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Argonne: Lithium-Air battery 1200 wh/kg, 1000 cycles

288 points by AtlasBarfed 4y ago

AtlasBarfed 4y ago
If commercialized in similar stats, a million mile lifetime battery in a Tesla Model S: 250 kilowatt hour battery ~ 1000 mile range battery would weight 208 pounds, although pack would probably be more than raw cell weight, let's say 250 pounds. Current Tesla model S is a 1100 pound pack. Because you are chopping off almost 1000 pounds in pack weight, the car would go even further than current tesla effeciency because of the BEV "rocket equation". The battery uses oxygen from the air, not purified oxygen unlike others. It is a solid battery design as well, so it should be compact. Materials are claimed to be common. Of course it can be hard to tell the path to commercialization. Usually research cells are very small, a far cry from BEV / grid and other commercial scale cells. Five years ago they were at 750 cycles (https://today.uic.edu/new-design-produces-true-lithium-air-battery/ https://today.uic.edu/new-design-produces-true-lithium-air-b...), unreported density.
- java-man 4y ago
  Are there any poisoning effects from gases present in the air, like water vapor?
  - chongli 4y ago
    The air intake could have filters, dehumidification, and drying via desiccant. I can’t imagine they would just run plain atmospheric air with all its pollutants through such a high efficiency, high energy battery.
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    The material resulting from discharge (Li2O) is very stable. Water (or LiOH) would break down before it on the charging process. There isn't a lot of stuff on the air that could contaminate it.
somewhat_drunk 4y ago
This transition can't happen soon enough, imo.
jmartrican 4y ago
About time Argonne starts pulling it weight. Its been Livermore National Laboratory showing up in my news feeds. Any downsides to this air battery that wasn't mentioned in the article?
- Iv 4y ago
  "With further development, we expect" These are the downsides. These are promises. Not actual performances.
- sebnukem2 4y ago
  From the article, now, this air battery is only vapor.
- throitallaway 4y ago
  I glanced over the headline and though it was an Argon Lithium battery tech.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    The lightweight version of these cells will be from Neonne National Labs.
multiplegeorges 4y ago
Since this is being developed at a National Lab, do the findings automatically enter the public domain for commercialization, or can the government license the tech and reap the rewards for citizens?
- nvrspyx 4y ago
  IANAL, but it appears the default is the former. > Licenses to practice inventions covered by patents and pending patent applications owned by the U.S. Government as represented by this Department will generally be royalty free, revocable and nonexclusive. They will normally be issued to all applicants and will generally contain no limitations or standards relating to the quality or testing of the products to be manufactured, sold, or distributed thereunder. But... > Where it appears however that the public interest will be served under the circumstances of the particular case by licenses which impose conditions, such as those relating to quality or testing of products, requirement of payment of royalties to the Government, etc., or by the issuance of limited exclusive licenses by the Secretary after notice and opportunity for hearing thereon, such licenses may be issued. In other words, if it would be in the public interest to impose royalties, exclusivity, or conditions of use, the Government can do so. In this case since it's a high energy density battery, I suppose an argument could easily be made that it would be in the public interest for the government to impose conditions related to quality and testing. Source: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-34/subtitle-A/part-6/section-6.3 https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-34/subtitle-A/part-6/sect... --- EDIT: With all of that said, it appears that patents related to this project, such as [1], have UChicago Argonne LLC as the applicant and not a US government agency, so the above might not even be applicable in this case. But, again, IANAL. 1: https://image-ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloadPdf/20220037646 https://image-ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloa...
  - londons_explore 4y ago
    Those kind of rules infuriate me... Some politicians friend will manage to argue that it's in the public interest to grant an exclusive license in return for commercializing the tech. They would argue that without being granted exclusivity, nobody will commercialize it. Then one company gets to reap all the profits of government work.
MisterPea 4y ago
Wait what?? What's the catch, 1200wh/kg is insane. Putting the same weight of this into a Tesla Model Y would easily give over 1200 miles of range
- nagisa 4y ago
  Volumetric density matters too.
  - Mountain_Skies 4y ago
    Very long cars are going to make a comeback. Parking lots will never be the same again! Wonder how well the batteries tolerate deformation and if they could be molded into crumble zones.
    - lm28469 4y ago
      > Very long cars are going to make a comeback. Not in Europe, a lot of US cars already wouldn't fit in EU parking spots (most are 5mx2.3m)
      - pmontra 4y ago
        They might park over the lines of outdoor parking slots but they won't fit into single car garages.
      - Mountain_Skies 4y ago
        Parking spaces in US cities can get smaller the closer you get to the central business district. Eventually they're marked as 'Compact' so hopefully only those in compact cars will attempt to use them. If Lithium-Air batteries enabled widespread adoption of EVs over ICE vehicles, but at the cost of requiring longer vehicles, would enlarging parking spaces be an acceptable cost?
