kef writes:
"Lithium-sulphur batteries has been a promising technology for the last 40 years, but researchers could not get them to survive past about 100 cycles. Now a chemical engineer thinks he's found an answer. From the article:
'Chemical engineer Elton Cairns suspected he had tamed a promising-but-wild battery chemistry early last year, when his coin-sized cells were still going strong even after a few months of continual draining and recharging. By July, his cells at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, had cycled 1,500 times and had lost only half of their capacity, a performance roughly on a par with the best Li-ion batteries. His batteries are based on Lithium-sulphur (Li-S) technology, which uses extremely cheap materials and in theory can pack in five times more energy by weight than Li-ion (in practice, researchers suspect, it will probably be only twice as much).'"
(Score: 5, Funny) by irick on Thursday March 06 2014, @04:37PM
I've been waiting for better battery tech since I could comprehend the discrepancy in advancement. Recently it appears to be a true spotlight issue it. It doesn't seem I can go a month without hearing about some promising new battery technology and my brain can't take all the damn build up!
I swear chemical engineers, if you leave me with blue balls on this one I'm going to use all of my cosmic pull to make sure that a 0th circle of hell is solidified and reserved for those who make tantalizing announcements on such fundamental technologies.
(Score: 0) by dast on Thursday March 06 2014, @06:22PM
I was going to post the same thing, but you beat me to it. Where are my shiny new Li-S batteries? This whole thing is like getting a lap dance but not getting laid. All cock tease and no action.
Get that Isht to market now!!
(Score: 1) by dast on Friday March 07 2014, @05:29PM
That really didn't warrant a down mod. Sheesh guys. Lighten up.
(Score: 1) by krishnoid on Thursday March 06 2014, @10:02PM
Done! [mythweb.com]. Now you just need some chemical engineers.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday March 06 2014, @04:44PM
Their packages claim they last for one thousand cycles. I can't really say I've had mine for years but have not cycled them that many times.
The only place I know that actually sells them is MicroCenter [microcenter.com] just off 101 in Sunnyvale, California.
They cost about twenty-five bucks for a starter kit with two AA cells, two AAA cells and a charger. The charger holds four of either kind of cells.
They also cell packs of four of either size, without the charger I think that was seventeen dollars.
They are very slow to charge. I expect that's why they can take so many cycles. I eventually bought a second starter kit just so I could have two chargers.
One of my chargers is a little flaky; they are quite lightweight and so clearly do not use transformers. You don't want to do that, there are all kinds of ways they could catch fire. I recommend plugging the chargers into a line filter. There really are quite severe surges and RFI on the mains; just try plugging one of your wall warts into an oscilloscope it is quite cool to watch.
I used to drive rather frequently between san jose california and vancouver washington. I managed to pour a starbucks into the slot of my car's CD player. Rather than replace it, I put my battery-powered busker's amp in the back seat, with a long 3 mm patch cord to the front to plug into my MP3 player.
That busker's amp can get quite loud, yet six UltraLasts lasted me about two thirds of the way. So I really only needed to charge twelve of them.
It is quite likely that the UltraLasts I already own are the last AA or AAA cells I will ever need to purchase.
I don't know whether they make a nine volt. MicroCenter didn't sell them when I lived there, maybe they do now.
MicroCenter is quite a good computer store, do give it a try.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by skullz on Thursday March 06 2014, @05:07PM
MichaelDavidCrawford, every one of your posts I've seen reads like some guy from Marketing (c) (tm). Not that there is anything wrong with that. Swap LinkedIn info?
Found the UltraLast batteries, and now they come with a cool solar charger and a modern hippy! http://www.ultralastbatteries.com/products/charger s/sol-charger [ultralastbatteries.com]
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday March 06 2014, @05:31PM
- I am required to flog my consulting services [warplife.com] like there is no tomorrow.
Actually I have thirty years of direct and indirect experience in Sales and Marketing. Drop "PolyFlex" into YouTube; there is a very poor quality video of me demonstrating one. It has awful sound I didn't realize my cheap digital camera would pick up the fan noise in my cube at work.
Buckminster Fuller invented them, but he called it the Jitterbug. The triangular faces are rigid, the square faces have flexible corners. I make mine out of quarter-inch hardwood dowels with 3/16" inside diameter, 3/8" outside diameter medical latex tubing. Any medical supply store, laboratory supply store or university chemistry stockroom will sell it.
Anyway a friend who was about to move away from Santa Cruz at first gave me his, when I was a UC Santa Cruz Physics student. I soon discovered there were all kinds of things I could do with it, so he requested it back.
Undaunted, the very next day I made another out of a pack of golf pencil sized colored pencils, and some rather heavier latex tube that I just happened to have lying around.
