Portable Battery Technology? *recharge*
- Thread starter Eteric
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There's some, but they'll likely still remain 5 years out from commercial usage.
Edit: The one new battery tech vastly improves safety and about doubles power density and was shown on a PBS show "Super Batteries" in 2015 or such. The other newer tech is said to nearly triple power densities but has only recently made the news in 2017.
I call bollocks on every new battery tech. Remember 'methanol fuel sells' back on PSP's era? Toshiba had them working, ready to power the world, yet where are they?? Everyone's promising a better future but no-one's delivering. Like FED and SED and a myriad of alternative TV techs. In real terms we had CRT, then plasma, now OLED, and OLED has taken some 20 years from the promise to featuring in very expensive consumer items. Batteries went lead-acid > NiCad > Lithium and we need a new generation which is going to take forever. Hell, our phone cases were supposed to be made of battery-plastics and shit already!
First place we'll see real battery replacements is military powered armour costing megabucks. If the military aren't using same future portable power tech now, there's no way we're going to see it at the consumer level in the next 10 years.
First place we'll see real battery replacements is military powered armour costing megabucks. If the military aren't using same future portable power tech now, there's no way we're going to see it at the consumer level in the next 10 years.
The battery tech that was shown on the PBS video made extreme sense and didn't seem to be of the sort of Shifty Bollocks. Here is the show: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/super-battery.html "Search for the Super Battery"
Safer Electrolytes around the 31:20 mark.
Doubling Energy Density by returning to Lithium Metal around the 33:45 mark
Still more development to go around the 36:00 mark
YouTube Video:
A few months back researches accidentally found a battery that could last several hundred years, although it has gold among its components so it is not feasible, I think. A battery like that could be recharged 200.000 times.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolo...eate-an-infinite-battery-that-will-never-die/
Then there is the graphene, which looks very promising in that respect and car manufacturers might use it in future cars.
Methanol fuel cells made sense and were shown working. The realism of the tech isn't in dispute. Every new tech comes with awesome PR about how wonderful it is to keep funding/share prices high. The reality is there's always a thousand little issues that prevent a consumer grade product materialising within the promised timeline. New tech just doesn't happen on time, same as software with very early announcements. Too much can and does go wrong.
There's no point anticipating a new battery tech and planning around it. Anyone designing a portable now on the assumption there'll be 2x the power to drive it available in a year would be a reckless gamble with a very high chance of failure. When it happens, then we can consider it, but it's otherwise worth ignoring promising tech. We'll have next-gen batteries in our portables about the same time real-time raytracing hardware is included.
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Deleted member 11852
Guest
Lots of technologies are not safe for consumers use. DMFC eventually got approved in the US (not sure about anywhere else) but it took about 5 years of testing before consumers were allowed to take them onboard commercial aircraft during which time conventional metal hydride batteries had moved on.
There are much better portable solutions, hydrogen fuel cells are widely used in certain circles but not by consumers. Safety and security in today's world will make any high energy small package immediately of concern because of how it can be misused. The best hope for better battery life is more power efficient electronics.
Dont know if you heard this, it was all over the science news a little while ago
https://news.utexas.edu/2017/02/28/goodenough-introduces-new-battery-technology
there was also another one I heard about recently, where the inventors are in talks with samsung
How is that announcement any different to methanol fuel cell announcements of the past? Or SED/FED TV announcements? Or printing computer chips on an ink-jet printer? Every month there are amazing new technologies announced that are faster, better, cheaper, safer, better, nicer, and better. About 1% see the light of day in commercial products at all, let alone within a couple of years of their reveal!
2006 Toshiba demos laptop fuel cell
http://gizmodo.com/5390935/the-futu...shibas-methanol-fuel-cell-is-promising-flawed
2009 early Toshiba product...
http://gizmodo.com/5390935/the-futu...shibas-methanol-fuel-cell-is-promising-flawed
2012 years later, "Whatever happened to" article
https://www.navigantresearch.com/blog/whatever-happened-to-direct-methanol-fuel-cells
2017 - nothing. No methanol fuel-cell type mobile device chargers. No Vita battery replacement running off methanol.
Literally, solving all our portable power needs with a working solution and a glorious future promised over a decade ago.
Has someone got a better battery working in a lab? Yes. Can they make a prototype and connect it to an iPad? Possibly. Is it coming to mainstream market any time soon? No reason to think it'll be any more successful than every other invention. As I said before, there can be a thousand things preventing it from having a successful mass-produced launch.
We will have better portable power tech only when it's released. Every promise up until that point is worthless and only there to attract the venture capital as the marketeers brush the thousand limiting issues under the rug out of sight.
2006 Toshiba demos laptop fuel cell
http://gizmodo.com/5390935/the-futu...shibas-methanol-fuel-cell-is-promising-flawed
2009 early Toshiba product...
http://gizmodo.com/5390935/the-futu...shibas-methanol-fuel-cell-is-promising-flawed
2012 years later, "Whatever happened to" article
https://www.navigantresearch.com/blog/whatever-happened-to-direct-methanol-fuel-cells
2017 - nothing. No methanol fuel-cell type mobile device chargers. No Vita battery replacement running off methanol.
Literally, solving all our portable power needs with a working solution and a glorious future promised over a decade ago.
Has someone got a better battery working in a lab? Yes. Can they make a prototype and connect it to an iPad? Possibly. Is it coming to mainstream market any time soon? No reason to think it'll be any more successful than every other invention. As I said before, there can be a thousand things preventing it from having a successful mass-produced launch.
