Battery that breathes air, by IBM

[Xaero]

http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/20/ibm-battery-500/

It uses oxygen from air to create electricity.  It releases oxygen when you charge it.  Very cool stuff and exactly what we need!

[FreepZ]

That's pretty cool technology. I've heard of lithium air batteries before, but this is the first time that I had seen that video . The biggest problem that I can recall with using air (or more specifically the oxygen in the air) is that there is a lot of water in the air as well, and lithium reacts quite violently with water.



Even if there is some way to get the water out of the air before it gets to the battery, there is still the risk if the car ever takes a dive into a river, or a flooded road. It would start to create a huge amount of hydrogen and other nasty things. Hopefully there will be solutions for those problems as well.

Then again, perhaps they have already solved the water problem with all those layers between the lithium and the air.



Time will tell. I just hope they can create a product sooner. 2030 is a long way off.

[protomech]

Also: the primary form of lithium in lithium ion batteries is not metallic lithium, it's lithium carbonate. Lithium carbonate is soluble in water, I don't think it has the kind of explosive reaction that metallic lithium does.

Meant to post this here. It sounds like they are talking about metallic lithium in the lithium-air batteries though.

2030 is infinitely far away. I wish them luck, but I'm going to file this away in the "jetpacks and flying car" category until they start making noises about productizing the battery.. sort of like hydrogen fuel cell cars. Toyota / GM / Honda / Hyundai were making noises about productizing these cars in the 2015 time frame.. the latest I've heard is through effective cost-cutting measures and reducing or removing the platinum in the catalyst, they've gotten costs down to the $80k ballpark.. good try.

[00049 (AKA SopFu)]

The Li/water combo is only a problem if the Li comes in contact with the water.  Li-air batteries are like a fuel cell in that the air never comes in contact with the Li since there is a barrier between the Li and the air.

I'm still betting we'll be seeing Li-air batteries in small applications in 5 years, with vehicles following shortly after.     And lets not forget that charging isn't improved with this tech. Ten times the capacity means ten times the charging time. 

[protomech]

Let's assume we have 10x capacity and 10x Wh/$. We'd see 3000 mile Tesla S 2.0s, or more like 2000 mile at super-legal speeds (850 kWh). You'd need Tesla's Supercharger service (likely 90 kW) to recharge overnight, and the battery pack would probably emit enough oxygen while it charges to give you an oxygen high while you sleep : P

And someone somewhere would still whine that they need 3000 miles at 100 mph and EVs "aren't here yet".

For the everyman, we'd see a range of EVs from 100 mile (36 kWh) to 400 mile (150 kWh). The 100 mile EVs would be down in the $12-15k price range and the 400 mile would be around $25k.

Overnight charging service might be 6-12 kW conductive (wireless upgrade). Typical parking spots would have wireless charging pads which the car can auto-negotiate charging access with. You could flip a switch to charge/not charge, or let the car negotiate charging based on SOC and/or destination. Pricing might be metered ($3/hour), flat-rate ($10 to park), or applied towards some club charge account. Interstates would have 48 kW level 3 charging service installed, which would be range from a pretty steep charge (1.5C for 36 kWh cars) to tame (0.33C for 150 kWh).

Ideally, you could also optionally set the car up for power regulation on the grid, where the grid could draw power from the car during peak loads. You would be able to set preferences for how low you're willing to allow the car to be drawn, and either you'd be paid directly or credited so many charge hours in the future (probably 2 hours charging for every 1 hour used to balance the grid demand). A car plugged in for 24h might end up being charged completely for free.

Fantasy scenario? Yeah, maybe so. We need battery improvements still and substantial infrastructure upgrades. I hope the wireless charging standards get set sooner rather than later and the world settles on a level 3 DC charging standard - we need those standards set today so that we can start rolling out infrastructure for tomorrow.

[FreepZ]

Ten times the capacity means ten times the charging time. 

Another way to look at it would be: Ten times the capacity means 1/10th the size.

Consider what an Empulse with 1/10th the battery size would look like. That huge set of batteries replaced by a single block. I would happily take two blocks for a 200 mile range, thank you very much. That's way more range than I ever use on my ICE bike.

Let's hope that the research goes well and charge time becomes a bigger problem than energy density.

[860]

That's pretty cool technology. I've heard of lithium air batteries before, but this is the first time that I had seen that video . The biggest problem that I can recall with using air (or more specifically the oxygen in the air) is that there is a lot of water in the air as well, and lithium reacts quite violently with water.



Even if there is some way to get the water out of the air before it gets to the battery, there is still the risk if the car ever takes a dive into a river, or a flooded road. It would start to create a huge amount of hydrogen and other nasty things. Hopefully there will be solutions for those problems as well.

You've confused the reactivity of an elemental (unstable) form of a chemical, with a highly stable chemical compound that includes an element.  The characteristics are not the same at all.

For example, here is what happens when you take elemental sodium, and drop it into water:



But sodium is also found the the compound Sodium Chloride (AKA table salt) that you toss into boiling water all the time to cook pasta, and it does not react with water by exploding. 

You wouldn't take the video of pure elemental Sodium being dropped in water, and then tell people that it would be dangerous if table salt were exposed to water, would you?

[Brammofan]

Did anyone watch the whole video?  At ~ :48 it's very...uh...inspiring?