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posted by martyb on Sunday December 09 2018, @09:43AM   Printer-friendly
from the also-prevents-cavities dept.

Focusing on the negative is good when it comes to batteries

Imagine not having to charge your phone or laptop for weeks. That is the dream of researchers looking into alternative batteries that go beyond the current lithium-ion versions popular today. Now, in a new study appearing in the journal Science, chemists at several institutions, including Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by Caltech for NASA, as well as the Honda Research Institute and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, have hit on a new way of making rechargeable batteries based on fluoride, the negatively charged form, or anion, of the element fluorine.

"Fluoride batteries can have a higher energy density, which means that they may last longer -- up to eight times longer than batteries in use today," says study co-author Robert Grubbs, Caltech's Victor and Elizabeth Atkins Professor of Chemistry and a winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. "But fluoride can be challenging to work with, in particular because it's so corrosive and reactive."

In the 1970s, researchers attempted to create rechargeable fluoride batteries using solid components, but solid-state batteries work only at high temperatures, making them impractical for everyday use. In the new study, the authors report at last figuring out how to make the fluoride batteries work using liquid components -- and liquid batteries easily work at room temperature. "We are still in the early stages of development, but this is the first rechargeable fluoride battery that works at room temperature," says Simon Jones, a chemist at JPL and corresponding author of the new study.

[...] The key to making the fluoride batteries work in a liquid rather than a solid state turned out to be an electrolyte liquid called bis(2,2,2-trifluoroethyl)ether, or BTFE. This solvent is what helps keep the fluoride ion stable so that it can shuttle electrons back and forth in the battery. Jones says his intern at the time, Victoria Davis, who now studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, was the first to think of trying BTFE. While Jones did not have much hope it would succeed, the team decided to try it anyway and were surprised it worked so well.

Room Temperature Cycling of Metal Fluoride Electrodes: Liquid Electrolytes for High Energy Fluoride-Ion Cells (DOI: 10.1126/science.aat7070) (DX)


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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by pTamok on Sunday December 09 2018, @02:40PM (2 children)

    by pTamok (3042) on Sunday December 09 2018, @02:40PM (#771929)

    I'm not entirely happy with the increasing use of perfluorinated organic chemicals, as they are extremely persistent in the environment, and it is not known what effect they might have on the ecosystem - experience of just one (perfluorooctanoic acid [wikipedia.org]) is not positive.

    While I'm not afraid of teh kemikals as such, as I have a fairly extensive knowledge of chemistry, industrial uses of man-made/man-processed chemicals and materials doesn't have a wonderful history: absbestos; radium; tetra-ethyl lead; mercury, CFC refrigerants (vs Ozone layer), poly-chlorinated biphenyls are just a few.

    I think a reasonable approach to chemical usage would be either to show a short half-life with respect to break-down into harmless products in the environment; or close supervision of their use so that long-term contaminants never leave their place of use and are properly disposed of by plasma incineration [wikipedia.org] (or similar), so that waste streams are entirely benign.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 09 2018, @04:08PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 09 2018, @04:08PM (#771965)

      so when the inevitable accident happens and the battery contents are spilled all over the side of the road, how bad is that, compared to other bad chemicals?
      assuming people will not simply spill used battery liquid into the sewers.

      • (Score: 1) by DECbot on Monday December 10 2018, @04:27AM

        by DECbot (832) on Monday December 10 2018, @04:27AM (#772246) Journal

        Besides fluorinated drinking water and toothpaste, the only experience of industrial use of fluorine I have is in semiconductor manufacturing. In the poly furnaces (doped and undoped), ClF3 was used to etch the quartz and remove the byproducts. We could tell which zone in the furnace was being etched by the temperature sensors. The process was set to occur at 350C, but where the chemical reaction was occurring, it was at 375C and the temperature controller output for that zone would go down to 0%.
         
        I've also read ClF3 works pretty well in liquid fueled rockets. When JPL needed an oxidizer that could oxidize fuel better than LOX, ClF3 tested very well. Though, it was noted that you had to be careful not to stare at the storage canisters funny.

