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Stabilization of gamma sulfur enables 4000 cycle Li-S batteries [pdf]

183 points by jbotz 4y ago

jbotz 4y ago
Full title: "Stabilization of gamma sulfur at room temperature to enable the use of carbonate electrolyte in Li-S batteries". The paper is from February, but it doesn't seem to have been posted before. TLDR is that with just a new anode made from carbon nanofibers and sulfur, batteries otherwise almost identical to existing Li-Ion batteries would have 2-5 times the energy density, last 3 times as long, and cost 1/3 or less, and be more environmentally benign (not needing cobalt). The breakthrough here is the discovery that carbon nanofibers stabilize gamma-phase sulfur which previously was thought to only exist briefly at high temperatures, and which doesn't form the polysulfides that have been the main problem with Li-S batteries. Yeah, there have been lots of "breakthrough battery tech" announcements that didn't lead to commercial products, but this one really looks like it may be just the leap forward that will make renewable energy storage a non-problem.
- xoa 4y ago
  >Yeah, there have been lots of "breakthrough battery tech" announcements that didn't lead to commercial products Although very important to note in these discussions: a lot of them did. Yes, in mass production as as part of a whole battery system vs a single lab cell the gains are almost always far smaller, but small gains add up over time. Energy density has dramatically increased over the last few decades [0] as well as cost dropping and those trends together have combined to make the current electrification acceleration possible. There isn't any need to be overly cynical about this stuff, the progress is real and a tipping point was reached a while ago. With the amount of capital for R&D and production pouring in at this point it's not unreasonable to hope for even more. ---- 0: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/eternally-five-years-away-no-batteries-are-improving-under-your-nose/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/eternally-five-years...
  - RivieraKid 4y ago
    > a lot of them did Really? I haven't noticed much progress over the last 5 to 10 years. What was the biggest breakthrough that has materialized in that time?
    - xoa 4y ago
      >Really? I haven't noticed much progress over the last 5 to 10 years You don't call doubling to tripling of energy density progress? https://cleantechnica.com/2020/02/19/bloombergnef-lithium-ion-battery-cell-densities-have-almost-tripled-since-2010/ https://cleantechnica.com/2020/02/19/bloombergnef-lithium-io... And it's not about "big breakthroughs" any more than it is for microprocessors. A bunch of lab changes that in production add .5-5% each add up to 10-20% in a generation add up to 2-3x over a decade. That something works in a lab though is still interesting since it shows the possible ceiling we can work towards. Going from that to something that we can make billions of cheaply entails compromises, but the ultimate envelope still matters.
      - multiplegeorges 4y ago
        Just like in finance, most (consumer/laymen) people are looking for a big win when it's been shown over and over that small gains compounded over time always come out ahead.
      - magila 4y ago
        So this got me curious and I started to look at something a bit more concrete: the history of 18650 cell capacity. Currently the highest capacity 18650 that's widely available is 3500 mAh. The first such cell I found is the LG MJ1 which dates back to 2014: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0481/9678/0183/files/lg_mj1_data_sheet.pdf https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0481/9678/0183/files/lg_mj... I also found a 3200 mAh model from 2012: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0481/9678/0183/files/panasonic_18650b_data_sheet.pdf https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0481/9678/0183/files/panas... That's a fair bit less than a 3x improvement over 10 years. Now of course this is a rather crude and unscientific measurement. It's also effectively measuring energy density by volume rather than weight, but volume is more often the limiting factor for Li-ion batteries (e.g. smartphones and EVs are volume limited). Still, I think this shows why people are skeptical about claimed massive improvements in battery tech: it's hard to find clear evidence of it in actual products people can buy.
- isoprophlex 4y ago
  EV batteries with 2-5 times the energy density would completely change the game. Imagine a car with a 900 - 2300 km range on a single charge. The cost savings would immediately solve the business case around renewable energy storage, too.
  - wffurr 4y ago
    Aviation too would benefit enormously from this.
    - jillesvangurp 4y ago