I went walking downtown with it when someone asked where I bought it, then told me that the Games-a-Lot toy store would likely buy them from me. I just walked up to the cash register and asked if they'd like to order any. The ordered a dozen on the spot.
This led to my selling the damn things to damn near every toy store in the monterey and south san francisco bay areas. I had two business partners and several employees for like six months.
At working software, also of santa cruz, in the early nineties, I learned about direct mail but rather more importantly, data-driven marketing. At our peak we had gross revenues of $3M per year, employed twelve people, and dropped a quarter million pieces in just one day.
Constrast this with Apple, which in those days was on the ropes, as were many of our fellow Mac developers, because Apple would pull such stunts as dropping a million pieces from some random list all at once, without even testing the list, the wording or price of the offer, or the printing on the outside of the envelope.
There are other michael crawford's on linkedin. You want the one with a photo of me playing my m-audio keyboard at an open mic.
I'll dig up my linkedin profile when I'm not using mom's dialup. LinkedIn sucks over dialup.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 4, Funny) by dotdotdot on Thursday March 06 2014, @05:40PM
Every time I read one of your posts, I expect your sig to be: "And now you know the rest of the story."
(Score: 1) by RedGreen on Thursday March 06 2014, @07:04PM
Every time I do I look for the ignore user button, sadly there is none.
"I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen
(Score: 5, Informative) by FatPhil on Thursday March 06 2014, @07:16PM
I had hundreds of foes on
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2, Informative) by RedGreen on Thursday March 06 2014, @07:54PM
Thanks took a while to find it but in the end I got it done, no more of that fool. For those who are curious the modifier is in the Comments section of your user page.
"I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen
(Score: 1) by tangomargarine on Thursday March 06 2014, @09:59PM
I'm not convinced that that doesn't say more about you than them...you don't block everybody who disagrees with you, do you?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday March 06 2014, @10:04PM
I also use my real name online. I do have lots of aliases, like IgnorantMotherFucker at /., but always it's obvious that it's me.
I decided to do that when I decided to have a go at writing professionally.
Consider what is quite commonly said about Steven King, that he is a hack writer, a coke addict, neglects his wife and children etc. All that said in public.
Now imagine what is not said in public, but during private conversations.
It would simply not be possible to lead the life I do, if I were concerned about what others said or thought about me.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday March 07 2014, @12:07AM
I did foe pretty much everyone who I considered to not have the ability to engage in a logical argument.
Don't mistake that predicate for something it's not - it's nothing to do with them being wrong or not having knowledge in a field, or simple holding an opposite opinion to me. It is to do with the processes that they use in order to form their conclusions and engage in discussion. I had some very interesting discussions with people I disagreed with, I like a well-thought-out contrary view. However, in terms of mathematical foundations (i.e. logic), I did foe everyone who clearly had a completely incompatible set of axioms to me.
There was generally a three-strikes policy, until I noticed that some illogic always led to more illogic, and so some people were barred on their first offence.
As a trivial example: if someone only ever posted "yo mama", or "typical [liebrawl|demonrat|republicunt] attitude!", or whatever whenever someone disagreed with them - that's just a logic-avoider, and not worth my time (which I value) - bozo bin.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Funny) by FatPhil on Friday March 07 2014, @12:12AM
Should end " and who relied on those axioms to inform the vast majority of their posts."
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday March 08 2014, @07:30PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1) by bryan on Thursday March 06 2014, @07:19PM
Except UltraLast batteries are apparently Nickel-Zinc and not the Li-S from TFA.
(Score: 2) by Khyber on Friday March 07 2014, @01:12AM
And Nickel-Zinc SUCKS. Sure, you got 1.6V nominal, and had roughly the same overall wH of a high-end Ni-MH.
I have a bunch of those PowerGenix pieces of crap. UltraLast is the same tech, it appears. Nope.jpeg. I killed those batteries in under a year.
Destroying Semiconductors With Style Since 2008, and scaring you ill-educated fools since 2013.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Woods on Thursday March 06 2014, @04:44PM
I am tired of always hearing about all of these great advancements in batteries that (If you (God forbid) RTFA) will never actually hit the market.
They are just paragraphs saying how "some scientist" (thinks|suspects|"found"|theorizes) that they can get "up to" (1 - 100) times better power storage on this new battery type because of whatever reason, and then that is the first and last we ever hear about it.
I wish I could find that chart that shows how far off certain advancements are based on the verbiage used to describe them. i.e. "theorized" advancements are 15 years away, "proposed" is 20, etc.
I feel like all battery related advancements are just the energy storage equivalent of vaporware.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Bob the Super Hamste on Thursday March 06 2014, @04:49PM
Is this close enough [xkcd.com]?