        --
        cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
  • (Score: 5, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Sunday December 09 2018, @03:02PM (6 children)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Sunday December 09 2018, @03:02PM (#771939) Journal

    Bis(2,2,2-trifluoroethyl)ether looks like this: CF3-CH2-O-CH2-CF3

    There are so many possible battery chemistries, with so many subtle variations, that it seems almost certain we'll eventually discover something good enough to make the electric car really viable.

    I've been learning what it's like to own an electric car. Bought a used Leaf with limited range of about 55 miles thanks to old batteries, and am finding that's really not enough, not in the US. There are too many places I want to go that are between 25 to 40 miles away. The 25 mile destination is right at the limit. But I can't do even that one without a recharge away from home if there's any inclement weather. If it's dark and rainy so that I have to use headlights and defrost the windshield, then the car can't do it. The headlights are no big deal, but the heater is. Running the heater knocks 10 miles off its range. So I found myself trying to see as best I could through a fogged up windshield, in the dark and rain, trying to wipe the condensation off with a napkin. I'm none too happy that range anxiety was pushing me to try such dangerous driving. The wife called with a request for groceries that added another 4 miles to the trip. That's nothing in a gas powered car, but in that electric, ouch. To get enough juice to get home, I ended up sitting for an hour at a standard 110V outlet that was most fortunately attached to the post that had a charging station that'd been shut off for the night.

    Recharging away from home is a total pain. The problem is that even in an area which has a fair number of charging stations, it doesn't mean you can just drive up and use them. They may be occupied. They aren't necessarily on 24/7, they may have been turned off for the night. Or the station may be located inside a gated compound, where they shut and lock the gates every evening. Lots of fun if you tried to recharge there, starting near their closing time and they unthinkingly locked your car in. They can also be very difficult to find. They're small, they could be attached to any lamppost anywhere, and there usually aren't any signs pointing out their location. In a large parking lot, it's worse than trying to find your car on those occasions when you forgot where you parked. The fastest way is just ask the people at the business. Even when you have the exact coordinates, you may find it's inside a parking garage, and then you must check each level.

    Many of the charge stations require payment, but you can't simply swipe a credit card like you can at a gas pump, no. There's no one to take cash either. No, you need accounts, and there's like half a dozen different networks with which you should have an account. Spent 2 hours setting up my smartphone with an app, then trying to use that to get a charge started, to no avail. Even called their help line, and they blamed the inability to start a charge on the car, when all along the problem was some snag with payment, or perhaps their station. By then, a nearby free station had become available, so I just drove over there and had no problem at all starting a recharge.

    Anyway, what this means is if you need to use a pay charge station, and forget your phone, you're screwed. Credit cards and cash won't do. One time on the way to a destination 40 miles away, I left the phone behind, and didn't realize it until I was 5 miles down the road. Turned around to get it, had to have the phone so I could recharge at pay stations. But then I had lost 10 miles of range, and was forced to cancel that trip. In addition to the time I had lost driving 10 miles for nothing, it just takes too long to recharge. A 55 mile range is most unforgiving of such mistakes.

    You might think, maybe you could make an appointment beforehand, so that not having a phone wouldn't be a big problem? Nope! If you successfully get a pay station activated, you have 30 seconds or 2 minutes or so, some relatively short time limit, to get it plugged in and the charge going, or the station will cancel. The station can be activated through the account, and I had a laptop with WiFi. But a 2 minute time limit really stinks when you're looking at activating the station from a nearby restaurant with free WiFi, then running as fast as possible back to the car to plug in. I'm no Olympic runner able to run a mile in 4 minutes. All the more impossible with a laptop to lug. No, must have the cellular Internet. If only the charge stations had WiFi, and the car had a built in computer capable of connecting....

    Another problem is falling behind. If you have to take several short trips during the day, you know, dropping someone off and picking them up a few hours later, and making a grocery run and maybe a doctor's appointment, you may not have enough time to charge the car fully, have to keep unplugging to take another short trip. While the car is great for trips of that sort, you can't go on a longer trip until the car has had time to fully recharge.