      Yes a 3x increase would be transformative for general aviation. A lot cheaper to operate. Similar range. Probably will start happening in the next five years. Current models are a bit limited for range. But that should be a solvable problem.
  - GordonS 4y ago
    Or even EVs capable of 500km, but weighing a tonne less than they do today. If this turns out to have the purported benefits at commercial scale, it could have an immense impact on our future!
    - altcognito 4y ago
      It is definitely the weight loss and reduction and materials that would make this a big deal. Imagine cutting the cost of the vehicle by 20-30%. Would be massive.
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      > Or even EVs capable of 500km, but weighing a tonne less than they do today. That's not too realistic, a Model 3 battery only weighs half a ton to begin with. So perhaps we could cut the curb weight of the car by 15-20%. I wouldn't complain, but it's not world changing.
  - foepys 4y ago
    Honestly, I'd rather have EV under 2 tonnes than 2,000km range...
- rsfern 4y ago
  I’m curious if they set out to stabilize this particular sulfur allotrope, or if they had more of a serendipitous “hmmm… that’s weird” data analysis moment. It’s really interesting because there could be so many ways to stabilize interesting new phases that conventional high throughput theoretical screening isn’t going to predict
  - jbotz 4y ago
    Apparently it was serendipitous. They were just hoping the carbon fibers would slow down the polysulphite formation, and were surprised when they found stable gamma sulfur[1]. [1] https://www.freethink.com/environment/lithium-sulfur-battery https://www.freethink.com/environment/lithium-sulfur-battery
- turbinerneiter 4y ago
  > that will make renewable energy storage a non-problem I recently played around with the data from Germany 2020. I scaled up the existing renewables (only the ones that are scalable - wind and solar, hydro is pretty much maxed out) so that the yearly consumption can be served from 100% renewables. Then I added a battery to carry the overproduction over to the gaps. A 3 TWh battery would still lead to 50 days of empty battery and thus gaps in the power supply. This is electricity, not Transport and heating. And obviously my approach is simple, no sector coupling effects, no smart grid just scaling up want we have. 3 TWh is 30 million Model S batteries. Even with sodium ion batteries I think this is not really realistic. I always wondered why the are talking about hydrogen so much, despite the much higher losses you get in that process. Now I get it. I think batteries will be a good solution for single family homes / buildings with solar panel. But the grunt of the grid storage I think will be hydrogen. Especially because during winter, it can produce heat and electricity and the same gas turbines that are already common in German cities. Either way, it's a big, hard project, but doable if we really want to.
  - brianwawok 4y ago
    Grid storage is different from powering EVs though. You don’t provide a week of grid backup via battery. You do stuff like pump 100 million gallons of water into a dam with a hydro plant ready. I think water is more efficient then hydrogen even.
    - DanHulton 4y ago
      Sure, but it's very dependant on geography, if you want to do it at scale. We're definitely going to have to adopt a mixed approach, so I'd say it still makes sense to keep the research into hydrogen, batteries, all of it.
    - maxerickson 4y ago
      That's 3 minutes of maximum generation at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludington_Pumped_Storage_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludington_Pumped_Storage_Power... I guess that plant doesn't have an extreme amount of head or a particularly large reservoir. It's about 7 minutes at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Sta... , which has a lot more head. So you need a lot more pumped storage if you want to start talking about days of backup, and we already used quite a few of the best sites.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  The only real reneweable energy storage problem is that we've not built enough generation to really need any storage yet. And so we're shovelling money to authoritarian regimes around the globe which they use to buy politicians and media. Luckily the EV market alone is enough to drive battery tech for short term storage forward, and green hydrogen for fertilizer is enough to take care of the rest. But, there's no need to wait, we should be a decade ahead on this at least if not for well funded lies holding us back.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
    What fertilizer is made out of Hydrogen??
    - becurious 4y ago
      Ammonia is currently produced from methane.
      - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
