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 …
Technology like this hopefully will help electric cars fulfill their potential (and actually be environmentally and financially friendly as they are neither now, not to mention range). Coupled with sustainable clean power generation this could be just what's needed! If they can be made cheaply enough and light enough to swap out or have a fast recharge time there's real potential here. Would love to see this make its way into a superbike.
This post has been deleted by its author
I had a look when they announced them but they're 30-60k! Thats rich even by duke standards. Hopefully we will continue to see advancements like this and benefit from sanely priced electric vehicles with decent ranges. Couple that with more fission \ fusion and renewables and we should have a decent proposition!
The only viable way to run electric cars is putting a diesel-electric drive train in it. Whichever battery gets invented, you need to invent a grid that can handle a millions of commuters hooking up at the approx the same time in waves as you pass the timezones.
Since current girds are already creaking at near collapse under the vagaries of variable energy production this particular pipedream will need to be postponed till a grid gets invented and installed that is capable.
"a grid that can handle a millions of commuters hooking up at the approx the same time in waves as you pass the timezones."
Don't know where you are, but this particular problem doesn't figure high on the UK's list of problems with energy supply.
EVs charge overnight. UK overnight electricity demand is currently very very roughly 10GW less than daytime. There's not really enough capacity for forecast peak demand in ten years time but that's another story and for next year at least we're probably OK. 10GW charges a lot of EVs (say maybe a million on 10kW fast chargers), especially when you're starting from an installed base of basically zero which is increasing at a rate of approximately zero.
See e,g, http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk
I feel you may be overestimating their sales.
However the grid could be an issue but adoption will be slow and the grid can evolve. I think what is happening is a difference in experience. Having lived in the UK and the US I can understand why it would be a concern for Americans. Their grid is about as stable as pisshead on a tightrope. There simply isn't the investment and hasn't been for a long time. My experience in the UK was that barring wankers in jcb's and the rare blizzard power was pretty solid. In nearly 30 years I can think of 4 power cuts, 2 of which were idiot induced and one of which was the result of living in the middle of nowhere connected to the grid by kite string and pixie dust. Stateside it seems to be more frequent.
"If these batteries are really so cheap, energy could be stored and used later without too much cost or pollution"
Unlikely. Just because the raw materials are cheap, that doesn't mean the end product will be. Also, even with 7x better energy density, it's still only about one third the energy density of wood. That's going to be one large battery you'll need.
If the raw materials are plentiful and cheap, you don't need a large energy density. Imagine that you could make a battery out of (say) Silicon dioxide and Calcium carbonate. You'd just pile up enough of it to solve the problem. It's only if the battery has to move its own mass around, as in a 'leccy car, that energy density becomes critical.
Sulfur is cheap and plentiful, Lithium rather less so.
"If the raw materials are plentiful and cheap, you don't need a large energy density."
Except that if it has low energy density then the costs of the "container" and electrical connections become increasing part of the completed cost. For grid applications it isn't like taking a D cell, and simply building exactly the same thing the size of a dustbin.
Also, building a battery for network scale energy storage has never been limited by the cost of the materials - if it worked for a few thousand cycles, and if the efficiency were adequate, then the power sector would have leapt at it, even with very high costs - peak rate despatchable power on the grid gets very high prices. But to take something of a few grammes and scale it up to make sense for the network, then you've got all manner of charge and discharge considerations - the battery must be robust for different environments (eg extremes of temperature), it must be capable of rapid discharge, it must not have excessive self discharge, it must not lose too much energy during the charge and discharge. Almost every one of these is a problem with any battery technology. Now factor in the fact that you need something the size of the house or a warehouse, think about the connectivity of the individual cells for a solid electrolyte, and you've got wiring complexity that makes a data centre look like a school project.
For grid applications you'd actually be going the other way, probably looking to high temperature liquid electrolytes (eg molten salt technologies), since they support the necessary high discharge rates, have respectable energy densities, and in an industrial setting the temperature needs can be managed. But even they have, in the real world, much lower energy densities than you might get in the lab, and cost too much to justify their widespread adoption.
It's a lovely idea, but I'll wager that dry electrolyte systems won't be able to deliver bulk power needs of either transport or the grid in your lifetime.