      - sebnukem2 4y ago
        People driving oversized cars from US in EU have no qualms about taking 2 parking spots.
Animats 4y ago
Actual paper, paywalled: [1] (Why is this paywalled? It's work done by U.S. Government employees and thus cannot be copyrighted.) This is a huge advance if it works. But we've heard this before. People have been fooling around with lithium-air batteries since the 1970s. Previous breakthrough announced in 2022: [2] Previous "breakthrough" announced in 2021: [3] Another "breakthrough" announced in 2021: [4] Not clear if this really runs on "air", or whether it needs a clean gas mixture. Water vapor has caused problems with previous lithium-air systems. That's not a killer problem, though; extracting clean oxygen from air is not that hard. Nor is removing water. [1] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq1347 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq1347 [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidrvetter/2022/02/01/how-this-tesla-busting-battery-could-be-the-holy-grail-for-electric-flight https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidrvetter/2022/02/01/how-thi... [3] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/05/210506104801.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/05/210506104801.h... [4] https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/breakthrough-design-offers-promising-solutions-to-the-lithium-air-battery-problem https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/breakthrough-design-offe...
- rsfern 4y ago
  Here you go https://www.researchgate.net/publication/368171693_A_room_temperature_rechargeable_Li2O-based_lithium-air_battery_enabled_by_a_solid_electrolyte https://www.researchgate.net/publication/368171693_A_room_te... I don’t know about Argonne, but at NIST all our papers are supposed to have full text up on PubMed within I think a year. I try to post to arxiv when I submit to the journal. Ironically paywall journals are easier for us from a budget perspective because we don’t really have dedicated funds for article fees like academics get with NSF funding Edit: I just saw that it’s “request full text”, which I found disappointing
  - Animats 4y ago
    Right. I've been looking around for the full text, but haven't found it. It's really annoying for papers which could be world changing if true. This is either a huge advance or there's some reason it won't work in practice.
ttul 4y ago
Assuming a human can carry 20kg with relative ease (say, in a backpack or strapped to a bike), this new battery allows one to carry around 24kWh - enough to run a North American house for several hours. Or to drive an e-bike for 1,000 miles… Really stretches the imagination.
- michaelteter 4y ago
  > Assuming a human can carry 20kg 20 pounds maybe... but 20kg (44lb) would be a serious effort for most people.
  - d3ckard 4y ago
    My kid weights 14kg and my 60 kg wife can still pick him up and walk with him. 20 kg with a good backpack is achievable to pretty much everyone.
    - michaelteter 4y ago
      Yes it's possible, but it's not something the average person can do for very long. I can squat 1.5X my own weight, but I still get pretty tired carrying a mere 12kg backpack through a long airport walk. Sure you can build up to carrying 20kg all the time, but it's not normal for most people in the world. And it would not be accepted as reasonable by the people in the world who could afford it.
      - Robotbeat 4y ago
        The key is a good pack like that used for hiking with a proper frame and a large padded belt, not a normal school type backpack that you carry just on your shoulders (often just slung over one shoulder). The proper pack setup loads your muscles more like squatting. The difference is pretty striking. I think 20kg is appropriate in that instance. (Normal guideline is hike pack should not be more than a third your body weight to avoid injury, which for the average American male would be 60 pounds and the average American female would be 50 pounds… there’s enough margin so that even if you’re talking just those in a healthy BMI of like 23, there’s enough for a 44 pound pack for the average height American male and female.)
causi 4y ago
Anytime you see a "battery breakthrough" article, a way to save yourself some time is just to check if they've patented it. If they haven't, they have zero expectation that it has commercial potential.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  Does the federal government hold patents? This is from a DoE national laboratory, not a university.
  - causi 4y ago
    Yes they do. Generally they license them for free, though.
  - zamnos 4y ago
    They do, and in fact, the federal government even has a special exception for patents. They (think: the NSA) can file a patent, and if the public files a similar enough patent, then the older, government one is revealed.
- jillesvangurp 4y ago
  https://patents.justia.com/inventor/michael-m-thackeray https://patents.justia.com/inventor/michael-m-thackeray It seems there are a few ... In related news, Michael Thackeray also now is a fellow of the Royal Society: https://www.anl.gov/article/michael-thackeray-named-fellow-of-the-royal-society https://www.anl.gov/article/michael-thackeray-named-fellow-o...
scythe 4y ago
>With further development, we expect our new design for the lithium-air battery to also reach a record energy density of 1200 watt-hours per kilogram "With further development". Somewhat misleading title. From the published paper: >The results shown in fig. S9 indicate that this solid-state Li-air battery cell can work up to a capacity of ~10.4 mAh/cm2, resulting in a specific energy of ~685 Wh/kgcell. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq1347 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq1347 Still impressive, but not 1200 Wh/kg!
dvh 4y ago
18650 battery weighting 45 grams would have 54Wh while typical 18650 now have around 10Wh