        To be precise, it's made from hydrogen and the current standard hydrogen is in turn made from methane (and the rest of the methane is dumped into the atmosphere as fossil CO2).
        MobiusHorizons 4y ago
        While accurate in a technical chemical feasibility sense, it is misleading to suggest that ammonia is industrially produced from hydrogen. Existing facilities take in methane and output ammonia and CO2. It is true that the chemical reaction used to make ammonia takes hydrogen and not methane, but that fact in isolation ignores a lot of existing infrastructure. Existing ammonia producing plants do the conversion from methane to hydrogen in the same facility that produces the ammonia, making the hydrogen essentially an implementation detail. There are other ways of producing hydrogen industrially, but it is incorrect to think about the hydrogen generating system in isolation when considering existing infrastructure. Hopefully in the future new plants will be built with green hydrogen in mind.
- zardo 4y ago
  Given that the breakthrough is getting this stable sulfur phase at room temperature that previously wasn't stable below 93C, I'd like to see how well they survive cold temperatures.
- lonk11 4y ago
  "TLDR is that with just a new anode made from carbon nanofibers and sulfur" The new material they discuss is for the cathode side (not anode). That's side where the lithium ions go when the battery is charged. The cathode of traditional Li-ion batteries is made of metal oxides: Cobalt, Nickel, Manganese (lately trying to get rid of the expensive Cobalt). The sulfur cathode promises to remove all of the expensive metals in the cathode and make the cathode much more energy dense. The anode is where the lithium ions go when the battery is being discharged. In traditional batteries the anode is made of carbon fibers (burnt coconut shells). The holy grail of anode is pure lithium anode - there is nothing more energy dense. But the problem with pure lithium is that it tends to get deposited not in an even layer, but in the form of dendrites that eventually poke through the dielectric separator creating a short. In this work they explored lithium anode, but as I understand that was not the main focus. I don't think they solved the dendrites formation problem.
- wolfi1 4y ago
  wasn't that the problem of the Na-S batteries as well? that could mean Na-S systems will be viable as well (Na is very easy and cheap to source)
rsfern 4y ago
DOI link: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42004-022-00626-2 https://doi.org/10.1038/s42004-022-00626-2 The micrographs of the nanofiber composite electrode are cool!
qeternity 4y ago
Alright domain experts of HN - tell me why this is too good to be true.
- jokoon 4y ago
  At this point any submission related to battery tech research should be removed.
  - rsfern 4y ago
    Why? I haven’t seen a silver bullet yet, but I always learn something new
    - grishka 4y ago
      I think GP's point is that Li-Ion batteries were state of the art 15 years ago, and they still are today. And they aren't much better either, they still degrade from normal use and still expand if you look at them wrong. Except 15 years ago they at least were designed to be easily replaceable.
      - Retric 4y ago
        This is a Li-Ion battery because Lithium isn’t one single technology it’s a family of batteries that use Lithium. So lithium titanate, lithium cobalt, lithium manganese oxide, nickel cobalt manganese(NCM), nickel cobalt manganese Aluminum(NCMA), lithium iron phosphate(LFP), and now lithium sulfer are all related but they have very different trade offs. 15 years ago Li-Ion battery tech meant worse trade offs so fewer charge cycles, slower charging, less energy per charge, more costly etc etc. And yes, NCM and NCMA both use lithium.
      - 41b696ef1113 4y ago
        Li-ion has made tremendous advances in that time. This article[0] goes through some of the history. Some hot takes: - Price per cell has dropped ~97% since 1991 - 1991 energy density ~200 Wh/liter; 2005 energy density ~500 Wh/liter; 2017 ~700 Wh/liter [0]: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/ee/d0ee02681f https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/ee/d0ee0...
giantg2 4y ago
I just want cheap 1kW/kg lithium sulfur batteries promised by Theion. Apparently gen 1 is out, but gen 3 is at that density.
- mkl 4y ago
  You mean kWh/kg. Gen 3 is supposed to be "out" in 2024, but I doubt that means available to regular people. This article says they expect to start with the space industry, which suggests they'll be pretty expensive: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmorris/2022/04/02/sulfur-battery-technology-could-make-electric-cars-go-three-times-further-by-2024/?sh=2295ad307eed https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmorris/2022/04/02/sulfur-b...