We will have better portable power tech only when it's released. Every promise up until that point is worthless and only there to attract the venture capital as the marketeers brush the thousand limiting issues under the rug out of sight.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Yup, I remember back in the 1980's at the same time a computing science journal had been showing prototypes for CD-ROM data storage, Organic storage based on living cells greatly expanding the amount of data that could be stored, organic living cells being used to power CPU's that were a magnitude more powerful than CPUs of the time, crystalline optical storage cubes that would hold massively more data without degredation, and many other things. All of which had been shown working to some extent, and all of which was promised by the researchers to be available to the public within a few years to a decade.
Out of all that, only one thing made it out. CD-ROM storage.
Also somewhere around the late 80's early 90's, a battery company was going around trade circles with promises of a nuclear powered battery that was just about to be released to retail that would be able to power devices for 10's of years. They just needed to do a little more work and get approval from the relevant government agency. Yup.
Always take PR claims, articles about new tech, new research, etc. with a huge grain of salt. Some will pan out, but the vast majority will never make it into a retail product.
Regards,
SB
In what way? Because the inventor of the Lithium Ion battery is involved?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Before_commercial_introduction
- 1973 – Adam Heller Proposes the lithium thionyl chloride battery, still used in implanted medical devices and in defense systems where greater than a 20-year shelf life, high energy density, or extreme operating temperatures are encountered.[25]
...
- 1979 – Working in separate groups, at Stanford University Ned A. Godshall et al.,[29][30][31] and the following year in 1980 at Oxford University, England, John Goodenough and Koichi Mizushima, both demonstrated a rechargeable lithium cell with voltage in the 4 V range using lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO2) as the positive electrode and lithium metal as the negative electrode.[32][33] This innovation provided the positive electrode material that made lithium batteries commercially possible.
...
- 1991 – Sony and Asahi Kasei released the first commercial lithium-ion battery.[51]
...
- 2011 – lithium-ion batteries accounted for 66% of all portable secondary (i.e., rechargeable) battery sales in Japan.[56]
Goodenough may be onto something. That doesn't mean it'll be a mainstream battery replacement any time soon.
I would wager wireless charging would be the next big thing in conjunction with our current battery tech. If you can charge from a few feet away and through material you could have a large battery pack in your purse or messenger bag or what have you that will simply keep the device charged ?
I also think heat is a big thing holding back portable tech
I also think heat is a big thing holding back portable tech
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Wireless charging is nice, and I really like it. But I do have to question its relevance for the future. When many major countries either don't produce as much energy as they use (USA, we have to buy electricity from other countries) or just barely produces more (UK) is a technology that has significant energy losses when used a good idea?
I get that convenience is always nice. But while I love wireless charging, I've stopped using it in order to conserve electricity. I shudder to think of a future where electric powered cars are even remotely as prevalent as petrol powered cars. Hell, given the option of stairs vs. elevators I don't even use elevators anymore when I don't need to. And given the option between electric doors in public places and non-electric doors, I'll go that extra bit and use the non-powered door. Is it mostly meaningless? Probably, as I watch a line of people pushing the handicap powered door button instead of opening a door with their hands. But it bugs me just how much electricity goes to waste.
Like I know a guy that used to lecture me on using CFL lightbulbs instead of incandescent to save power. Yet he didn't give any thought to using an electric elevator to go up 1 or 2 floors instead of taking the stairs. His one use of the electric elevator probably covered multiple months of my using an incandescent light bulb instead of a CFL lightbulb in my bathroom (CFLs are horrible in bathrooms). His yearly use of electric elevators? So much wasted electricity.
Bleh, I seem to have wandered off on a tangent here. But wireless charging is such a huge waste of electricity, IMO.
Regards,
SB
I don't see wireless charging wasiting any more power than a plug at least in its current form ?
Also with solar and wind becoming so cheap we are going to need to do something with the power we create during the day.
I think massive battery arrays in our basements will do more harm than good to the planet
Also with solar and wind becoming so cheap we are going to need to do something with the power we create during the day.
I think massive battery arrays in our basements will do more harm than good to the planet
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
Basic physics. Induction charging is very limited by range because the coils at each end (charging/device) are effectively forming a non-bridged (physical) transformer but the moment you begin to introduce range the efficiency drop ramps up as energy is lost during conversion. Distance and coil size are important factors to range/power transfer and if you have a fundamental schooling in physics then Maxwell's differential equations are what you need as reference.
This has been a problem since the 1800s when Nikola Tesla first demonstrated wireless transfer.
IIRC there was a wireless power demonstration room recently in the tech news. IIRC A/ yes of course wastage occurs B/ what about your nuts C/ maybe in 50-100 years
edit:
http://www.iflscience.com/technology/disney-researchers-make-wireless-power-transfer-breakthrough/
so actually you need the room surrounded by aluminum and you can't stand too close or you'll fry your nuts, though on the plus side 40-95% efficiency aint too bad
edit:
http://www.iflscience.com/technology/disney-researchers-make-wireless-power-transfer-breakthrough/
so actually you need the room surrounded by aluminum and you can't stand too close or you'll fry your nuts, though on the plus side 40-95% efficiency aint too bad
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Deleted member 11852
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Yes. Lots of physics problems to solve that are simply beyond our engineering ability at the moment. They have been for decades and there is nothing on the horizon that suggests it's going to be solved any time soon.
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