What holds energy tech back? The infernal battery
WASHINGTON (AP) - As 21st century technology strains to become ever faster, cleaner and cheaper, an invention from more than 200 years ago keeps holding it back. It's why electric cars aren't clogging the roads and why Boeing's new ultra-efficient 787 Dreamliners aren't flying high.
And chances are you have this little invention next to you right now and probably have cursed it recently: the infernal battery.
Boeing is the first company to make extensive use in an airliner of technology's most advanced battery - lithium ion. But a Jan. 7 battery fire aboard a Dreamliner in Boston, followed by a similar meltdown in Japan, led authorities around the world to ground the fleet this month, highlighting a longstanding safety problem that engineers have struggled with.
In 2006 and 2007, more than 46 million cellphone batteries and 10 million laptop batteries - all lithium ion - were recalled because of the risk of overheating, short-circuiting and exploding. Additional safety features have been installed since then on lithium ion batteries used in consumer electronics.
As for the electric car industry, lithium ion batteries have proved to have two major drawbacks: They are costly, and they do not allow automobiles to go far enough between rechargings. A123, a maker of lithium ion batteries for electric cars, went bankrupt last year because of poor demand and high costs after receiving a $249 million federal grant.
Lithium ion batteries, which store more energy at a higher voltage and a lighter weight than earlier types, represent the most recent big jump in battery technology. And that took place nearly a quarter of a century ago.
"We need to leapfrog the engineering of making of batteries," said Lawrence Berkeley National Lab battery scientist Vince Battaglia. "We've got to find the next big thing."
But none of the 10 experts who talked to The Associated Press said they know what that big thing will be yet, or when it will come.
"If you crack it ... it'll change the world," said Carnegie Mellon University materials science professor Jay Whitacre.
Batteries are so crucial to a greener energy future that the Obama administration has spent more than $2 billion to jump-start the advanced battery industry, including setting up what some experts say is a mini-Manhattan Project for batteries.
To make the next breakthrough, researchers will have to master complex chemistry, expensive manufacturing, detailed engineering, a variety of different materials, lengthy testing, stringent safety standards and giant cost problems. It involves dealing with liquids and solids, metals and organic chemicals, and things that are in between, said Glenn Amatucci, director of the Energy Storage Research Group at Rutgers University.
"We're dealing with a system that you can imagine is almost alive. It's almost breathing," Amatucci said. "Trying to understand what's happening within these batteries is incredibly complex."
One reason the battery is the slowpoke of the high-tech highway is that it has conflicting functions. Its primary job is to store energy. But it's also supposed to discharge power, lots of it, quickly. Those two jobs are at odds with each other.
"If you want high storage, you can't get high power," said M. Stanley Whittingham, director of the Northeast Center for Chemical Energy Storage. "People are expecting more than what's possible."
On the commercial market, lithium ion batteries are generally ones small enough to fit into cellphones. But to power bigger items - from a Prius to a 787 - they get grouped together, increasing the juice they store and provide. That also increases the safety risk, experts say. The lithium ion battery that caught fire in a Boeing 787 weighed 63 pounds and was 19 inches long.
"You can't get around the fundamental thing is that lithium ion batteries are stuffed full of flammable liquid," Whitacre said.
Even one-in-a-million problems with lithium ion batteries can result in many fires because there are billions of them in use now, with dozens sometimes stacked together in a single device.
Experts say lithium ion batteries are more dangerous because their electrolyte, the liquid that allows ions to move between electrodes in the battery, is more flammable than the substance in older type batteries. Those older types include the lead-acid batteries in most cars and the nickel cadmium batteries that are often in video equipment and power tools.
Still, MIT materials science and engineering professor Gerbrand Ceder and others said the safety problems can be fixed.
Change doesn't come often in the battery field.
"The big advances in battery technology happen rarely. It's been more than 200 years and we have maybe five different successful rechargeable batteries," said George Blomgren, a former senior technology researcher at Eveready and now a private battery consultant. "It's frustrating."
Alessandro Volta - for whom the volt is named - invented the first useful battery in 1800. That was long before other breakthrough inventions like the internal combustion engine, telephone, car, airplane, transistor, computer and Internet. But all of those developments have seemed to evolve faster than the simple battery.
The lead-acid car battery "has been around for 150 years more or less," Whitacre said. "This is a remarkable testament to first how robust that chemistry is and how difficult change is."
Battery experts are split over what's next. Some think the lithium ion battery can be tinkered with to get major efficiency and storage improvements. Amatucci said he thinks we can get two to three times more energy out of future lithium ion batteries, while others said minor chemical changes can do even more.
But just as many engineers say the lithium ion battery has run its course.
"With the materials in the current lithium ion battery, we are definitely plateaued," Blomgren said. "We're waiting for something to come along that really does the job."
