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from the it-keeps-going-and-going-and-going-and-going-and-going.... dept.
Zhongwei Chen, a chemical engineering professor at Waterloo, and a team of graduate students have created a low-cost battery using silicon that boosts the performance and life of lithium-ion batteries. Their findings are published in the latest issue of Nature Communications .
Waterloo's silicon battery technology promises a 40 to 60 per cent increase in energy density, which is important for consumers with smartphones, smart homes and smart wearables.
The environmentally safe technology could also make dramatic improvements for hybrid and electric vehicles. The findings could mean an electric car may be driven up to 500 kilometres between charges and the smaller, lighter batteries may significantly reduce the overall weight of vehicles.
Current lithium-ion batteries normally use graphite anodes. The Waterloo engineers found that silicon anode materials have a much higher capacity for lithium and are capable of producing batteries with almost 10 times more energy.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday October 29 2015, @08:21PM
All these tiny advances that the media touts as big breakthroughs will hopefully push battery tech to the point that the electric motor is a compelling replacement for the combustion engine in nearly all applications.
100 years from now, assuming humanity and civilization are still doing fine, people may be astonished by the amount of traveling we feel is necessary, and will conclude that our huge love affair with cars mislead us into accepting far more traveling than was sensible. The car enabled us to chase this illusion of a home in the country and a job in the city, leading to suburban sprawl in which we never achieve this ideal because new neighbors keep moving in, and soon the edge of the country has been forced so far away you might as well be living in the city, but only a poor excuse for a real city. Traveling is also a way to stick it to landlords who want to charge premium rent for premium locations, and I expect that's been another big driver of suburban sprawl. The illusion must be pretty powerful and the rent very obnoxious to push people into preferring long commutes in horrible rush hour traffic.
All this battery technology would not be quite as important if we built more efficient communities. Still very important, just that personal transportation and batteries designed for it won't be as important.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday October 29 2015, @08:35PM
That's an interesting thought. 20 years ago I read a thought-provoking book, Home from Nowhere [amazon.com], that posited a return to walkable, mixed-use communities. Its chief villain was single-use zoning (such as you find in American suburbs).
Will better battery technology itself change what it means to live & work? Well, you can live in the middle of nowhere and telecommute now, but do most people? No, because something about human contact remains valuable to society. Yahoo, for example, recently changed its policies to disallow telecommuting. Why? We don't know, but something in the company's data on productivity must indicate something. Even with Skype and videoconferencing, people still hop on planes and trains for business meetings.
The real estate angle and the pricing of plots based on proximity is another wrinkle. How you come down on that seems a personal decision. I could never afford a house in my neighborhood, but I love that I can take my kids to Prospect Park and stumble onto a parade and a ceilidh two blocks removed from each other, happening independently. I love that I can hop on the subway and take my family to see all the treasures of the ages at the Metropolitan Museum, for free. Others love unencumbered vistas from their easy chairs and a pasture full of thoroughbreds. YMMV.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday October 31 2015, @01:00AM
Ok, wandering pretty far from the topic of battery tech, but here goes.
I suspect telecommuting is not that popular currently because our technologies aren't yet quite up to the job, as well as for political reasons. A virtual reality conference and work room takes a bit more hardware and networking bandwidth than is available at commodity prices. A web cam on a laptop and a two way connection doesn't cut it. "Something about human contact"? That has disadvantages too, like fist fights and the ever present possibility a disgruntled employee will go postal. Surveillance and control is a more common problem-- most employers these days seem to feel they have the right to spy on and micromanage their employees, and telecommuting makes that harder. Telecommuting makes it more difficult to achieve the infantilization of the workers, trying to turn us into little more than slaves.
I find it sad that in many ways, the US Civil War is still being fought, the age long East-West conflict going all the way back to the Greeks vs the Persians, is still not over, the lessons are still being learned and relearned. There are many people in management positions who don't know how to manage, or more like just can't believe in people, can't believe that not everyone is a naturally lazy, unmotivated slacker, and resort to an autocratic, pushy, Captain Obvious, whip cracking, slave driver style. The Confederacy never had a real chance of winning the Civil War, as the economies and populations were such an imbalance. Their only real hope was that the Union would not be willing to fight. Despite having more land and an easier climate, the Confederacy had far fewer people and a far smaller economy, and the main reason for that was that slavery is a very inefficient way to harness mankind's productivity. We've seen this over and over. In the Mexican War of 1848, the Mexicans lost because the troops were little better off than slaves, and had little heart or stomach for a fight. They had superior numbers and the advantage of defense, but lost anyway. One of the most significant differences between the Middle Ages and Modern times is the change in government from absolute monarchies to democracies. The American Revolution was the "shot heard around the world", and while it took a few centuries to depose all the monarchs, it happened, with World War I finishing off the German Kaiser, the Russian Czar, and the Austrian Emperor and his empire. Xenophon and Alexander the Great were able to defeat the mighty Persian Empire thanks in large part to their adoption of Eastern (meaning autocratic) style government as opposed to the Greek Western (democratic) style. Persian troops were not strongly motivated. So long as they were winning, they would fight, to avoid being punished for cowardice or dereliction of duty, but soon after a battle started going badly, they would break and run.
But how are our corporations run? Much like early Medieval feudal societies. What really is the point of anointing one person to be CEO, rather than governing the company through more democratic means? So this person can forbid telecommuting, because ... he or she doesn't like it, and that because it makes it more difficult to micromanage the workers?
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday October 29 2015, @10:10PM
The city I live in is grappling with the problem of sprawl among other things.
Auckland is about the size of London, but with 1.4 million people v about 9 million.
We tend to live in single family dwellings, with our own land, whereas London has semi-detached houses and apartments. This tends to make London much more compact, and with less distance to walk for various services. I was also struck by how small houses are in London, much smaller than mine, and I suspect much smaller than the average American home.
There are no doubt both good and bad with more compact cities, but it was really nice to be able to walk to a choice of pubs in the evening and walk home with no worries about drink driving. Public transport is also easy and cheap, which no doubt many Americans will sneer at (as do many New Zealanders), but when everyone uses the Tube, and trains run regularly it just becomes the way to get around.
Just a few observations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 29 2015, @10:57PM
But there's still a long way down the road to the chemist's.