  - giantg2 4y ago
    Good catch. Yeah, any new tech will be expensive. In theory, once it hits mass production it should be cheaper than existing li-ion since it doesn't require cobalt or nickel. I'm hoping it works out and hits similar price as today's batteries by 2030. But I'm probably too optimistic.
    - Tade0 4y ago
      LFP batteries already don't require nickel nor cobalt and they're indeed cheaper than alternatives.
      - giantg2 4y ago
        But at 1/4 the claimed density of the gen3 lithium sulfur crystal.
tomohawk 4y ago
I have to wonder what economic chance new battery types have given the massive investment in current tech. It feels like we're betting on the wrong thing, and in the process blowing our wad and good will. Kind of like what happened with nukes.
- gameswithgo 4y ago
- perlgeek 4y ago
  > I have to wonder what economic chance new battery types have given the massive investment in current tech. Current tech tends to improve at a steady pace. Taking a new tech to production takes some years (somewhere in the 5 to 20 years range); processes need to refined and scaled, suppliers sourced, people trained, recycling must be addressed etc. So new tech only stands a real chance if you can convince investors that its advantage is big enough that it still dominates when it comes to market. Let's say current batteries improve 7% per year (number made up, but not totally unrealistic). If the new technology needs 10 years to get to market, the current technology improves by a factor of 1.07*10 = 1.97 in mean time. So a 2x advantage along any axis (density, charge cycles, price, availability of materials etc.) is not a solid bet for an investor. A 5x advantage likely is. If course you'd want advantages on multiple axes to really make a solid bet.
- AtlasBarfed 4y ago
  There's lots of segments for battery chemistries to be used, so they just need to beat out smaller segments to establish commercial viability. EV batteries also aren't a monoculture. They are even mixing battery types in EV packs to achieve different range/cost aspects. If there's room for Sodium Ion, LFP, and the various cobalt/nickel chemistries, if there's air, sea, and long-haul modes plus grid storage, home battery storage, plus all the mobile and tools, there's plenty of segments.
matheweis 4y ago
If I’m reading it correctly there’s little significance to the 4000 cycle count; capacity had already stabilized at ~650mAh/g at around 3000 cycles and didn’t drop significantly thereafter. Am I missing anything obvious that would imply the cycle stability is limited to 4000? From the trends it seems to me that the headline is understated and these might last much longer than 4000 cycles.
- hulitu 4y ago
  Yes. Room temperature. Automotive (body) is between -40 °C and + 85 °C. The garage is normally not heated.
- manmal 4y ago
  Increasing cycle count (and thus, battery life) of all big batteries by 33% would be a huge deal though.
- was_a_dev 4y ago
  Is 650mAh/g a lot, how do current battery technologies compare?
  - sudosysgen 4y ago
    The highest capacity 18650 cell, the NCR18650G, clocks in at around 75mAh/g.
Isslam1 4y ago
Incredible
- Isslam1 4y ago
  Incredible2
fswd 4y ago
the difference between 600 cycles (best 18650) and 4000 cycles is night and day. There's already Lithium Phosphate that is warranted for 6000-8000 cycles. That's 19 years. With 600 cycles your battery will hit the landfield in 2 years. A Lithium Phosphate battery will last 19 years before it has to go to the landfield. Nobody takes the environmental cost in consideration until you take away the subsidies and look at the real numbers.
- eternityforest 4y ago
  I don't think any batteries marketed as phosphate last that long, although they may contain lithium phosphate. The only commercial batteries I know of that can do that are Lithium Titanate/LTO, that you can mostly only buy on AliExpress and a few specialty places, and are almost unheard of in commercial products(Except maybe some wireless earbuds and capacitor-like applications). They have like 1/4 the energy density or something, but they are still really amazing. I'd love to see power tools use them, we could run tethered on a USB-PD, charging during idle periods, and not wear out from cycling.
  - fswd 4y ago
    You might be surprised researching the current product offerings. Google "server rack battery". I am off grid with a 5.1kwh server rack lithium phosphate battery. Basically it's all I need. $2200 shipped with accessories, built in BMS with temp sensor and high grade terminals, bluetooth plus RS-485/CANBUS.
    - eternityforest 4y ago
      Those are pretty impressive! I wonder if they have some special software control to only charge up to 90% or something? I've never seem standalone batteries without smart controls go more than 3k for LFP.