- Tuna-Fish 4y ago
  These are lithium-air batteries, meaning you cannot construct them into normal, cylindrical batteries as they need air intake (and exhaust when charging).
mdkdog 4y ago
I'm not holding my breath. I've seen too many "breakthrough's" in the lasts 10 years but nothing in the market
- dividuum 4y ago
  Can't wait for that Tesa battery ;-)
- dd36 4y ago
  Yep, nothing has happened in the market for the last ten years…
- mrb 4y ago
  In the last 10 years, the EV market has grown 50-fold from $10 to $500 billion in revenue.
throw93 4y ago
This is awesome. I hope people realize this came out of public funding and not made by a corp. Although eventually some corp will make a minor tweak to this and copyright the hell out of it. Really excited to see this in a car soon!
- Moissanite 4y ago
  > Although eventually some corp will make a minor tweak to this and copyright the hell out of it Patent rather than copyright, but you are most likely correct - in fact I fully expect at least one company already has a patent which might arguably be infringed by this work, regardless of whether that company has ever made an actual working battery, or really done any meaningful research whatsoever. Such is the insanity of the patent system.
- vlovich123 4y ago
  If it’s a minor tweak it’s not patentable. And only the authors can patent it (assuming they do so before presenting it publicly which can set a clock). The authors of course can sell.
- mesoman 4y ago
  Public funding contributes basic research. Corporations contribute other things, like design for actual use and production, production tooling design, production tooling production, factory space and management, distribution management, warehousing, marketing (yes, you do need to spend money to market it in any economy). And by the way, all this results in paying wages and taxes which go back to the public. Also, in many cases of publicly funded research, the resulting company is owned or partly owned by the researcher(s), which is one of the incentives for doing the research in the first place. Utility patents cover that which is new and, in theory, non-obvious (although non-obvious is very poorly enforced based own personal experience). Those would include the "tweaks", which may not be as minor as you think, given the difference between the needs of a product that is to be mass produced, vs. a proof-of-concept laboratory device. Patents might also include the methods of production. Design patents cover the appearance and aesthetics, and are a different type of patent in the US.
mabbo 4y ago
There are so many different metrics that are important in a battery. wh/kg is a key one, definitely, but the standard Lithium Ion battery meets a bunch of important ones. What's the wh/volume? Maybe it's light but it's huge? What's the charging rate? Maybe it holds power well, but takes 3 days to recharge? What's the discharge rate? Maybe it hold power well, but can't release it quickly? What's the cost per wh to produce? It's a research thing right now, so probably it's incredibly expensive- but that always is the case with new stuff. This is the hard part with any new battery announcement. They always yell about how this new battery tech wins at one metric, while quietly not mentioning that there's a lot more where the Li-ion wins out overall.
- scythe 4y ago
  I have access to the paper. First, the actual measured capacity is 685 Wh/kg, not 1200; the researchers stated they hope to reach the latter figure with further development. In order: - Wh/L is 619, so the battery just barely floats. The absence of a dense metal oxide cathode probably makes it lighter than the usual lithium battery cell (which have s.g. ~2). - Charging rate is given as 1 A/g for a 1 Ah/g electrode, so these numbers were measured with a 1-hour charge time. Data for higher charge rates is buried in the Supporting Information (which may be public?) - Discharge rate is the same. - Cost to produce is unclear. The electrolyte contains about 1-2% germanium (5 wt% of Li10GeP2S2), and the cathode contains molybdenum. It is difficult to give the Mo concentration with certainty because the specific area of the cathode is given as "250 g/m^2" but it should be as "m^2/g". Assuming a simple typo, the cathode contains 25 mg of Mo per cubic centimeter, which is sometimes written "2.5% w/v". These are rare elements, but the concentrations are rather low. The use of toxic sulfides (H2S risk) may increase production costs. Coulombic efficiency, which you didn't ask for, starts at 93% and drops to 88% after 1000 cycles, so pretty good but a little lower than you expect from a typical lithium battery.
  - amluto 4y ago
    Wh/kg is an insufficient metric for air batteries. One needs Wh/kg at full charge and separately or full discharge, or kg/Wh charged and additional kg/Wh per unit Wh discharged, or something along those lines. (kg/Ah discharged could be used to estimate electrons per oxygen atom absorbed, too.)
mdp2021 4y ago
A Jackery Explorer model 240 weighs 3Kg, a model 500 6Kg, a model 1000 10Kg. This promises a jump of an order of magnitude (base 10)...
timerol 4y ago
> “The chemical reaction for lithium superoxide or peroxide only involves one or two electrons stored per oxygen molecule, whereas that for lithium oxide involves four electrons,” said Argonne chemist Rachid Amine. More electrons stored means higher energy density. I find it odd and surprising that the limiting factor is electrons per oxygen, not electrons per lithium. Oxygen is freely floating in the air, while lithium is in a fixed amount in the battery. Possibly something about the electrode makes it store a limited quantity of oxygen.
- jacknews 4y ago
  Most of the energy from burning fuel comes from the oxygen, not the fuel: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jchemed.5b00333 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jchemed.5b00333
- melony 4y ago
  Nominative determinism strikes again!