There are all sorts of new type batteries being worked on: lithium-air, lithium-sulfur, magnesium, sodium-ion.
"Right now it's a horse race," Blomgren said. "There's deficiencies in every technology that's out there. Each one of them requires a major solution."
One of the nation's best hopes for a breakthrough, said Battaglia, is John Goodenough, the man responsible for the 1979 breakthrough that led the first commercial lithium ion battery in 1991. He will receive the National Medal of Science at the White House next month.
Goodenough is 90.
"I'm working on it," Goodenough said Tuesday. "I'm optimistic in a sense that I'm willing to keep working on it. I think we can do some interesting things."
And chances are you have this little invention next to you right now and probably have cursed it recently: the infernal battery.
Boeing is the first company to make extensive use in an airliner of technology's most advanced battery - lithium ion. But a Jan. 7 battery fire aboard a Dreamliner in Boston, followed by a similar meltdown in Japan, led authorities around the world to ground the fleet this month, highlighting a longstanding safety problem that engineers have struggled with.
In 2006 and 2007, more than 46 million cellphone batteries and 10 million laptop batteries - all lithium ion - were recalled because of the risk of overheating, short-circuiting and exploding. Additional safety features have been installed since then on lithium ion batteries used in consumer electronics.
As for the electric car industry, lithium ion batteries have proved to have two major drawbacks: They are costly, and they do not allow automobiles to go far enough between rechargings. A123, a maker of lithium ion batteries for electric cars, went bankrupt last year because of poor demand and high costs after receiving a $249 million federal grant.
Lithium ion batteries, which store more energy at a higher voltage and a lighter weight than earlier types, represent the most recent big jump in battery technology. And that took place nearly a quarter of a century ago.
"We need to leapfrog the engineering of making of batteries," said Lawrence Berkeley National Lab battery scientist Vince Battaglia. "We've got to find the next big thing."
But none of the 10 experts who talked to The Associated Press said they know what that big thing will be yet, or when it will come.
"If you crack it ... it'll change the world," said Carnegie Mellon University materials science professor Jay Whitacre.
Batteries are so crucial to a greener energy future that the Obama administration has spent more than $2 billion to jump-start the advanced battery industry, including setting up what some experts say is a mini-Manhattan Project for batteries.
To make the next breakthrough, researchers will have to master complex chemistry, expensive manufacturing, detailed engineering, a variety of different materials, lengthy testing, stringent safety standards and giant cost problems. It involves dealing with liquids and solids, metals and organic chemicals, and things that are in between, said Glenn Amatucci, director of the Energy Storage Research Group at Rutgers University.
"We're dealing with a system that you can imagine is almost alive. It's almost breathing," Amatucci said. "Trying to understand what's happening within these batteries is incredibly complex."
One reason the battery is the slowpoke of the high-tech highway is that it has conflicting functions. Its primary job is to store energy. But it's also supposed to discharge power, lots of it, quickly. Those two jobs are at odds with each other.
"If you want high storage, you can't get high power," said M. Stanley Whittingham, director of the Northeast Center for Chemical Energy Storage. "People are expecting more than what's possible."
On the commercial market, lithium ion batteries are generally ones small enough to fit into cellphones. But to power bigger items - from a Prius to a 787 - they get grouped together, increasing the juice they store and provide. That also increases the safety risk, experts say. The lithium ion battery that caught fire in a Boeing 787 weighed 63 pounds and was 19 inches long.
"You can't get around the fundamental thing is that lithium ion batteries are stuffed full of flammable liquid," Whitacre said.
Even one-in-a-million problems with lithium ion batteries can result in many fires because there are billions of them in use now, with dozens sometimes stacked together in a single device.
Experts say lithium ion batteries are more dangerous because their electrolyte, the liquid that allows ions to move between electrodes in the battery, is more flammable than the substance in older type batteries. Those older types include the lead-acid batteries in most cars and the nickel cadmium batteries that are often in video equipment and power tools.
Still, MIT materials science and engineering professor Gerbrand Ceder and others said the safety problems can be fixed.
Change doesn't come often in the battery field.
"The big advances in battery technology happen rarely. It's been more than 200 years and we have maybe five different successful rechargeable batteries," said George Blomgren, a former senior technology researcher at Eveready and now a private battery consultant. "It's frustrating."
Alessandro Volta - for whom the volt is named - invented the first useful battery in 1800. That was long before other breakthrough inventions like the internal combustion engine, telephone, car, airplane, transistor, computer and Internet. But all of those developments have seemed to evolve faster than the simple battery.
The lead-acid car battery "has been around for 150 years more or less," Whitacre said. "This is a remarkable testament to first how robust that chemistry is and how difficult change is."