183 points by jbotz 4y ago

Full title: "Stabilization of gamma sulfur at room temperature to enable the use of carbonate electrolyte in Li-S batteries". The paper is from February, but it doesn't seem to have been posted before. TLDR is that with just a new anode made from carbon nanofibers and sulfur, batteries otherwise almost identical to existing Li-Ion batteries would have 2-5 times the energy density, last 3 times as long, and cost 1/3 or less, and be more environmentally benign (not needing cobalt). The breakthrough here is the discovery that carbon nanofibers stabilize gamma-phase sulfur which previously was thought to only exist briefly at high temperatures, and which doesn't form the polysulfides that have been the main problem with Li-S batteries. Yeah, there have been lots of "breakthrough battery tech" announcements that didn't lead to commercial products, but this one really looks like it may be just the leap forward that will make renewable energy storage a non-problem.

xoa 4y ago
>Yeah, there have been lots of "breakthrough battery tech" announcements that didn't lead to commercial products Although very important to note in these discussions: a lot of them did. Yes, in mass production as as part of a whole battery system vs a single lab cell the gains are almost always far smaller, but small gains add up over time. Energy density has dramatically increased over the last few decades [0] as well as cost dropping and those trends together have combined to make the current electrification acceleration possible. There isn't any need to be overly cynical about this stuff, the progress is real and a tipping point was reached a while ago. With the amount of capital for R&D and production pouring in at this point it's not unreasonable to hope for even more. ---- 0: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/eternally-five-years-away-no-batteries-are-improving-under-your-nose/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/eternally-five-years...
- RivieraKid 4y ago
  > a lot of them did Really? I haven't noticed much progress over the last 5 to 10 years. What was the biggest breakthrough that has materialized in that time?
  - xoa 4y ago
    >Really? I haven't noticed much progress over the last 5 to 10 years You don't call doubling to tripling of energy density progress? https://cleantechnica.com/2020/02/19/bloombergnef-lithium-ion-battery-cell-densities-have-almost-tripled-since-2010/ https://cleantechnica.com/2020/02/19/bloombergnef-lithium-io... And it's not about "big breakthroughs" any more than it is for microprocessors. A bunch of lab changes that in production add .5-5% each add up to 10-20% in a generation add up to 2-3x over a decade. That something works in a lab though is still interesting since it shows the possible ceiling we can work towards. Going from that to something that we can make billions of cheaply entails compromises, but the ultimate envelope still matters.
    - multiplegeorges 4y ago
      Just like in finance, most (consumer/laymen) people are looking for a big win when it's been shown over and over that small gains compounded over time always come out ahead.
    - magila 4y ago
      So this got me curious and I started to look at something a bit more concrete: the history of 18650 cell capacity. Currently the highest capacity 18650 that's widely available is 3500 mAh. The first such cell I found is the LG MJ1 which dates back to 2014: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0481/9678/0183/files/lg_mj1_data_sheet.pdf https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0481/9678/0183/files/lg_mj... I also found a 3200 mAh model from 2012: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0481/9678/0183/files/panasonic_18650b_data_sheet.pdf https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0481/9678/0183/files/panas... That's a fair bit less than a 3x improvement over 10 years. Now of course this is a rather crude and unscientific measurement. It's also effectively measuring energy density by volume rather than weight, but volume is more often the limiting factor for Li-ion batteries (e.g. smartphones and EVs are volume limited). Still, I think this shows why people are skeptical about claimed massive improvements in battery tech: it's hard to find clear evidence of it in actual products people can buy.
isoprophlex 4y ago
EV batteries with 2-5 times the energy density would completely change the game. Imagine a car with a 900 - 2300 km range on a single charge. The cost savings would immediately solve the business case around renewable energy storage, too.
- wffurr 4y ago
  Aviation too would benefit enormously from this.
  - jillesvangurp 4y ago
    Yes a 3x increase would be transformative for general aviation. A lot cheaper to operate. Similar range. Probably will start happening in the next five years. Current models are a bit limited for range. But that should be a solvable problem.
- GordonS 4y ago
  Or even EVs capable of 500km, but weighing a tonne less than they do today. If this turns out to have the purported benefits at commercial scale, it could have an immense impact on our future!
  - altcognito 4y ago
    It is definitely the weight loss and reduction and materials that would make this a big deal. Imagine cutting the cost of the vehicle by 20-30%. Would be massive.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    > Or even EVs capable of 500km, but weighing a tonne less than they do today. That's not too realistic, a Model 3 battery only weighs half a ton to begin with. So perhaps we could cut the curb weight of the car by 15-20%. I wouldn't complain, but it's not world changing.
- foepys 4y ago
  Honestly, I'd rather have EV under 2 tonnes than 2,000km range...
rsfern 4y ago
I’m curious if they set out to stabilize this particular sulfur allotrope, or if they had more of a serendipitous “hmmm… that’s weird” data analysis moment. It’s really interesting because there could be so many ways to stabilize interesting new phases that conventional high throughput theoretical screening isn’t going to predict