It can solve some of it, in some cases, but it is more a solution for transport than anything else. What we really need a new energy carrier. Since not only does the energy production capacity necessarily correlate with consumption in time, but quite often not in space either.
The trick with oil is not that it is a good energy source, but rather that it is a great energy carrier. In fact it is so good that I struggle to mention any other that can compare.
"I expect it was to explain why Richard was using the deprecated spelling, which was changed to sulfur in the 90s with agreement from IUPAC and RSC (in return USizens have to spell aluminium correctly). I don't know what happened to it, though."
Which they always remember to do...
Folks are fed up with these draconian Li+ postal restrictions, if we could simply make them at home from common or garden chemicals then this problem would vanish.
Even double Li-Ion volumetric capacity would blow NiMH out of the water and e-bike enthusiasts would consider rebuilding their pack once a year as a small price to pay for full recyclability..
I actually considered trying a similar approach using the somewhat safer Mg-ion system, using dehydrated washing up liquid doped with magnesium carbonate as the electrolyte, foils coated with carbon and homemade FePO4 from Coke Zero (tm) .. yes the capacity and cycle life would suck but so what.
Turns out that at least one brand of aluminium adhesive foil can be used in this way, glued to recycled glass
cut to shape in order to avoid the use of rolled Al.
AC x520
the bi-monthly 'new battery technology with revolutionise the world' story.
I swear we get 5 or 6 of these a year. What the hell happens to them all ??
Is exxon and bp out there paying the universities with wads of used notes to keep their mouth shuts ?*
*where's my tinfoil hat by the way - I swear I left it on my desk.... damn oil companies have stolen my tinfoil hat..
"In the case of NiFe just follow the patent stream which came to an abrupt end after Exide bought up the rights."
If true [0] that would be a great example to hightlight for those campaigning for 'use it or lose it' conditions to be placed on certain IP rights such as patents. Reminds me, I haven't seen The Man In The White Suit for a few decades.... must dig that out.
[0] Not saying it's untrue - just that this is the internet and i've not researched it myself !
Regarding NiFe cells, they had been being made for 70 years before Exide bought Edison's old company.
that does seem like long enough for people to have done meaningful experimentation.
Likewise, the only 'rights' Exide could have bought were patents which hadn't yet expired and trade secrets, and any of those patents would have expired decades ago.
In any case, company XYZ having a patent on a particular twist on a technology doesn't stop some other company taking the more general technology and developing it, or even taking the patented tech and developing that with an eye to releasing products as soon as the patents expire.
While they might last longer than lead-acids, NiFe cells don't seem to have performance as good for things like vehicle batteries - similar energy/kg, lower energy/volume, lower power/kg
According to wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel%E2%80%93iron_battery
Due to its low specific energy, poor charge retention, and high cost of manufacture, other types of rechargeable batteries have displaced the nickel–iron battery in most applications
Lots more interesting stuff. No mention of Exide. The batteries are out there and in use, in places where the weight of the battery is less important than its reliability or ruggedness. They're under review for renewable energy storage. For automotive use, weight is important, as is energy retention (cars are left unused for weeks, occasionally months) and for a fuel-driven car the battery is dead weight except for the few seconds when you are starting the engine. Doesn't sound like a competitor for lead-acid to me.
I wonder the same thing every time I see one of these stories. It's always "X material is going to change batteries forever" and then said tech never makes it to the market. Perhaps there's an artificial black hole deep in the bowls of LHC eating all the battery research?
Or maybe marketing is a popular minor for student battery boffins.
Or perhaps there is a conspiracy keeping things quiet.
So many possibilities, so little battery life left. *sigh*
My thoughts exactly too.
It's not battery companies or oil companies buying and burying patents, it's a university student's fabricated project to get their bit of paper.
This is another bunch of graduate students bigging up some bullshit for their theses so they can get their degrees. Once they have those they'll go on to their cushy desk jobs, the battery plans will disappear into an archive box in the university library's basement, and shit will go on as always.