Battery experts are split over what's next. Some think the lithium ion battery can be tinkered with to get major efficiency and storage improvements. Amatucci said he thinks we can get two to three times more energy out of future lithium ion batteries, while others said minor chemical changes can do even more.
But just as many engineers say the lithium ion battery has run its course.
"With the materials in the current lithium ion battery, we are definitely plateaued," Blomgren said. "We're waiting for something to come along that really does the job."
There are all sorts of new type batteries being worked on: lithium-air, lithium-sulfur, magnesium, sodium-ion.
"Right now it's a horse race," Blomgren said. "There's deficiencies in every technology that's out there. Each one of them requires a major solution."
One of the nation's best hopes for a breakthrough, said Battaglia, is John Goodenough, the man responsible for the 1979 breakthrough that led the first commercial lithium ion battery in 1991. He will receive the National Medal of Science at the White House next month.
Goodenough is 90.
"I'm working on it," Goodenough said Tuesday. "I'm optimistic in a sense that I'm willing to keep working on it. I think we can do some interesting things."
What happens is when you tie multiple Lithium Ion cells together "in Series to raise the voltage" or "In parallel" to raise the capacity of a battery and you "discharge-charge" them hard, the individual cells don't charge and discharge equally. So if you don't balance out the individual cells by monitoring each cells voltage when "charging", then some of the cells charge to much because the charger thinks all of the cell are charged to the same voltage. When this happens the cells that had more voltage, prior to charging, get "overcharged" and the battery cells overheat and explode.  If you have a balance board that is hooked to "each individual cell" and charges "each cell individually" it balances out the voltage and each cell gets charged equally and keeps the battery from getting "overcharged cells" by monitoring each cells voltage constantly and adjusts the voltage to each cell. I don't know why they wouldn't have these on the 787's already.
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LiPo batteries are the newest thing not Lithium Ion. Get your tech info right if your going to write a story correct.
 @Seahawker http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3o_2mwRPdw
ouch!
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It sounds like the problem is with cooling them. It doesn't seem like it should be THAT big of a problem. Why can't they be submerged? An oil cooling jacket with pump, temp sensor, seems pretty basic.
 @Elvis No. What happens is when you tie multiple Lithium Ion cells together "in Series to raise the voltage or "In parallel" to raise the capacity of a battery and you "discharge-charge" them hard, the individual cells don't charge and discharge equally. So if you don't balance out the individual cells by monitoring each cells voltage when "charging", then some of the cells charge to much because the charger thinks all of the cell are charged to the same voltage. When this happens the cells that had more voltage, prior to charging, get "overcharged" and the battery cells overheat and explode.  If you have a balance board that is hooked to "each individual cell" and charges "each cell individually" it balances out the voltage and each cell gets charged equally and keeps the battery from getting "overcharged cells". I don't know why they wouldn't have these on the 787's already.
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 @Seahawker Are they using the tin anode?
http://www.geekwire.com/2012/battery-breakthrough-technology-promises-triple-lithium-ion-capacity/
 @Elvis Not sure which anode they are using.
 @Seahawker I have wondered if this was predictable. You seem to confirm that. I still think that to have a cooling system for something that is prone to overheat isn't a bad idea. We should get compensated for doing their brainstorming for them.
 @Elvis Cooling the Cells wont help  much if some of the Cells are over charged. Its a Chemical reaction  that causes the cells to catch fire. If you don't charge each cell equally to the same voltage then your either overcharging cells with more voltage at the time of charging, or your not charging the cells that have less voltage during charging to the correct voltage. If you monitor each cell then you know exactly how many volts each cell has prior to charging and during charging and then you can adjust the voltage going to each cell during charging to charge each cell to the same voltage +/- . You have  to do this with  multi cell Lithium Polymer batteries also or they will blow up just like Lithium Ion battery cells.
Back in the early part of the last century there were several Electric cars being manufactured. They were very popular with the ladies (Henry Fords wife had one) because they did not need to be cranked. They were made right up until the early 30's. What would the technology be like now if we had stuck with electric cars? Google Detroit electric to see pictures or check out Jay Lenos on youtube. They have one at the Lemay Auto Museum.
Never in history has there been so many people and so much knowledge available to focus on the development of battery technology. Better ones will be coming.
Aw just think of a radioactive isotope powering your phone for 400 years. Now how green would that be? No chargers, no batteries âaccidentallyâ getting into the trash. Now wouldnât that be worth a little cancer risk? That would be even greener than those mercury filled CFLâs.Â
Love to have a phone that would go for a week or more without charging, a laptop that would run a few day or an EV car that could run more than 50 miles.
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We are just kind of stuck for now and things are or even going backwards. The Iphone 1 had the longest battery life out of the first 5 generations, my old flip phone went several days between charges, my phone now is lucky to go 10 hours if Im using it alot.