- jbotz 4y ago
  Apparently it was serendipitous. They were just hoping the carbon fibers would slow down the polysulphite formation, and were surprised when they found stable gamma sulfur[1]. [1] https://www.freethink.com/environment/lithium-sulfur-battery https://www.freethink.com/environment/lithium-sulfur-battery
turbinerneiter 4y ago
> that will make renewable energy storage a non-problem I recently played around with the data from Germany 2020. I scaled up the existing renewables (only the ones that are scalable - wind and solar, hydro is pretty much maxed out) so that the yearly consumption can be served from 100% renewables. Then I added a battery to carry the overproduction over to the gaps. A 3 TWh battery would still lead to 50 days of empty battery and thus gaps in the power supply. This is electricity, not Transport and heating. And obviously my approach is simple, no sector coupling effects, no smart grid just scaling up want we have. 3 TWh is 30 million Model S batteries. Even with sodium ion batteries I think this is not really realistic. I always wondered why the are talking about hydrogen so much, despite the much higher losses you get in that process. Now I get it. I think batteries will be a good solution for single family homes / buildings with solar panel. But the grunt of the grid storage I think will be hydrogen. Especially because during winter, it can produce heat and electricity and the same gas turbines that are already common in German cities. Either way, it's a big, hard project, but doable if we really want to.
- brianwawok 4y ago
  Grid storage is different from powering EVs though. You don’t provide a week of grid backup via battery. You do stuff like pump 100 million gallons of water into a dam with a hydro plant ready. I think water is more efficient then hydrogen even.
  - DanHulton 4y ago
    Sure, but it's very dependant on geography, if you want to do it at scale. We're definitely going to have to adopt a mixed approach, so I'd say it still makes sense to keep the research into hydrogen, batteries, all of it.
  - maxerickson 4y ago
    That's 3 minutes of maximum generation at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludington_Pumped_Storage_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludington_Pumped_Storage_Power... I guess that plant doesn't have an extreme amount of head or a particularly large reservoir. It's about 7 minutes at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Sta... , which has a lot more head. So you need a lot more pumped storage if you want to start talking about days of backup, and we already used quite a few of the best sites.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
The only real reneweable energy storage problem is that we've not built enough generation to really need any storage yet. And so we're shovelling money to authoritarian regimes around the globe which they use to buy politicians and media. Luckily the EV market alone is enough to drive battery tech for short term storage forward, and green hydrogen for fertilizer is enough to take care of the rest. But, there's no need to wait, we should be a decade ahead on this at least if not for well funded lies holding us back.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  What fertilizer is made out of Hydrogen??
  - becurious 4y ago
    Ammonia is currently produced from methane.
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      To be precise, it's made from hydrogen and the current standard hydrogen is in turn made from methane (and the rest of the methane is dumped into the atmosphere as fossil CO2).
      - MobiusHorizons 4y ago
        While accurate in a technical chemical feasibility sense, it is misleading to suggest that ammonia is industrially produced from hydrogen. Existing facilities take in methane and output ammonia and CO2. It is true that the chemical reaction used to make ammonia takes hydrogen and not methane, but that fact in isolation ignores a lot of existing infrastructure. Existing ammonia producing plants do the conversion from methane to hydrogen in the same facility that produces the ammonia, making the hydrogen essentially an implementation detail. There are other ways of producing hydrogen industrially, but it is incorrect to think about the hydrogen generating system in isolation when considering existing infrastructure. Hopefully in the future new plants will be built with green hydrogen in mind.
zardo 4y ago
Given that the breakthrough is getting this stable sulfur phase at room temperature that previously wasn't stable below 93C, I'd like to see how well they survive cold temperatures.
lonk11 4y ago
"TLDR is that with just a new anode made from carbon nanofibers and sulfur" The new material they discuss is for the cathode side (not anode). That's side where the lithium ions go when the battery is charged. The cathode of traditional Li-ion batteries is made of metal oxides: Cobalt, Nickel, Manganese (lately trying to get rid of the expensive Cobalt). The sulfur cathode promises to remove all of the expensive metals in the cathode and make the cathode much more energy dense. The anode is where the lithium ions go when the battery is being discharged. In traditional batteries the anode is made of carbon fibers (burnt coconut shells). The holy grail of anode is pure lithium anode - there is nothing more energy dense. But the problem with pure lithium is that it tends to get deposited not in an even layer, but in the form of dendrites that eventually poke through the dielectric separator creating a short. In this work they explored lithium anode, but as I understand that was not the main focus. I don't think they solved the dendrites formation problem.
wolfi1 4y ago
wasn't that the problem of the Na-S batteries as well? that could mean Na-S systems will be viable as well (Na is very easy and cheap to source)