This has happened so often it's completely destroyed the credibility of the university system as far as I'm concerned. This is why, when I'm hiring and an applicant presents me with a university degree, I just toss it straight back at them. I'm not interested in pieces of paper that tell me you can bullshit a professor, I want to see what you can do. Can't show me? Thanks for coming, good luck in your future endeavours.
"Hot new battery technologies need a cooling off period"
"Boffins build ant-sized battery, claim it's tough enough to start a car"
"Doped nanotubes boost lithium battery power three-fold"
"Dying to make greener batteries"
"Korean boffins discover secret to quick-charge batteries"
"Stanford boosts century-old battery tech"
and so on....
One day, one of these might turn out to actually work outside the lab and to the promised specifications, but I won't hold my breath.
The Spinning Jenny never existed in some academics lab. It was invented by James Hargreaves, in the early 18th century, and he put it to use in his textile mills.
The difference between James Hargreaves and the academics publicising these battery "breakthroughs" is that Hargreaves risked his own money whereas the battery researchers are risking (and seeking) other peoples money.
At some point somebody might well make a significant breakthrough in battery technology but I wont believe it until I see it.
My old fella lead the r&d of these sodium/sulphur batteries in the 70s for a large involved company. The sodium had to be in a liquid state to make it work - so quite hot, and dangerous. The sodium and sulphur was divided by a ceramic electrolyte called beta alumina, as I recall. The cell was one long metal cylinder with a concentric beta alumina tube down it. On the inside of the ceramic tube was the sulphur and between the outside of the ceramic tube and in the inside of the metal outer cylinder was the molten sodium (could have been the other way round, too long ago now). To keep the Na and S apart, the gap between the ceramic tube and the metal outer cylinder was closed using a glass-type o-ring. The problem was the o-ring - getting it to expand/contract at the same rate as the ceramic and outer metal cylinder. Having the o-ring fail resulted in... catastrophic failure. Making sure the Na did not overheat was also... desirable. Can't think why they never caught on.
I worked there once as a summer job (nepotism, oh yes). I got the job of constructing a cell temperature l.e.d. readout box - essentially a box of electronics connected to sensors on the cells.
It was interesting stuff.
Sodium-sulphur batteries are being used as stationary power storage but they have a nasty habit of catching fire at which point lots of burning sodium and sulphur means they take a lot of putting out -- the fire in a 1MWh Na-S battery at the NGK offices in Japan took two weeks to extinguish.
http://www.ngk.co.jp/english/news/2011/1007.html
And you don't want to be in downwind proximity to a large pile of burning Sulfur. Not the most toxic of materials, but most definitely unpleasant ( S + air -> SO2 + water -> H2SO3 + more air -> H2SO4).
I read about a proposal to use sodium-sulfur batteries in electric cars in (I think) the 1980s, and I thought it was one of the craziest ideas I'd ever read. I thought, like putting a shock-sensitive detonator in a petrol tank. (Now they're talking about CNG ... at least a CNG cylinder can't not be tough).
Are you confusing hydrogen sulphide? (which is about as toxic as hydrogen cyanide, except that you're more likely to notice the rotten-eggs smell in time to make a hasty escape).
Sulfur Dioxide isn't in that league, and there are many things much more toxic than cyanide.
"Are you confusing hydrogen sulphide?"
NO, I'm a chemist - hydrogen sulfide IS VERY toxic but sulfur dioxide is also toxic at the 10 ppm kind of level. One of the major hazards of carbon disulfide, a extremely flammable solvent is the rapid production of sulfur dioxide during a fire. Although many materials are more toxic than sulfur dioxide the fact that 32 g of sulfur can produce 22.4L of sulfur dioxide which is still toxic when diluted with ~ 2 million litres of air would concern me.
Sulphur dioxide, if I remember my chemistry is not so much toxic i.e. poisonous but as it dissolves in water (rather badly as I recall) to form sulphurous and sulphuric acid it is an extreme irritant and not good for your health.
Put out a sodium sulphur fire!! I mean you are not going to put water on it are you?
The same sort of issue was at the back of my mind when I read the words lithium sulphur. All I could hear was the word BANG. Just mix a bit of carbon and ammonium nitrate in there and you will have a fine battery.
That is the problem with high energy density batteries: they are quite close to being a bomb.
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
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