    Finally, there are still plenty of places that are simply too far away from any charging station. Can't have your car recharging while you are visiting somewhere for a few hours, not without a 2 or 3 mile hike from the nearest station to your destination.

    Heard from another electric car owner that a range of 150 miles is more the thing. Makes a world of difference.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by KilroySmith on Sunday December 09 2018, @05:34PM (4 children)

      by KilroySmith (2113) on Sunday December 09 2018, @05:34PM (#772008)

      The difference between a car company making a "compliance car" that meets their obligations under governmental regulation ("1% of your vehicle sales must be zero emission cars"), and a car company who believes that EVs are the future and are a critical item for reducing our impact on the environment.

      Nissan built a fine car - but didn't put in temperature management for the batteries. As a result, the batteries degrade quickly reducing the car's "city car" utility below basic needs. Nissan didn't build out any charging infrastructure, leaving you on your own to be serviced by "the free market" which requires you to have accounts with a half-dozen different charging companies. Nissan didn't build in the ability to charge the car quickly, so you could stop for lunch and have a useful amount of range added while you did.

      Another car company which shall remain nameless spent the time early on thinking about what the basic requirements were for an EV to be not only barely usable in the real world, but seamlessly usable. They built cars with big enough batteries that almost everyone could wake up every morning with a full "tank", do all their commuting and errands for the day and pull into the garage at night with a comfortable reserve left. They built charging infrastructure on all the major highways so that your bi-annual visit to Grandma was not only do-able, but the fact that the car was an EV only slightly impacted your trip length. They engineered the battery system with cooling, heating, and charge management such that battery degradation in real-life use is less than 10% after 200,000 miles. And they built an EV which last month was the sixth highest selling car in the USA (excluding pickups), and would have sold more if they had the production capacity to build more. And they still haven't bought a single ad or commercial to push more sales of.

      Wouldn't it be nice if they could drop their price by $10 grand by having Fluoride batteries available...

      • (Score: 2) by choose another one on Monday December 10 2018, @01:08PM (2 children)

        by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 10 2018, @01:08PM (#772347)

        They built cars with big enough batteries that almost everyone could wake up every morning with a full "tank", do all their commuting and errands for the day and pull into the garage at night with a comfortable reserve left.

        According to the official stats for my country less than half of households actually have a garage to pull into, for the US (e.g. https://archives.hud.gov/news/2010/pr10-138.cfm [hud.gov] ) it seems it is higher at 66%, but even so there is no way that you can get "almost everyone" out of 66% of households.

        This is the biggest problem with EV infrastructure - and it is likely to be further biased against due to many of those without garages probably being in dense urban environments where EVs would be more useful. For performance parity, electric needs to get to the point where it is fill-up-while-you-wait (if it takes a bit longer than petrol or gives less range that may be fine, but you need correspondingly more charging stations than petrol pumps, and they need to be as accessible to all as petrol pumps) OR you need park-and-charge at most/all parking spaces, including on-street. I don't see either of those happening, I think it is more likely that the populace will be forced into the less performant option - it's been done with incandescent light bulbs.

        • (Score: 2) by KilroySmith on Tuesday December 11 2018, @02:21AM (1 child)

          by KilroySmith (2113) on Tuesday December 11 2018, @02:21AM (#772719)

          Those without garages are likely to end up with power outlets in their apartment/townhouse/condo parking spaces, even if it's just (in the US) 120V/15A, or there will be power outlets at their place of work (common in CA at the moment). Solving the problem of adding electrical outlets isn't rocket science, and the lack of electrical outlets doesn't need to be permanent.

          • (Score: 2) by choose another one on Tuesday December 11 2018, @03:06PM

            by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday December 11 2018, @03:06PM (#772880)

            Eventually, maybe, but that is essentially what I said with "most/all parking spaces".

            With most apartment complexes, even if you have "your" own parking space you won't have the right to put a charger in it, so it'll have to be put through the management and probably done building/complex wide - which is not rocket science but it is a large infrastructure job and may well require upgrading the main grid connection to the building/complex.