rsfern 4y ago

DOI link: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42004-022-00626-2 https://doi.org/10.1038/s42004-022-00626-2 The micrographs of the nanofiber composite electrode are cool!

qeternity 4y ago

Alright domain experts of HN - tell me why this is too good to be true.

jokoon 4y ago
At this point any submission related to battery tech research should be removed.
- rsfern 4y ago
  Why? I haven’t seen a silver bullet yet, but I always learn something new
  - grishka 4y ago
    I think GP's point is that Li-Ion batteries were state of the art 15 years ago, and they still are today. And they aren't much better either, they still degrade from normal use and still expand if you look at them wrong. Except 15 years ago they at least were designed to be easily replaceable.
    - Retric 4y ago
      This is a Li-Ion battery because Lithium isn’t one single technology it’s a family of batteries that use Lithium. So lithium titanate, lithium cobalt, lithium manganese oxide, nickel cobalt manganese(NCM), nickel cobalt manganese Aluminum(NCMA), lithium iron phosphate(LFP), and now lithium sulfer are all related but they have very different trade offs. 15 years ago Li-Ion battery tech meant worse trade offs so fewer charge cycles, slower charging, less energy per charge, more costly etc etc. And yes, NCM and NCMA both use lithium.
    - 41b696ef1113 4y ago
      Li-ion has made tremendous advances in that time. This article[0] goes through some of the history. Some hot takes: - Price per cell has dropped ~97% since 1991 - 1991 energy density ~200 Wh/liter; 2005 energy density ~500 Wh/liter; 2017 ~700 Wh/liter [0]: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/ee/d0ee02681f https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/ee/d0ee0...

giantg2 4y ago

I just want cheap 1kW/kg lithium sulfur batteries promised by Theion. Apparently gen 1 is out, but gen 3 is at that density.

mkl 4y ago
You mean kWh/kg. Gen 3 is supposed to be "out" in 2024, but I doubt that means available to regular people. This article says they expect to start with the space industry, which suggests they'll be pretty expensive: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmorris/2022/04/02/sulfur-battery-technology-could-make-electric-cars-go-three-times-further-by-2024/?sh=2295ad307eed https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmorris/2022/04/02/sulfur-b...
- giantg2 4y ago
  Good catch. Yeah, any new tech will be expensive. In theory, once it hits mass production it should be cheaper than existing li-ion since it doesn't require cobalt or nickel. I'm hoping it works out and hits similar price as today's batteries by 2030. But I'm probably too optimistic.
  - Tade0 4y ago
    LFP batteries already don't require nickel nor cobalt and they're indeed cheaper than alternatives.
    - giantg2 4y ago
      But at 1/4 the claimed density of the gen3 lithium sulfur crystal.