Learn to take care of your vehicle [blogspot.com]
(Score: 1) by Woods on Thursday March 06 2014, @07:08PM
That is it, actually. Looks like my memory was getting the best of me again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 06 2014, @04:50PM
I guess you are thinking of this. [xkcd.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 07 2014, @03:30AM
A few hundred charge/discharge cycles is good enough for some consumer electronic devices, like stand alone cameras. They should try to get this to market now.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 06 2014, @04:46PM
Title: "Li-S Batteries Last Up To 2 - 5 Times Longer."
OK, 2 to 5 times longer than what?
Than previously? Well, from the summary:
OK, that's more like a factor 15. Well, maybe it's compared with current batteries?
No, that's more a factor of 1.
So where does the factor 2 to 5 come from? Well, apparently from this:
But that's not about durability, but about energy density.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Thursday March 06 2014, @05:02PM
This is a big step up for LiS, but it's still a long way away from other Li-Ion batteries in terms of durability. 50% after 1,500 cycles is not considered good, 80% after 3,000 cycles is considered normal for consumer batteries. That said, if 50% of the LiS battery is more than 80% of the Li-Ion battery, most people will still probably be happy...
sudo mod me up
(Score: 4, Informative) by Angry Jesus on Thursday March 06 2014, @06:03PM
I would like to see the information that is the source for your claims.
The second table in this article on Li-Ion charging best practices [batteryuniversity.com] suggests that 3,000 recharge cycles would be quite exceptional. The parameters aren't exactly the same as TFA's -- 70% capacity level, rather than 50%. But they show only 500 cycles of 100% discharge (deep cycles) before degrading to the 70%. Given that, it seems plausible that 1,500 deep cycles would take capacity down past 50% even with the asymptotic nature of battery capacity decay rates thus corroborating TFA's claims about Li-Ion.
The full text of the paper is here. [lbl.gov] I'm not even close to being an expert, but at a couple of points they refer to results from work in 2011 where they explicitly call out their testing as being with deep cycles, so I think it is reasonable to assume they are also talking about 100% discharges with respect to the 1,500 cycle number too.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Thursday March 06 2014, @07:16PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by Angry Jesus on Thursday March 06 2014, @07:59PM
I think you are off by a factor of 10. Looks like 300 and 500 cycles for most apple products with 1000 for some specific models. [apple.com] No info on why the difference, maybe the 1000 cycle models have an internal limiter that prevents it from going to 0, my samsung notebook does that, and I hear tesla's do that too (but have an emergency over-ride in case you get stranded).
(Score: 1) by CoolHand on Thursday March 06 2014, @05:02PM
Well, AC, I was going to mod you up, because I also found this confusing, but apparently the time limit on my mod points ran out -- they run out really quickly. Apparently someone else didn't agree since you got modded down though..
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 4, Interesting) by wjwlsn on Thursday March 06 2014, @05:11PM
I actually assumed energy density when I read the title, so it can't have been *too* bad. As in "don't bother with those 1000 mAh NiMHs... I got some 2000 mAh LiPos right here".
One thing these articles don't often mention, however, are the charge / discharge C ratings. For instance, a cell with a capacity of 1000 mAh (or 1 amp-hour), rated at 1C charge / 10C discharge, should be charged at 1 A current for an hour, and should be discharged at no more than 10 A instantaneous. Exceed those rates and you risk damaging the cell (or if it's a LiPo, setting it on fire).
The cheap $12 LiPo packs (3 cells in series) I use for my radio control planes and multirotors typically have 2200 mAh capacity and are rated 1 to 3C for charging, so charging currents can safely range from 2.2 A to 6.6 A (higher charge current tends to shorten cell life, though). Their discharge rating is 20C (44 A) continuous to 30C (66 A) burst. (More expensive packs are available that can charge at up to 5C and discharge at 50C, and you can increase total discharge capability by running packs in parallel.)
Anyway, all that aside, I really want to know the charge and discharge ratings for these new technologies. Energy density (or total capacity) isn't the only important factor.
I am a traveler of both time and space. Duh.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Angry Jesus on Thursday March 06 2014, @06:17PM
The full paper [lbl.gov] says 6C discharge, 3C charge. It appears their focus was more on rates than capacity and that the higher the rates the lower the effective capacity. But, I really don't have enough contextual knowledge to be even close to sure on that point.
(Score: 2) by wjwlsn on Thursday March 06 2014, @07:01PM
Thanks, that's useful info. The charge rate's not bad, but that discharge rate (if not improved) would really limit this tech to low current draw applications. I wonder what the self-discharge rate is? (I'll go check the full paper.)
Moderators, please mod parent Informative.
I am a traveler of both time and space. Duh.