malchow 4y ago
Enovix is already at 1,500 cycles w/ 88% capacity retention at *889 wh/L per core* (figure ignores packaging, like the Argonne figure) at 6C CCCV charge – 1C discharge. And that is a commercially relevant sized cell that is being produced at Fab1 in Fremont. https://ir.enovix.com/static-files/667425e2-44ef-4ab0-978b-991a2e6be186 https://ir.enovix.com/static-files/667425e2-44ef-4ab0-978b-9...
- Retric 4y ago
  Volumetric density isn’t the issue, for many applications weight per kWh is simply too high.
rgmerk 4y ago
Commentators thus far seem mainly interested in applications in cars, in the event this ever makes it out of the lab. Frankly, cars are not the big deal here. Existing battery technology is good enough for most light vehicle applications, and continues to incrementally improve. A lithium-air battery car could be even better and would solve most of the edge cases (the people who want to tow horse floats across the country at 70mph, for instance, or for lightweight electric sports cars). However, this would be a transformative technology for electric aviation. Delivery drones double or triple their useful range. Air taxis go from pushing the limits of structural engineering to being easily doable. Short-haul all-electric airliners become plausible.
- geff82 4y ago
  As a private pilot I am SO looking forward to finally be able to do away with piston engines and fly electric...
  - api 4y ago
    Has anyone experimented with hydrogen or natural gas fuel cells? They're cumbersome for cars but for planes the reduced weight would make sense. Weight doesn't matter as much for land transport. I know hybrids don't make as much sense for planes because the throttle range is typically 50-100% through a flight vs cars where you spend tons of time down at 10-15% throttle and need only bursts of power.
    - Full_Clark 4y ago
      Universal Hydrogen is outfitting a Dash-8 with one hydrogen fuel cell engine for a test flight in March (leaving the other engine unchanged as a Jet-A powered turboprop). If all goes well they'll convert the other engine to hydrogen fuel cell as well, and they hope to be operating it in passenger service by 2025. https://hydrogen.aero/product/ https://hydrogen.aero/product/ Seems promising because they don't have to fully design a new aircraft, they just have to get the new powertrain certified. Though the same end-customer airline (Air New Zealand) is also eyeing off some new-build battery-electric aircraft with 250nm range and 30 min recharge times. https://simpleflying.com/eviation-alice-first-flight/ https://simpleflying.com/eviation-alice-first-flight/
pengaru 4y ago
> For over a decade, scientists at Argonne and elsewhere have been working overtime to develop a lithium battery that makes use of the oxygen in air If only we could have EV batteries instead make use of CO2 in the air...
wg0 4y ago
VR, Self driving cars, Quantum computers, fusion and efficient, durable, high density batteries - always a decade away.
idontwantthis 4y ago
Not directly related, but what are the odds that if I buy an electric car this year, I will be able to upgrade the battery chemistry in 10 years? If I bought a car today, I'd like to drive it until I can't anymore. If electric batteries are x times better in 10 years than now, it would suck to only be able to replace it with today's lithium ion. Imagine upgrading your car in 10 years to take it from 200 miles to 10000.
- ComputerGuru 4y ago
  Those odds are entirely contingent on the software/firmware being rooted and reverse engineered or else completely replaced by an open alternative (eg ECU swap). Car manufacturers would have no motive to develop let alone release retrofits for older cars.
  - alwayslikethis 4y ago
    Furthermore they have an incentive to lobby for legislation to forbid aftermarket hardware/software, likely in the name of "public safety", but really just sales figures. Electric cars generally have fewer parts that wear over time, so car makers really have to up the planned obsolescence game if, after a major battery breakthrough that allows for more range/lifespan than you need, they still want to be selling the same amount of cars year over year. Can't wait for someone to come up with a full aftermarket car firmware that would let you run everything on it, circumvent restrictions, and disable telemetry.
wolfi1 4y ago
rechargeable batteries, which want to use air as the second electrode, have the problem of CO2 in the air which causes dendrites in the (liquid) electrolyte, a solid electrolyte does not have this problem, obviously, but there seems to be still some problems as they achieved only 1000 cycles
gloosx 4y ago
The O2 content of air varies seasonally in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres and is decreasing from year to year. Also Oxygen is more disperse at higher altitudes. Interesting how it affects such batteries.
phtrivier 4y ago
It's a bit disheartening that some part of science were created by a few hundred dudes in the course of a few decades (say, quantum theory in the early 1900s), and we know the name of those persons, and they changed the world for ever while also getting famous pretty fast. But nowadays, it takes hundreds of teams of unknown researchers to _not quite actually_ make the changes that we desperately need. Maybe there are some problems that you can only solve "Mannathan Project"-style, as opposed to the normal, slow and steady course of research ? Must take some courage to realize the urge, and still go the way of the tortoise without loosing your mind.
sriku 4y ago
Please can someone explain the chemistry better? The article seems to say it takes O2 from air and makes Li2O as output? Won't that somehow expend the battery over time .. or is the O2 released back on recharge?
hulitu 4y ago
1000 cycles is bullshit. 3 years of lifetime. And they forgot to say what those cycles are (how much discharge, from which capacity, at which temperature).

