Ultra High Capacity Li-Ion Batteries To Charge in Seconds
Gerband Ceder, a professor of materials science at MIT, has developed a new lithium-ion battery electrode that could be charged or discharged a few times faster than conventional ones. Currently, conventional batteries usually takes hours to discharge and the high-power ones can do it in at least 90 seconds, while the new one is able to discharge in as fast as 10 seconds.
The battery should be able to deliver up to 25,000 watts, based on the researchers calculations, and could be able to power hybrid race cars or laser weapons, they say.
Ultracapacitors are also able to discharge power fast, but the difference is that the new battery can store up to 10 times as much energy as an ultracapitor, which is extremely useful.
Lithium iron phosphate, an electrode material, has been modified in order to allow ions and electrons move much faster in and out, basing on a computer model developed in 2004 by Gerband Ceder, who figured out that by directing lithium ions toward particular faces of crystals could improve conductivity.
Ceder managed to form a layer of lithium diphosphate by including extra phosphorus and lithium. Lithium diphosphate is a material with a high lithium-ion conductivity, because it shuttles the ions that encounter the material to faces that can pull them in, resulting in a very fast battery discharge.
He also says that the batteries can not only be discharged quickly, but also be charged very fast and that cell phones could take only a few seconds to charge, while hybrid cars a few minutes.
A professor of physics at Dalhousie University, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, called Jeff Dahn, stated that the battery developed by Ceder is only good for acceleration, but not for long range, because its energy capacity is lower than other batteries. “A real breakthrough . . . would be a new positive electrode material with quantum-leap performance specs in energy storage,” Jeff Dahn says.
There is probably a long way until we will be able to charge our hybrid cars in minutes, but now that the technology exists and it only needs to be improvement, there are chances.
Looks like it is time to develop Wind farms and Solar Electric power plants across the U.S.A. and to expect a battery car solution for the end-times of the “Cheap Oil Age”. We need a lighter, two seater, tandem style, carbon fiber “Commuter Car” to help folks in the suburbs and the “Boonies” to get to and from work cheaply. Wind power stations could cut transmission costs, and interchangeable batteries can resolve peak charging times for battery cars. Many viable solutions are presented, it is now up to OPEC to force the issue with rising fuel prices, and though they have been posturing, have yet to cut supplies significantly! Your move, OPEC.