(Score: 1) by carguy on Thursday March 06 2014, @06:40PM
In addition to energy density, there is also the question of cell voltage. If it's not compatible with current devices, then the electronics may need to be redesigned--adding another delay before the new battery will be in the market. The Wikipedia article on Lithium–sulfur battery is not encouraging, "cell voltage varies nonlinearly in the range 2.5–1.7 during discharge; batteries often packaged for 3V".
(Score: 2) by wjwlsn on Thursday March 06 2014, @07:18PM
That's not necessarily a show-stopper, as packaging multiple cells in series would address this issue. For instance, standard LiPo cells have a nominal voltage of 3.7 V, but range from 4.2 V (fully charged) to about 3.5 V (low voltage cutoff, LVC, don't go below this or cell damage occurs). That becomes a useful range of 10.5 V to 12.6 V for the 3-cell-series (3S) LiPo packs that I use.
Using the figures you quoted for LiS cells means that a 5-cell-series (5S) LiS pack could potentially be equivalent to a 3S LiPo pack. Hmmm... that possibly negates quite a bit of the energy density advantage that these LiS cells might have on battery pack size/weight.
I am a traveler of both time and space. Duh.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday March 06 2014, @08:09PM
When you ask how long a battery lasts, there are two answers.
The first is how long it lasts after a full charge till your device shuts down.
The second is how many cycles your battery can handle before it won't hold a useful charge.
LI-S batteries have been promising because they could hold a larger charge, but hampered by short useful lives.
Both TFS and TFA carried a mixed message (blame the journalism major who wrote the original story, not the scientist who did the research).
In any event, I'll take the twice as much, and be happy.
Now if we can just prevent device manufacturers from reducing battery size in a pointless attempt to make device thinner and leaving us with something that barely lasts a day, we will be golden.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 06 2014, @10:22PM
Staying power during sex? If that would be it, and taking my experience as the measure, I'm truly not impressed with a battery that lasts 4-10 minutes and takes 4 weeks to recharge.
But hey... age makes one wiser, or so they say.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by wjwlsn on Thursday March 06 2014, @04:47PM
... a Beowulf cluster of these?!
Remember the "pomegranate inspired" battery design that was discussed here a little while ago? The one that supposedly had 10x the capacity of standard Li ion cells? And what else is a pomegranate but a Beowulf cluster of tasty little pods (albeit with disgustingly gritty end bits and the most annoying fruit packaging system ever evolved or designed (intelligently). Ha!
http://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=14/03/01/064 203 [soylentnews.org]
Of course, I have no idea if the two techniques would be compatible, but hey... I'm an ideas guy. I'll leave the implementation details up to the experts.
I am a traveler of both time and space. Duh.
(Score: 5, Funny) by skullz on Thursday March 06 2014, @04:52PM
I'm an ideas guy. I'll leave the implementation details up to the experts
Must... control... fist... of... rage...
(Score: 2) by wjwlsn on Thursday March 06 2014, @05:14PM
Hehe. Maddening, isn't it? :)
I am a traveler of both time and space. Duh.
(Score: 1) by skullz on Thursday March 06 2014, @06:45PM
Yes. Yes, it is. Hat off to you, sir.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday March 06 2014, @11:11PM
And it's comments like this why I don't miss /. in the least. This is the best of classical /., distilled. Awesome comment, skullz. You made my day a happy one. Thanks!
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday March 06 2014, @10:38PM
Yeah... I still wonder, though... you see, nanometer cells that all need connected together to something macroscopic to be useful. Sounds a feat similar to using an atomic force microscope to assemble carbon nanotubes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Funny) by ngarrang on Thursday March 06 2014, @04:58PM
The article is an ad, essentially, begging for funding.
"We have shown in a lab setting in small quantities a proof-of-concept. We are asking for investors to give us money to see if we can do this on a larger scale, with no guarantee we will succeed. We promise not to spend it all on Cheetos and Mt. Dew."
(Score: 1) by egcagrac0 on Thursday March 06 2014, @06:45PM
Wake me when we've got something that approaches the power density of the battery in Tom Swift Jr's pen-transceiver.
(Score: 4, Informative) by nitehawk214 on Thursday March 06 2014, @08:00PM
As in "LieS" instead of "Li-S".
We hear about a "revolutionary new battery technology" every few months. Some of the proposals sound interesting, but any that claim "100x" inevitably turn out to be pure bs. This one seems to be intentionally vague.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday March 06 2014, @11:15PM
We could substitute "hookers and blow" and it would be nearly universally true. Don't we all dream of drawing the eye of that cute little brunette, slighly near-sighted undergrad? Somewhere inside all us geeks is the hunger that "Real Genius" awoke, whereby hot girls would desire us for our intellects.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by nitehawk214 on Friday March 07 2014, @08:46PM
Yes, but what does that have to do with batteries?
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 06 2014, @08:47PM
And I want it NaO!