288 points by AtlasBarfed 4y ago

If commercialized in similar stats, a million mile lifetime battery in a Tesla Model S: 250 kilowatt hour battery ~ 1000 mile range battery would weight 208 pounds, although pack would probably be more than raw cell weight, let's say 250 pounds. Current Tesla model S is a 1100 pound pack. Because you are chopping off almost 1000 pounds in pack weight, the car would go even further than current tesla effeciency because of the BEV "rocket equation". The battery uses oxygen from the air, not purified oxygen unlike others. It is a solid battery design as well, so it should be compact. Materials are claimed to be common. Of course it can be hard to tell the path to commercialization. Usually research cells are very small, a far cry from BEV / grid and other commercial scale cells. Five years ago they were at 750 cycles (https://today.uic.edu/new-design-produces-true-lithium-air-battery/ https://today.uic.edu/new-design-produces-true-lithium-air-b...), unreported density.

java-man 4y ago
Are there any poisoning effects from gases present in the air, like water vapor?
- chongli 4y ago
  The air intake could have filters, dehumidification, and drying via desiccant. I can’t imagine they would just run plain atmospheric air with all its pollutants through such a high efficiency, high energy battery.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  The material resulting from discharge (Li2O) is very stable. Water (or LiOH) would break down before it on the charging process. There isn't a lot of stuff on the air that could contaminate it.

somewhat_drunk 4y ago

This transition can't happen soon enough, imo.

jmartrican 4y ago

About time Argonne starts pulling it weight. Its been Livermore National Laboratory showing up in my news feeds. Any downsides to this air battery that wasn't mentioned in the article?

Iv 4y ago
"With further development, we expect" These are the downsides. These are promises. Not actual performances.
sebnukem2 4y ago
From the article, now, this air battery is only vapor.
throitallaway 4y ago
I glanced over the headline and though it was an Argon Lithium battery tech.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  The lightweight version of these cells will be from Neonne National Labs.

multiplegeorges 4y ago

Since this is being developed at a National Lab, do the findings automatically enter the public domain for commercialization, or can the government license the tech and reap the rewards for citizens?

nvrspyx 4y ago
IANAL, but it appears the default is the former. > Licenses to practice inventions covered by patents and pending patent applications owned by the U.S. Government as represented by this Department will generally be royalty free, revocable and nonexclusive. They will normally be issued to all applicants and will generally contain no limitations or standards relating to the quality or testing of the products to be manufactured, sold, or distributed thereunder. But... > Where it appears however that the public interest will be served under the circumstances of the particular case by licenses which impose conditions, such as those relating to quality or testing of products, requirement of payment of royalties to the Government, etc., or by the issuance of limited exclusive licenses by the Secretary after notice and opportunity for hearing thereon, such licenses may be issued. In other words, if it would be in the public interest to impose royalties, exclusivity, or conditions of use, the Government can do so. In this case since it's a high energy density battery, I suppose an argument could easily be made that it would be in the public interest for the government to impose conditions related to quality and testing. Source: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-34/subtitle-A/part-6/section-6.3 https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-34/subtitle-A/part-6/sect... --- EDIT: With all of that said, it appears that patents related to this project, such as [1], have UChicago Argonne LLC as the applicant and not a US government agency, so the above might not even be applicable in this case. But, again, IANAL. 1: https://image-ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloadPdf/20220037646 https://image-ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloa...
- londons_explore 4y ago
  Those kind of rules infuriate me... Some politicians friend will manage to argue that it's in the public interest to grant an exclusive license in return for commercializing the tech. They would argue that without being granted exclusivity, nobody will commercialize it. Then one company gets to reap all the profits of government work.

MisterPea 4y ago

Wait what?? What's the catch, 1200wh/kg is insane. Putting the same weight of this into a Tesla Model Y would easily give over 1200 miles of range

nagisa 4y ago
Volumetric density matters too.
- Mountain_Skies 4y ago
  Very long cars are going to make a comeback. Parking lots will never be the same again! Wonder how well the batteries tolerate deformation and if they could be molded into crumble zones.
  - lm28469 4y ago
    > Very long cars are going to make a comeback. Not in Europe, a lot of US cars already wouldn't fit in EU parking spots (most are 5mx2.3m)
    - pmontra 4y ago
      They might park over the lines of outdoor parking slots but they won't fit into single car garages.
    - Mountain_Skies 4y ago
      Parking spaces in US cities can get smaller the closer you get to the central business district. Eventually they're marked as 'Compact' so hopefully only those in compact cars will attempt to use them. If Lithium-Air batteries enabled widespread adoption of EVs over ICE vehicles, but at the cost of requiring longer vehicles, would enlarging parking spaces be an acceptable cost?
    - sebnukem2 4y ago
      People driving oversized cars from US in EU have no qualms about taking 2 parking spots.

