Boffins develop 'practically free' sulphur-powered batteries Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in the USA have demoed a battery technology that makes two radical departures from the past: the main material is the superabundant sulphur, and it's an all-solid battery without a liquid electrolyte. Lithium-sulphur combinations have all the characteristics needed to create …
Yes another story has the crucial missing detail. Seems they are achieving 4 times the energy density.
So the cell voltage must be about ~2.0V
Four times the density is actually a pretty good start. will keep an eye on this.
case
with just a gram or two of actual battery.
IDK but perhaps a bit more work on non-chemical bits of the battery might lighten things up a bit.
OTOH the cost factor is intriguing.
But remember, like all the other battery of the future stories it's still V 0.1 tech.
This post has been deleted by its author
The general problem with a battery is that it involves surface chemistry, but you need a lot of extra bulk material to give the surfaces some mechanical integrity. This is why having a reliable solid-electrolyte chemistry would be a big step forward. If the electrolyte is solid wlll add to the mechanical integrity of the whole.
For NiMH cells (whch I read up about), they are constructed much like a toilet roll. A long thin roll of charge-storage sandwich. You get a higher storage capacity by making the sandwich thinner, but thinner means greater charge leakage, and a law of diminishing returns sets in rapidly for an AA cell packing more than 2700mAh.
Did i read that right 1200mah/g vs 140mah/g that is better than 8 times the density!
Just think we could have smart phones that last more than a day, electric cars with decent range at a good price.
this is an amazing step forward on battery technology!
I hope they managed to get this to market very very soon!
"My tax dollars paid for that work, but can I read the article?
NOOOOOO!."
Don't worry, US and UK governments are starting to mandate Open Access for their research. Which means you get to pay for the research to be done, and pay for it to be published, so that the Chinese can read it, copy it, patent it, and rob you again. Even better!
"Don't worry, US and UK governments are starting to mandate Open Access for their research. Which means you get to pay for the research to be done, and pay for it to be published, so that the Chinese can read it, copy it, patent it, and rob you again. Even better!"
I should point out that I do think that government-supported research should be available. It can be put on the author's webpage, for free, rather than the government giving an extra $3000/article to publishers for doing feck all.
This sounds fantastic! The world is saved!
Oh wait, I wonder if Richard Chirgwin read Dave Wilby's Register article "Hot new battery technologies need a cooling off period"
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/06/ornl_boffins_suck_the_liquid_out_of_batteries/
Usually require to be heated to work
So this one works well at 60ºC... nice.. Let¡s see the costs (including the heatsinks in the car), and
power loss per day to keep them warm.
As for solution for wind and solar, there are a couple good ones:
1. Interconnected grids. Good for many reasons.
2. Two level water reservoirs (with turbines and pumps). Not only way cheaper and more efficient than batteries.. also HUGE.
2. I've always preferred my idea (only done a small search to see if anyone else is developing it) instead of having two reservoirs you only need one with some massive air filled tanks. drag them underwater to store energy and slowly release them to expel the energy. it could even be placed doughnut like round offshore windmills. As far as my back of fag packet calculations go displacement is better than depth when storing energy in this way is concerned.
What did I do wrong there?
Thought the comments were interesting and useful, DIY batteries are somewhat well known and people
often "up-cycle" dead Li packs etc by replacing just the bad cell.
You do need to be careful though as they can be volatile if the cells get too far out of balance, best to capacity match in order to make sure.
E-bike enthusiasts often do this to get another 6 months to a year out of their $900+ pack, especially if it just up and died for no good reason.
Judging by the number of failed packs on Greedbay this is quite common.
Come to think of it, there's no reason why you couldn't make a battery out of double sided PCB stock coated with lead (cheap) then chemically activated with sulphur and immersed in H2SO4 and contained in a 3D printed double layered box with LMP Bismuth-tin-lead cell interconnects.
#include "OnestepclosertoTheRobotUprising.h"
AC x520
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