tomohawk 4y ago

I have to wonder what economic chance new battery types have given the massive investment in current tech. It feels like we're betting on the wrong thing, and in the process blowing our wad and good will. Kind of like what happened with nukes.

gameswithgo 4y ago
perlgeek 4y ago
> I have to wonder what economic chance new battery types have given the massive investment in current tech. Current tech tends to improve at a steady pace. Taking a new tech to production takes some years (somewhere in the 5 to 20 years range); processes need to refined and scaled, suppliers sourced, people trained, recycling must be addressed etc. So new tech only stands a real chance if you can convince investors that its advantage is big enough that it still dominates when it comes to market. Let's say current batteries improve 7% per year (number made up, but not totally unrealistic). If the new technology needs 10 years to get to market, the current technology improves by a factor of 1.07*10 = 1.97 in mean time. So a 2x advantage along any axis (density, charge cycles, price, availability of materials etc.) is not a solid bet for an investor. A 5x advantage likely is. If course you'd want advantages on multiple axes to really make a solid bet.
AtlasBarfed 4y ago
There's lots of segments for battery chemistries to be used, so they just need to beat out smaller segments to establish commercial viability. EV batteries also aren't a monoculture. They are even mixing battery types in EV packs to achieve different range/cost aspects. If there's room for Sodium Ion, LFP, and the various cobalt/nickel chemistries, if there's air, sea, and long-haul modes plus grid storage, home battery storage, plus all the mobile and tools, there's plenty of segments.

matheweis 4y ago

If I’m reading it correctly there’s little significance to the 4000 cycle count; capacity had already stabilized at ~650mAh/g at around 3000 cycles and didn’t drop significantly thereafter. Am I missing anything obvious that would imply the cycle stability is limited to 4000? From the trends it seems to me that the headline is understated and these might last much longer than 4000 cycles.

hulitu 4y ago
Yes. Room temperature. Automotive (body) is between -40 °C and + 85 °C. The garage is normally not heated.
manmal 4y ago
Increasing cycle count (and thus, battery life) of all big batteries by 33% would be a huge deal though.
was_a_dev 4y ago
Is 650mAh/g a lot, how do current battery technologies compare?
- sudosysgen 4y ago
  The highest capacity 18650 cell, the NCR18650G, clocks in at around 75mAh/g.

Isslam1 4y ago

Incredible

Isslam1 4y ago
Incredible2

fswd 4y ago

the difference between 600 cycles (best 18650) and 4000 cycles is night and day. There's already Lithium Phosphate that is warranted for 6000-8000 cycles. That's 19 years. With 600 cycles your battery will hit the landfield in 2 years. A Lithium Phosphate battery will last 19 years before it has to go to the landfield. Nobody takes the environmental cost in consideration until you take away the subsidies and look at the real numbers.

eternityforest 4y ago
I don't think any batteries marketed as phosphate last that long, although they may contain lithium phosphate. The only commercial batteries I know of that can do that are Lithium Titanate/LTO, that you can mostly only buy on AliExpress and a few specialty places, and are almost unheard of in commercial products(Except maybe some wireless earbuds and capacitor-like applications). They have like 1/4 the energy density or something, but they are still really amazing. I'd love to see power tools use them, we could run tethered on a USB-PD, charging during idle periods, and not wear out from cycling.
- fswd 4y ago
  You might be surprised researching the current product offerings. Google "server rack battery". I am off grid with a 5.1kwh server rack lithium phosphate battery. Basically it's all I need. $2200 shipped with accessories, built in BMS with temp sensor and high grade terminals, bluetooth plus RS-485/CANBUS.
  - eternityforest 4y ago
    Those are pretty impressive! I wonder if they have some special software control to only charge up to 90% or something? I've never seem standalone batteries without smart controls go more than 3k for LFP.