Animats 4y ago

Actual paper, paywalled: [1] (Why is this paywalled? It's work done by U.S. Government employees and thus cannot be copyrighted.) This is a huge advance if it works. But we've heard this before. People have been fooling around with lithium-air batteries since the 1970s. Previous breakthrough announced in 2022: [2] Previous "breakthrough" announced in 2021: [3] Another "breakthrough" announced in 2021: [4] Not clear if this really runs on "air", or whether it needs a clean gas mixture. Water vapor has caused problems with previous lithium-air systems. That's not a killer problem, though; extracting clean oxygen from air is not that hard. Nor is removing water. [1] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq1347 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq1347 [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidrvetter/2022/02/01/how-this-tesla-busting-battery-could-be-the-holy-grail-for-electric-flight https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidrvetter/2022/02/01/how-thi... [3] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/05/210506104801.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/05/210506104801.h... [4] https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/breakthrough-design-offers-promising-solutions-to-the-lithium-air-battery-problem https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/breakthrough-design-offe...

rsfern 4y ago
Here you go https://www.researchgate.net/publication/368171693_A_room_temperature_rechargeable_Li2O-based_lithium-air_battery_enabled_by_a_solid_electrolyte https://www.researchgate.net/publication/368171693_A_room_te... I don’t know about Argonne, but at NIST all our papers are supposed to have full text up on PubMed within I think a year. I try to post to arxiv when I submit to the journal. Ironically paywall journals are easier for us from a budget perspective because we don’t really have dedicated funds for article fees like academics get with NSF funding Edit: I just saw that it’s “request full text”, which I found disappointing
- Animats 4y ago
  Right. I've been looking around for the full text, but haven't found it. It's really annoying for papers which could be world changing if true. This is either a huge advance or there's some reason it won't work in practice.

ttul 4y ago

Assuming a human can carry 20kg with relative ease (say, in a backpack or strapped to a bike), this new battery allows one to carry around 24kWh - enough to run a North American house for several hours. Or to drive an e-bike for 1,000 miles… Really stretches the imagination.

michaelteter 4y ago
> Assuming a human can carry 20kg 20 pounds maybe... but 20kg (44lb) would be a serious effort for most people.
- d3ckard 4y ago
  My kid weights 14kg and my 60 kg wife can still pick him up and walk with him. 20 kg with a good backpack is achievable to pretty much everyone.
  - michaelteter 4y ago
    Yes it's possible, but it's not something the average person can do for very long. I can squat 1.5X my own weight, but I still get pretty tired carrying a mere 12kg backpack through a long airport walk. Sure you can build up to carrying 20kg all the time, but it's not normal for most people in the world. And it would not be accepted as reasonable by the people in the world who could afford it.
    - Robotbeat 4y ago
      The key is a good pack like that used for hiking with a proper frame and a large padded belt, not a normal school type backpack that you carry just on your shoulders (often just slung over one shoulder). The proper pack setup loads your muscles more like squatting. The difference is pretty striking. I think 20kg is appropriate in that instance. (Normal guideline is hike pack should not be more than a third your body weight to avoid injury, which for the average American male would be 60 pounds and the average American female would be 50 pounds… there’s enough margin so that even if you’re talking just those in a healthy BMI of like 23, there’s enough for a 44 pound pack for the average height American male and female.)

causi 4y ago

Anytime you see a "battery breakthrough" article, a way to save yourself some time is just to check if they've patented it. If they haven't, they have zero expectation that it has commercial potential.

anigbrowl 4y ago
Does the federal government hold patents? This is from a DoE national laboratory, not a university.
- causi 4y ago
  Yes they do. Generally they license them for free, though.
- zamnos 4y ago
  They do, and in fact, the federal government even has a special exception for patents. They (think: the NSA) can file a patent, and if the public files a similar enough patent, then the older, government one is revealed.
jillesvangurp 4y ago
https://patents.justia.com/inventor/michael-m-thackeray https://patents.justia.com/inventor/michael-m-thackeray It seems there are a few ... In related news, Michael Thackeray also now is a fellow of the Royal Society: https://www.anl.gov/article/michael-thackeray-named-fellow-of-the-royal-society https://www.anl.gov/article/michael-thackeray-named-fellow-o...

scythe 4y ago

>With further development, we expect our new design for the lithium-air battery to also reach a record energy density of 1200 watt-hours per kilogram "With further development". Somewhat misleading title. From the published paper: >The results shown in fig. S9 indicate that this solid-state Li-air battery cell can work up to a capacity of ~10.4 mAh/cm2, resulting in a specific energy of ~685 Wh/kgcell. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq1347 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq1347 Still impressive, but not 1200 Wh/kg!

dvh 4y ago

18650 battery weighting 45 grams would have 54Wh while typical 18650 now have around 10Wh

Tuna-Fish 4y ago
These are lithium-air batteries, meaning you cannot construct them into normal, cylindrical batteries as they need air intake (and exhaust when charging).

mdkdog 4y ago

I'm not holding my breath. I've seen too many "breakthrough's" in the lasts 10 years but nothing in the market

dividuum 4y ago
Can't wait for that Tesa battery ;-)
dd36 4y ago
Yep, nothing has happened in the market for the last ten years…
mrb 4y ago
In the last 10 years, the EV market has grown 50-fold from $10 to $500 billion in revenue.

throw93 4y ago

This is awesome. I hope people realize this came out of public funding and not made by a corp. Although eventually some corp will make a minor tweak to this and copyright the hell out of it. Really excited to see this in a car soon!

