Advances in batteries/energy thread

[ScienceRocks]

infrastructure, science, r&d.

Yes, I know, you want to defund it all and turn our country into a third world shit hole. I get it.

 

[30 year chrysler mechanic]

ZSW engineers build lithium-ion battery able to last for 27 years

3 hours ago by Bob Yirka report

(Phys.org) —Officials at Germany's Centre for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg, (ZSW) have issued a press release describing improvements they've made to lithium-ion batteries. They claim their improvements allow a single battery to be recharged up to 10,000 times while still retaining 85 percent of its charging capacity. Such a battery, if used in an electric car, they note, would allow its owner to recharge the battery every day for 27.4 years.

Read more at: ZSW engineers build lithium-ion battery able to last for 27 years

believe it when i see it. only battery that would have lasted that long in a car was the edison cell nickle iron battery and it would have started any car built in past 100 years but it lasted too long so never used. glass mats were suppose to last 10 years , i change them out every day haven't seen a 10 year old glass mat yet. i have see some old lead acid last 10 years. lithium very flammable and very hard to put out.

 

[ScienceRocks]

"Fool's gold" nanocrystals present cheap, abundant alternative to lithium in batteries

• Colin Jeffrey
• November 15, 2015
• 3 PICTURES

As energy production moves towards solar and wind-powered alternatives, battery systems to store intermittently-produced electricity have never been more important. Unfortunately, many of the materials needed to make high-performance batteries for this purpose are rapidly diminishing and becoming increasingly expensive as a result. Now researchers have created a new type of storage battery that is made from a range of cheap and abundant materials and shows promise for high-efficiency performance.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Huawei shows super-fast battery charging at Japan event
Batteries that charge in minutes, the very concept is an attention-grabber. Huawei believes it has taken a real step forward and has videos to demonstrate its successful experiments with super-fast battery charging.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Huawei Unveils Lithium-Ion Batteries That Charge ~10 Times Faster
Published on November 16th, 2015 | by James Ayre

16 comments Originally published on EV Obsession. New fast-charging lithium-in batteries were recently unveiled by workers from Watt Lab — an arm of the Central Research Institute at Huawei Technology Corporation — at the recent 56th Battery Symposium

 

[ScienceRocks]

Researchers create sodium battery in industry standard "18650" format

• Eric Mack
• November 28, 2015
• 3 PICTURES

A team of researchers in France has taken a major step towards powering our devices with rechargeable batteries based on an element that is far more abundant and cheaper than lithium. For the first time ever, a battery has been developed using sodium ions in the industry standard "18650" format used in laptop batteries, LED flashlights and the Tesla Model S, among other products.

Read More

 

[ScienceRocks]

Metal makes for a promising alternative to fossil fuels

• David Szondy
• December 12, 2015

Clean fuels come in many forms, but burning iron or aluminum seems to be stretching the definition – unless you ask a team of scientists led by McGill University, who see a low-carbon future that runs on metal. The team is studying the combustion characteristics of metal powders to determine whether such powders could provide a cleaner, more viable alternative to fossil fuels than hydrogen, biofuels, or electric batteries.

 

[HenryBHough]

Lithium batteries apparently represent a major breakthrough in home heating.

Especially when placed in a toy hoverboard 'neath a dry Christmas tree.

A little tough to control the room temp, though.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Lithium batteries apparently represent a major breakthrough in home heating.

Especially when placed in a toy hoverboard 'neath a dry Christmas tree.

A little tough to control the room temp, though.

Better then giving your child a 2,000 year old book about a god that burns a city to the ground and demand that they learn nothing else. Also, it may not be a good idea to bring a dry tree into your home...

 

[ScienceRocks]

First plasma from Wendelstein 7-X fusion reactor

• Nick Lavars
• December 13, 2015
• 4 PICTURES

Testing of the Wendelstein 7-x stellarator has started with a bang, albeit a very very small one, with researchers switching on the experimental fusion reactor to produce its first helium plasma at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Greifswald, Germany. After almost a decade of construction work and more than a million assembly hours, the first tests have gone according to plan with the researchers to shift focus to producing hydrogen plasma after the new year.

 

[Old Rocks]

Lithium batteries apparently represent a major breakthrough in home heating.

Especially when placed in a toy hoverboard 'neath a dry Christmas tree.

A little tough to control the room temp, though.

And, of course, one might be smart enough not to buy devices powered by lithium batteries from manufacturers with a bad record.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Are these futuristic high-altitude balloons the brave new world of solar energy?

One way to improve the efficiency of solar panels is to place them where clouds can’t interrupt their energy production. Even in the sunniest parts of the world, clouds can still cause fluctuations in energy output. So what better place to put solar panels than above the clouds?


The idea is not without major hurdles, but some energy scientists think it’s worth trying. Researchers at NextPV—a multinational lab jointly operated by France’s CNRS and the University of Tokyo—are developing solar panels attached to high-altitude balloons that would hypothetically float 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) in the sky. That’s well above where most clouds reside.


“Anywhere above the planet, there are very few clouds at an altitude of 6 km—and none at all at 20 km,” writes CNRS French director Jean-François Guillemoles, in an article on the lab’s website. “As the sky loses its blue color, direct illumination becomes more intense: the concentration of solar energy results in more effective conversion, and hence higher yields.”

 

[ScienceRocks]

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New hybrid electrolyte for solid-state lithium batteries

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a novel electrolyte for use in solid-state lithium batteries that overcomes many of the problems that plague ...

