slower or both.
- brink 7y agoAm I correct in assuming that a four-fold capacity in electric vehicles is coming? That will likely decimate oil dependency.
- hanniabu 7y ago> That will likely decimate oil dependency Until subsidies are increased... Pet peeve of mine is how big business like to champion capitalism, but when they start failing they no longer like those rules and want government help to stay relevant and afloat.
- emayljames 7y agoSocialism for the rich, "the (not so) free market" for the peasantry.
- vocatus_gate 7y agoReduce it by a tenth?
- nickserv 7y agoI know you're referring to the original meaning of the term, but a 10% decrease in global oil consumption in the transportation sector would be a great accomplishment. Not nearly enough of course, but so far we haven't even been able to flatline.
- WhompingWindows 7y agoBest not to assume anything about battery breakthroughs - there's one reported every week. Many companies are on the fore-front of batteries...if this chemistry is legit and available, you will know when Tesla or LG chem or one of the big players buys this groups' IP.
- Gibbon1 7y agoTwo thoughts of mine. A twofold improvement in capacity would kill gasoline cars dead. That's 300 miles of range out of a 600lb battery. Adding up the weights of various components the electric car would weight about the same as a gasoline one. While the failure modes of metal lithium anode batteries are terrifying that's probably okay for grid applications. Difference between a cell phone stuffed under a pillow and a battery in a concrete vault at at substation.
- jpm_sd 7y agoSion Power has been working on this technology "since 1989". https://sionpower.com/about/ https://sionpower.com/about/ It still only lasts a couple of hundred charge cycles before wearing out: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/1/eaay2757 https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/1/eaay2757 "The cells are stable for more than 200 cycles..."
- Retric 7y ago200 charge cycles at 4x the storage = 800 lithium ion charge cycles. That’s easily competitive. Put another way if your getting 300 miles of range a current EV that’s 300 x4 x200 = 240,000 miles.
- ajuc 7y agoOnly if you change your habits to maximize the lifetime of the batteries. For example avoid charging the car every night and instead charge it for a few nights after it's completely empty.
- Retric 7y agoMost batteries handle partial charging better than full charging. But, assuming it’s an issue a hybrid design with say 150 miles of daily driving lithium ion and 150 x4 = 600 miles of extended range is another option.
- ajuc 7y agoThat's actually a good idea. I was thinking supercapacitors for fast acceleration/recuperation and batteries only rated for sustained driving at cruising speed. Should last much longer.
- Enginerrrd 7y agoAs I understand it, this is a terrible thing to do to lithium ion batteries. NiCad batteries were like that, but li-ion shouldn't be allowed to go below 20% if you're interested in longevity.
- scythe 7y agoI've read dozens of papers on Li-S over the years because of how much incredible potential the technology seems to have. The "dirty little secret" seems to be not the charge cycles (which are less than, but similar to, other batteries), but the large amount of electrolyte required, which reduces the effective energy density of the battery. There are all sorts of papers reporting high-capacity and durable cathodes but fewer that address the electrolyte problem, so I'm curious to see what their plan for that is. A few papers about the electrolyte problem are e.g.: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acscentsci.7b00123 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acscentsci.7b00123 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/adma.201705951 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/adma.2017059...
- foxyv 7y agoFor utilities I don't imagine that electrolyte is a big issue as there is plenty of space and you aren't lugging them around like you are in an EV. Maybe their plan is to use it mostly for grid power?
- philipkglass 7y agoHowever, lithium-sulphur batteries may face similar ethical problems to lithium-ion batteries. The metal oxides in lithium-ion batteries are typically nickel, cobalt or manganese, which are expensive and diminishing in natural stores. They also have associated ethical problems: a significant proportion of cobalt is sourced by child miners in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example. “In order to have much cheaper energy and more ethical batteries, we need a radically new energy storage system,” says Shaibani. The researchers will further test battery prototypes with a view to manufacturing them commercially in Australia in coming years. It appears that Shaibani is saying that their new battery chemistry is an example of a radically improved battery that removes ethical problems while it improves energy density. The way the New Scientist article is written, that preceding paragraph makes it sound like Shaibani's new chemistry still needs improvements to remove cobalt. There is already no nickel, manganese, or cobalt in this new lithium-sulfur cathode (nor in most lithium-sulfur cathodes). See Table S1 in the supplementary table for elemental analysis: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/suppl/2019/12/20/6.1.eaay2757.DC1/aay2757_SM.pdf https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/suppl/2019/...