Moissanite 4y ago
> Although eventually some corp will make a minor tweak to this and copyright the hell out of it Patent rather than copyright, but you are most likely correct - in fact I fully expect at least one company already has a patent which might arguably be infringed by this work, regardless of whether that company has ever made an actual working battery, or really done any meaningful research whatsoever. Such is the insanity of the patent system.
vlovich123 4y ago
If it’s a minor tweak it’s not patentable. And only the authors can patent it (assuming they do so before presenting it publicly which can set a clock). The authors of course can sell.
mesoman 4y ago
Public funding contributes basic research. Corporations contribute other things, like design for actual use and production, production tooling design, production tooling production, factory space and management, distribution management, warehousing, marketing (yes, you do need to spend money to market it in any economy). And by the way, all this results in paying wages and taxes which go back to the public. Also, in many cases of publicly funded research, the resulting company is owned or partly owned by the researcher(s), which is one of the incentives for doing the research in the first place. Utility patents cover that which is new and, in theory, non-obvious (although non-obvious is very poorly enforced based own personal experience). Those would include the "tweaks", which may not be as minor as you think, given the difference between the needs of a product that is to be mass produced, vs. a proof-of-concept laboratory device. Patents might also include the methods of production. Design patents cover the appearance and aesthetics, and are a different type of patent in the US.

mabbo 4y ago

There are so many different metrics that are important in a battery. wh/kg is a key one, definitely, but the standard Lithium Ion battery meets a bunch of important ones. What's the wh/volume? Maybe it's light but it's huge? What's the charging rate? Maybe it holds power well, but takes 3 days to recharge? What's the discharge rate? Maybe it hold power well, but can't release it quickly? What's the cost per wh to produce? It's a research thing right now, so probably it's incredibly expensive- but that always is the case with new stuff. This is the hard part with any new battery announcement. They always yell about how this new battery tech wins at one metric, while quietly not mentioning that there's a lot more where the Li-ion wins out overall.

scythe 4y ago
I have access to the paper. First, the actual measured capacity is 685 Wh/kg, not 1200; the researchers stated they hope to reach the latter figure with further development. In order: - Wh/L is 619, so the battery just barely floats. The absence of a dense metal oxide cathode probably makes it lighter than the usual lithium battery cell (which have s.g. ~2). - Charging rate is given as 1 A/g for a 1 Ah/g electrode, so these numbers were measured with a 1-hour charge time. Data for higher charge rates is buried in the Supporting Information (which may be public?) - Discharge rate is the same. - Cost to produce is unclear. The electrolyte contains about 1-2% germanium (5 wt% of Li10GeP2S2), and the cathode contains molybdenum. It is difficult to give the Mo concentration with certainty because the specific area of the cathode is given as "250 g/m^2" but it should be as "m^2/g". Assuming a simple typo, the cathode contains 25 mg of Mo per cubic centimeter, which is sometimes written "2.5% w/v". These are rare elements, but the concentrations are rather low. The use of toxic sulfides (H2S risk) may increase production costs. Coulombic efficiency, which you didn't ask for, starts at 93% and drops to 88% after 1000 cycles, so pretty good but a little lower than you expect from a typical lithium battery.
- amluto 4y ago
  Wh/kg is an insufficient metric for air batteries. One needs Wh/kg at full charge and separately or full discharge, or kg/Wh charged and additional kg/Wh per unit Wh discharged, or something along those lines. (kg/Ah discharged could be used to estimate electrons per oxygen atom absorbed, too.)

mdp2021 4y ago

A Jackery Explorer model 240 weighs 3Kg, a model 500 6Kg, a model 1000 10Kg. This promises a jump of an order of magnitude (base 10)...

timerol 4y ago

> “The chemical reaction for lithium superoxide or peroxide only involves one or two electrons stored per oxygen molecule, whereas that for lithium oxide involves four electrons,” said Argonne chemist Rachid Amine. More electrons stored means higher energy density. I find it odd and surprising that the limiting factor is electrons per oxygen, not electrons per lithium. Oxygen is freely floating in the air, while lithium is in a fixed amount in the battery. Possibly something about the electrode makes it store a limited quantity of oxygen.

jacknews 4y ago
Most of the energy from burning fuel comes from the oxygen, not the fuel: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jchemed.5b00333 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jchemed.5b00333
melony 4y ago
Nominative determinism strikes again!

malchow 4y ago

Enovix is already at 1,500 cycles w/ 88% capacity retention at *889 wh/L per core* (figure ignores packaging, like the Argonne figure) at 6C CCCV charge – 1C discharge. And that is a commercially relevant sized cell that is being produced at Fab1 in Fremont. https://ir.enovix.com/static-files/667425e2-44ef-4ab0-978b-991a2e6be186 https://ir.enovix.com/static-files/667425e2-44ef-4ab0-978b-9...

