Breakthroughs, Inventions,
Discoveries & Pioneering Efforts in the Field of Battery Power
Do have a look at this section and please let me ( narsi
at esource dot in) know if you could think of any improvements / refinements
to make this section more useful.
For the latest updates in Batteries , please see all our blog posts
Battery Power - Battery Power - Inventions, Research, Innovations, Breakthroughs
- Battery Breakthrough -- An Update - An article appeared
in the current issue of Science describing the latest in a series of
recent advances that could make hybrids, and even all-electric vehicles,
practical. Researchers have long known that a material based on lithium,
nickel, and manganese could be used to make lithium-ion batteries that
store large amounts of energy. The problem has been that batteries based
on this material could be charged and discharged only slowly, otherwise
the amount of energy they could store would drop dramatically. In the
Science paper, researchers at MIT and the State University of New York
(SUNY) in Stony Brook described a way around the problem. Read more from
this Feb 2006
Technology Review article
- Battery Breakthrough? - A Texas company says it can make a new ultracapacitor power system to replace the electrochemical batteries in everything from cars to laptops. This Jan 2007 Technology Review article reports that a Texas startup is developing what some are calling a "game changing" energy-storage technology. The product is a kind of battery-ultracapacitor hybrid based on barium-titanate powders, and the company claims it will dramatically outperform the best lithium-ion batteries on the market in terms of energy density, price, charge time, and safety. The company announced that it has reached two production milestones and is on track to ship systems this year for use in electric vehicles. EEStor's ambitious goal, according to patent documents, is to "replace the electrochemical battery" in almost every application, from hybrid-electric and pure-electric vehicles to laptop computers to utility-scale electricity storage.
- In April 2005, Toshiba made a breakthrough step toward the day of instantly recharging lithium-ion batteries. The company announced news of a prototype battery that can be 80% recharged in 60 seconds - rather than the normal three or four hours -- and be fully charged in a "few minutes more." It also has a life cycle of 1,000 recharges before any degradation of performance. The secret of the new battery is the addition of nanoparticles that, because of their size and unique properties, "prevent organic liquid electrolytes from reducing during battery recharging. The nanoparticles quickly absorb and store vast amount of lithium ions, without causing any deterioration in the electrode." Read more from this Fool.com report
- For the first time in its over-30-year existence, an
electric powered model (powered by Lithium-Polymer LiPo batteries) was
competitive against the most powerful O.S. and Y.S. glow-powered pattern
airplanes in an FAI world championship format. At the start of the
event, contestants and spectators alike were skeptical, believing that
competing with an electric model was more of a publicity stunt than a
serious competition attempt. But after the first flight, all skeptics
were silenced and by the end of the preliminary rounds, a 4th place
position transferring into the finals proved that an electric-powered
model had the right stuff to compete against the most powerful
glow-powered aircraft, as flown by the best pilots in the world. Read
this report from RC
Hobbies
- In April 2006, there was a story in Reuters that a group of MIT scientists have engineered a simple and easily manipulated virus called the M13 virus, to create nanowires for microscopic batteries. The genetically modified virus bonds with certain metal ions. The virus in incubated in a cobalt chloride solution which allows cobalt oxide crystals to mineralize uniformly along the length. Electrical properties are provided to the solution with the addition of gold. The resulting wires, about 900 nanometers long and just 6 nanometers in diameter, worked as positive battery electrodes. The researchers hope to build batteries ranging in different sizes - as small as a grain of rice to the sizes we are more accustomed to, say that of hearing-aid batteries. This was not the first time nanowires had been created this way - previous work had allowed the creation of semiconductor and magnetic nanowires using similar processes.
- Sulphur fuels battery breakthrough - May 2004 article, The Register, UK - Tucson-based Sion Power Corporation has demonstrated a new generation of batteries based on Li-S (Lithium Sulfur) technology. Long anticipated as the lighter successor to Lithium Polymer, Sion claims that the Li-S battery pack at 350 watt hours/kg compared to 150 Wh/kg for today's Li-Poly batteries, and are good for 300 power cycles. The new technique uses a similar manufacturing process to litium polymer. The lower weight could make it attractive to phone and computer businesses, while the higher power discharge rate could make it attractive to bike and car manufacturers.