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New flow battery offers lower-cost energy storage

Energy storage system owners could see significant savings from a new flow battery technology that is projected to cost 60 percent less than today's standard flow batteries.

 

[ScienceRocks]

First Solar Panels Likely To Surpass p-type Crystalline Panels In Performance By 2017

Published on December 30th, 2015 | by Saurabh Mahapatra

According to Solar Media’s Solar Intelligence, the performance of First Solar’s thin film solar panels is expected to exceed that of the p-type crystalline solar panels by the end of 2017. First Solar is among the [&hellip...

 

[ScienceRocks]

New battery made of molten metals may offer low-cost, long-lasting storage for the grid

A novel rechargeable battery developed at MIT could one day play a critical role in the massive expansion of solar generation needed to mitigate climate change by midcentury. Designed to store energy on the electric grid, ...

Stable "superoxide" opens the door to a new class of batteries

While lithium-ion batteries have transformed our everyday lives, researchers are currently trying to find new chemistries that could offer even better energy possibilities. One of these chemistries, lithium-air, could promise ...

Battery “kill-switch” prevents overheating and fires

• John Anderson
• January 13, 2016
• 2 PICTURES

Researches at Stanford University have developed a lithium-ion battery that automatically shuts off before it overheats, and restarts instantly once it cools down. The simple add-on to existing battery technology could help prevent battery fires in laptops and other electronic devices.

 

[ScienceRocks]

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Fuel cell breakthrough: Team reports success with low-cost nickel-based catalyst

"Planes, Trains and Automobiles" is a popular comedy from the 1980s, but there's nothing funny about the amount of energy consumed by our nation's transportation sector.
This sector—which includes passenger cars, trucks, buses, and rail, marine, and air transport—accounts for more than 20 percent of America's energy use, mostly in the form of fossil fuels, so the search is on for environmentally friendly alternatives.
The two most promising current candidates for cars are fuel cells, which convert the chemical energy of hydrogen to electricity, and rechargeable batteries.
The University of Delaware's Yushan Yan believes that fuel cells will eventually win out.


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-01-fuel-cell-breakthrough-team-success.html#jCp

Lightbridge making progress to improved nuclear fuel that will boost energy production by 17% in existing nuclear reactors

Lightbridge Corporation has received final regulatory approval for irradiation testing of its metallic fuel at Norway's Halden research reactor. The company has also entered an agreement with US fabricator BWXT Nuclear Energy to evaluate the possible fabrication of fuel samples at BWXT's US facilities. Reston, Virginia-based Lightbridge...

 

[ScienceRocks]

New Generation of Solar Cells At One Fifth The Cost

New Generation of Solar Cells At One Fifth The Cost
By newuniversedaily on January 19, 2016 • ( Leave a comment )

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Scientists from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland have developed a solar panel material that is one fifth the cost of the current commercial equivalent.​

Results also show that the new material is more efficient – at 20.2% – then its other two, more expensive rivals. And because the composite is easily modified, it will likely be a blueprint for a new generation of low cost solar cells.

A promising area in photovoltaic solar cell development harnesses films made from perovskites – a material with the same type of crystal structure as calcium titanium oxide. Perovskite-based cells are of huge interest to the academic community because their operational methods are new, and there has been a meteoric rise in power conversion efficiency compared to other technologies in a relatively short time period (as shown in the graph).

Image credit: ossilla.com

 

[saveliberty]

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Fuel cell breakthrough: Team reports success with low-cost nickel-based catalyst

"Planes, Trains and Automobiles" is a popular comedy from the 1980s, but there's nothing funny about the amount of energy consumed by our nation's transportation sector.
This sector—which includes passenger cars, trucks, buses, and rail, marine, and air transport—accounts for more than 20 percent of America's energy use, mostly in the form of fossil fuels, so the search is on for environmentally friendly alternatives.
The two most promising current candidates for cars are fuel cells, which convert the chemical energy of hydrogen to electricity, and rechargeable batteries.
The University of Delaware's Yushan Yan believes that fuel cells will eventually win out.


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-01-fuel-cell-breakthrough-team-success.html#jCp

Lightbridge making progress to improved nuclear fuel that will boost energy production by 17% in existing nuclear reactors

Lightbridge Corporation has received final regulatory approval for irradiation testing of its metallic fuel at Norway's Halden research reactor. The company has also entered an agreement with US fabricator BWXT Nuclear Energy to evaluate the possible fabrication of fuel samples at BWXT's US facilities. Reston, Virginia-based Lightbridge...

Nickel, now there's a completely safe metal...

 

[ScienceRocks]

Lithium-oxygen breakthrough clears the air for boosted batteries

• Nick Lavars
• January 26, 2016

Boasting an energy density similar to that of gasoline, lithium-air (or lithium-oxygen) batteries may one day prove the panacea for the range-anxiety associated with electric vehicles. But first there are a number of challenges that need to be overcome, one of which is the unwanted buildup of lithium peroxide on the electrode which hampers this type of battery's performance. Scientists have now figured out a way that this mess might be avoided – an advance they say could lead to batteries with five times the energy density of those currently available.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Lithium-ion battery boost could come from "caging" silicon in graphene

• Eric Mack
• January 30, 2016
• 2 PICTURES

A team at Stanford claims to have made a battery breakthrough that could boost the performance of lithium-ion batteries and also make them smaller and lighter. The researchers managed to remove two long-standing barriers to these improvements by putting silicon particles in graphene "cages."