Retric 4y ago
Volumetric density isn’t the issue, for many applications weight per kWh is simply too high.

rgmerk 4y ago

Commentators thus far seem mainly interested in applications in cars, in the event this ever makes it out of the lab. Frankly, cars are not the big deal here. Existing battery technology is good enough for most light vehicle applications, and continues to incrementally improve. A lithium-air battery car could be even better and would solve most of the edge cases (the people who want to tow horse floats across the country at 70mph, for instance, or for lightweight electric sports cars). However, this would be a transformative technology for electric aviation. Delivery drones double or triple their useful range. Air taxis go from pushing the limits of structural engineering to being easily doable. Short-haul all-electric airliners become plausible.

geff82 4y ago
As a private pilot I am SO looking forward to finally be able to do away with piston engines and fly electric...
- api 4y ago
  Has anyone experimented with hydrogen or natural gas fuel cells? They're cumbersome for cars but for planes the reduced weight would make sense. Weight doesn't matter as much for land transport. I know hybrids don't make as much sense for planes because the throttle range is typically 50-100% through a flight vs cars where you spend tons of time down at 10-15% throttle and need only bursts of power.
  - Full_Clark 4y ago
    Universal Hydrogen is outfitting a Dash-8 with one hydrogen fuel cell engine for a test flight in March (leaving the other engine unchanged as a Jet-A powered turboprop). If all goes well they'll convert the other engine to hydrogen fuel cell as well, and they hope to be operating it in passenger service by 2025. https://hydrogen.aero/product/ https://hydrogen.aero/product/ Seems promising because they don't have to fully design a new aircraft, they just have to get the new powertrain certified. Though the same end-customer airline (Air New Zealand) is also eyeing off some new-build battery-electric aircraft with 250nm range and 30 min recharge times. https://simpleflying.com/eviation-alice-first-flight/ https://simpleflying.com/eviation-alice-first-flight/

pengaru 4y ago

> For over a decade, scientists at Argonne and elsewhere have been working overtime to develop a lithium battery that makes use of the oxygen in air If only we could have EV batteries instead make use of CO2 in the air...

wg0 4y ago

VR, Self driving cars, Quantum computers, fusion and efficient, durable, high density batteries - always a decade away.

idontwantthis 4y ago

Not directly related, but what are the odds that if I buy an electric car this year, I will be able to upgrade the battery chemistry in 10 years? If I bought a car today, I'd like to drive it until I can't anymore. If electric batteries are x times better in 10 years than now, it would suck to only be able to replace it with today's lithium ion. Imagine upgrading your car in 10 years to take it from 200 miles to 10000.

ComputerGuru 4y ago
Those odds are entirely contingent on the software/firmware being rooted and reverse engineered or else completely replaced by an open alternative (eg ECU swap). Car manufacturers would have no motive to develop let alone release retrofits for older cars.
- alwayslikethis 4y ago
  Furthermore they have an incentive to lobby for legislation to forbid aftermarket hardware/software, likely in the name of "public safety", but really just sales figures. Electric cars generally have fewer parts that wear over time, so car makers really have to up the planned obsolescence game if, after a major battery breakthrough that allows for more range/lifespan than you need, they still want to be selling the same amount of cars year over year. Can't wait for someone to come up with a full aftermarket car firmware that would let you run everything on it, circumvent restrictions, and disable telemetry.

wolfi1 4y ago

rechargeable batteries, which want to use air as the second electrode, have the problem of CO2 in the air which causes dendrites in the (liquid) electrolyte, a solid electrolyte does not have this problem, obviously, but there seems to be still some problems as they achieved only 1000 cycles

gloosx 4y ago

The O2 content of air varies seasonally in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres and is decreasing from year to year. Also Oxygen is more disperse at higher altitudes. Interesting how it affects such batteries.

phtrivier 4y ago

It's a bit disheartening that some part of science were created by a few hundred dudes in the course of a few decades (say, quantum theory in the early 1900s), and we know the name of those persons, and they changed the world for ever while also getting famous pretty fast. But nowadays, it takes hundreds of teams of unknown researchers to _not quite actually_ make the changes that we desperately need. Maybe there are some problems that you can only solve "Mannathan Project"-style, as opposed to the normal, slow and steady course of research ? Must take some courage to realize the urge, and still go the way of the tortoise without loosing your mind.

sriku 4y ago

Please can someone explain the chemistry better? The article seems to say it takes O2 from air and makes Li2O as output? Won't that somehow expend the battery over time .. or is the O2 released back on recharge?

hulitu 4y ago

1000 cycles is bullshit. 3 years of lifetime. And they forgot to say what those cycles are (how much discharge, from which capacity, at which temperature).