- The Latest Battery News – from Source Research - Some of the products / technologies mentioned: (1) "Eneloop" battery from Sanyo, which is a rechargeable NiMH battery and which retain 85% of their charge even after one year, (2) Lithium-ion batteries from Toshiba Corporation that have short recharge times, (3) a high-performance 28-volt battery from Techtronic Industries Co. Ltd. of Hong Kong which has a built-in fuel gauge, (4) Digital Xtreme Power batteries with oxyride technology from Panasonic Batteries with longer lifetime than alkaline batteries, using newly developed Oxy Nickel Hydroxide and new technologically developed manganese dioxide and graphite
- New battery technology announced - The U.S.-based Uniross Batteries Corp. says it's created a technology that will outlast standard alkaline rechargable or disposable AA/AAA batteries. The product, to be marketed in North America as "Hybrio by Ultralast," is to be available by late October 2006 (Sep 2006 news brief)
- Personal Nuclear Power: New Battery Lasts 12 Years - LiveScience, May 2005 - A new type of battery based on the radioactive decay of nuclear material is 10 times more powerful than similar prototypes and should last a decade or more without a charge. The longevity would make the battery ideal for use in pacemakers or other surgically implanted devices, developers say, or it might power spacecraft or deep-sea probes. The technology, called betavoltaics, uses a silicon wafer to capture electrons emitted by a radioactive gas, such as tritium (a radioactive form of hydrogen). The technology is licensed to BetaBatt Inc. Read more from this May 2005 Live Science article
- Super Battery - Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are developing a battery that could charge very quickly, and also might never need to be replaced. To make the invention, they turned to the capacitor and connected this technology with a new technology, nanotechnology. Capacitors contain energy as an electric field of charged particles created by two metal electrodes, charge faster and last longer than normal batteries. The problem is that of surface area; the researchers solved this by covering the electrodes with millions of tiny filaments called nanotubes. Read more from this June 2006 article from Science Central
- New battery offers unsurpassed recharge performance and
high energy density - Mar 2005 - Toshiba Corporation today announced a
breakthrough in lithium-ion batteries that have very short recharge
times- can recharge 80% of a battery's energy capacity in only one
minute. The new battery fuses advances in nano-material technology &
lithium-ion battery cells. A breakthrough technology applied to the
negative electrode uses new nano-particles to prevent organic liquid
electrolytes from reducing during battery recharging. The nano-particles
quickly absorb and store vast amount of lithium ions, without causing
any deterioration in the electrode. Major Specifications of New Battery:
Excellent Recharge Performance; High Energy Density; Small and light;
Long Life Cycle; operates well in extremes of temperature; discharges
80% of its capacity at minus 40 degrees centigrade, and loses only 5% of
capacity at high temperatures; Eco-friendly - battery can save and
re-use energy that was simply wasted before.
Pictures
Li-Fiber Sample Battery Picture
Check out the latest inventions and breakthroughs
in energy & alternative energy, on the following topics @ NewNergy Blog
|
· Airlines |
· Autos |
|||
|
· Biofuels |
· Biogas |
· Biomass |
||
|
· Coal |
· Costs |
|||
|
· Diesel |
||||
|
· Engines |
||||
|
· Gasoline |
||||
|
· Jatropha |
||||
|
· Oil |
· Peak Oil |
|||
Energy Sources - Main Sections
Notes:
- We’d like to regularly add more useful content and web resources to Oilgae.com. Should you know of any good web resource for Biodiesel production from algae, do let us know by sending a note to [narsi]@[esource].[in] (remove [ ] for the email address). Many thanks for your patience.
- All content at Oilgae are available for reproduction and
usage under the GNU Free Documentation License. Please see explanation
at the end of this page for more details.
Add Links/Submit Links: Do you have a web resource that belongs to here? If you have a
web site that you wish to include in this page, do let us know the details by
sending a note about your URL to [narsi]@[esource].[in] to add URL (pl remove
the [ ] to get my email address!). We’ll quickly review the web site, and if
found relevant, add it to the database. Thanks!
Oilgae.com content is available under
GNU Free Documentation License: All content at
Oilgae.com is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation (GFDL). Put simply,
under this license, anyone is free to copy & use any amount of content
@ Oilgae.com, make changes to it and use it in any way they wish, as long
as they also allow the same rights to anyone else for this content and give
credits to Oilgae by giving a link to the specific page/s from where the
content was taken (a mention of Oilgae.com and a brief description about the
site is enough for offline usage). To those who wish to use content from
Oilgae.com, our only request is that they acknowledge the source and provide
a link back to Oilgae.com. Put not so simply, see the Oilgae.com GNU
Free Documentation License .
About Oilgae - Oilgae - Oil & Biodiesel from Algae
has a focus on Biodiesel production from algae while also discussing
alternative energy in general. Algae present an exciting possibility as a
feedstock for biodiesel, and when you realise that oil was originally
formed from algae - among others - you think "Hey! Why not oil
again from algae!"
To facilitate exploration of oil production from algae as well as exploration
of other alternative energy avenues, Oilgae provides web links, directory,
and related resources for algae-based biofuels / biodiesel along with inputs
on new inventions, discoveries & breakthroughs in other alternative
energy domains such as Solar Wind nuclear, hydro, Geothermal hydrogen
& fuel cells, gravitational, geothemal, human-powered, ocean & Wave /
Tidal energy.
