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Lithium-oxygen batteries could store 10 times the energy of today's lithium-ion cells
Lithium-ion batteries power everything from our smartphones to our cars. But one of their most promising replacements is lithium-oxygen batteries, which in theory could store 10 times more power. The only problem: They fall apart after just a handful of charging cycles. Now, researchers have found that running them at high temperatures—along with a couple of other fixes—can push them to at least 150 cycles. Although they would be too hot to handle in phones, lithium-oxygen batteries the size of rail cars could one day underpin a green energy grid, storing excess wind and solar power and delivering it on demand.
"This is very encouraging," says Yang Shao-Horn, a chemical physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge who was not involved in the work. But she and others caution that the new batteries must prove themselves over many more cycles before they'll be considered for the mass market.
A high-energy-density lithium-oxygen battery based on a reversible four-electron conversion to lithium oxide (DOI: 10.1126/science.aas9343) (DX)
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Sunday August 26 2018, @04:22PM (1 child)
I'm far from the first one to point that out. The hits just keep on coming.
Stanford Creates Pomegranate-inspired Battery [soylentnews.org]
New Supercapacitor for 1000x Lifetime + Fastcharge [soylentnews.org]
Hemp Nanosheets Topple Graphene for Making Ideal Supercapacitor [soylentnews.org]
Smart, Eco-Friendly New Battery Made of Seeds and Pine Resin [soylentnews.org]
Why We Don't Have Better Batteries, or What Went Wrong at Envia [soylentnews.org]
Scientists Explore Paths to Better Batteries [soylentnews.org]
Stanford Claims New Battery Charges in 60 seconds [soylentnews.org]
Electric Car, With Light Aluminium-Air Battery, Travels 1,100 Miles on a Single Charge [soylentnews.org]
Nitrogen can Triple Energy Capacity of Supercapacitors [soylentnews.org]
Rechargeable Batteries With Almost Infinite Lifetimes Coming, Say MIT-Samsung Engineers [soylentnews.org]
Researchers Use 3D Printing to Make Ultrafast Graphene Supercapacitor [soylentnews.org]
Scientists Develop Nanowires That Could Allow Lithium-Ion Batteries to Last for a "Lifetime" [soylentnews.org]
A Phone that Charges in Seconds? [soylentnews.org]
Lithium-Ion Pioneer Claims 5x Increase in Energy Density [soylentnews.org]
All-Nanotube Stretchable Supercapacitor With Low Equivalent Series Resistance [soylentnews.org]
Supercapacitors vs. Lithium-Ion Batteries [soylentnews.org]
Lithium Battery Advancements [soylentnews.org]
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The lithium-oxygen battery isn't well suited for smartphones, laptops, drones, etc., but it would obviously be great for solar power. But based on the above stories, we could guess that an all-purpose battery with 3-10x the energy density of today's Li-Ions is feasible. And that would dramatically affect the planet. Drone flies for 25 minutes? Try 4 hours...
My personal favorite so far has been this:
https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/the-plastic-battery-that-doesnt-explode/ [sciencefriday.com]
https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/semiconductors/materials/welcome-to-the-ionyl-age [ieee.org]
Double the energy density while safer. When will we see it in action? Meh...
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday August 26 2018, @04:48PM
Fair point - I just thought I remembered you saying it. If not you, it must have been someone else.