            If you only have on-street parking (which I do, and I am not alone there are many many others - if there weren't I'd be able to park outside the house :-) ) then it means local council / municipal installations along every street where there is parking (since you don't get to choose where you park, we frequently end up >100yds away from house), still not rocket science (after all, they manage to do street lights) but not cheap either. Then you've got the problem of what outlet/connector type since there are many standards, and how to charge for the charge, for which there are many "standards" also. Solving all that becomes a politics problem rather than a rocket science one.

      • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday December 13 2018, @06:17AM

        by bzipitidoo (4388) on Thursday December 13 2018, @06:17AM (#773908) Journal

        Good points, but overly pessimistic.

        > Nissan didn't build in the ability to charge the car quickly

        Yes they did. Many Leafs have a CHAdeMO port for faster charging. Mine has that, but I have yet to use it. Problem is, the fast charge degrades the battery faster.

        > Another car company which shall remain nameless spent the time early on thinking

        There's something to be said for producing the car a few years sooner than everyone else, and not waiting on infrastructure. It's a chicken and egg problem. I would rather have a Tesla, but the used Leaf I got was much, much less expensive.

        I would have liked to wait longer before going for the electric, but the breakdown of my old car, a 90s Lumina, forced the issue. Those Lumina engines were infamous for developing leaks around the head gasket, and when that happens, you're screwed. Have to replace the engine. Instead, I dumped the car. Wasn't worth fixing.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @03:20PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @03:20PM (#772387)

      There are so many possible battery chemistries, with so many subtle variations, that it seems almost certain we'll eventually discover something good enough to make the electric car really viable.

      Fuel cells are another option - for example if someone manages to make a light and compact hydrocarbon fuel cell, you could use the existing petrol/diesel infrastructure or even the fuels themselves for the electric vehicles.

      To me hydrogen isn't suitable - not dense enough and too many problems with handling and storage.

      Then you'd just need a supercapacitor or a much smaller battery for the regenerative braking or "sprinting"[1] stuff.

      [1] The fuel cell pack might only be spec'ed to produce enough power for a max sustained speed of say 120kph, so you need the battery/capacitor for sprints beyond those speeds or for rapid accelerations.

  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 09 2018, @08:20PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 09 2018, @08:20PM (#772078)

    Fluoride is a highly toxic byproduct of aluminium (aluminum for US) production/smelting. Now maybe we can "capture" this stuff in useful batteries instead of certain large mining groups sponsoring dental schools and writing the textbooks too (since 1940's) ... with the end result that some cities still put Fluoride in the drinking water! So just like Carbon capture programmes, we could have Fluoride capture. Maybe the new batteries will not need Cobalt, and so put a stop to exploitation, slavery and war in central Africa (or at least slow it down with lower demand). Blood diamonds and 40 tons of Gold missing from SA mines every year - add Blood Cobalt and other minerals that make the Leafs and Teslas go. Now how green and PC is that EV looking?

  • (Score: 2) by radu on Monday December 10 2018, @09:24AM

    by radu (1919) on Monday December 10 2018, @09:24AM (#772285)

    they may last longer be slimmer -- up to eight times longer slimmer -- than batteries in use today

  • (Score: 2) by KritonK on Monday December 10 2018, @11:36AM

    by KritonK (465) on Monday December 10 2018, @11:36AM (#772320)

    Imagine not having to charge your phone or laptop for weeks.

    I don't need to imagine anything about my phone [wikipedia.org]; its battery easily lasts 3-4 weeks.

  • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday December 11 2018, @10:17AM

    by darkfeline (1030) on Tuesday December 11 2018, @10:17AM (#772804) Homepage

    I'm not a chemist, but ionic fluoride is pretty low on the list of things I want to carry close to my person on a regular basis. There are lots of fun fluoride compounds like hydrogen fluoride.

    Imagine a Li-ion battery. Imagine it bursting. Now imagine it emitting hydrogen fluoride gas (same chemical as in hydrofluoric acid).

    Nope nope nope.

    --
    Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
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