Battery advances seems to be flowing as fast as electrons-magnetic waves these days — and super fast charging batteries may hit the market in as little as 2 to 3 years. And that’s critical because the car of the very near future, plug in hybrids, are a core climate solution. And electricity is the only alternative fuel that can lead to energy independence.
Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology report in a March 12 Nature article, “Battery materials for ultrafast charging and discharging” (subs. req’d):
It is typically believed that in electrochemical systems very high power rates can only be achieved with supercapacitors, which trade high power for low energy density as they only store energy by surface adsorption reactions of charged species on an electrode material. Here we show that batteries which obtain high energy density by storing charge in the bulk of a material can also achieve ultrahigh discharge rates, comparable to those of supercapacitors…. A rate capability equivalent to full battery discharge in 10–20 s can be achieved.
The ability to charge and discharge batteries in a matter of seconds rather than hours may make possible new technological applications and induce lifestyle changes.
Impressive. You can read the M.I.T. release here. One of the biggest benefits to plug in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and electric vehicles is one not discussed by the researchers. As EV World editor Bill Moore explains:
Being able to charge and discharge rapidly, especially if there is no degradation of the cell, is of value for improving energy recovery from an EV’s regenerative braking system, only about 10 percent of which is typically recaptured from the vehicle’s kinetic energy. It also will be useful in improving vehicle acceleration. Blended-mode plug-ins should also benefit as a result, though series hybrids like the Volt probably won’t, as they require more energy-dense cells.
Where MIT’s “breakthrough” can be of real significance is in its purported cost advantage. The developers contend that their new coating material reduces the need for other mediating compounds in the battery, and since it can be applied using current manufacturing processes, battery costs can be reduced.
It is also worth noting that the lithium chemistry MIT is working with does not suffer from overheating, as current lithium batteries can.
The best news about MIT’s advance is that “Because the material involved is not new — the researchers have simply changed the way they make it — Ceder believes the work could make it into the marketplace within two to three years.” In that sense, this may be more of an innovation than a breakthrough, though neither term is well defined.
As for the ability to charge the entire PHEV or EV quickly, the authors note:
… the rate at which very large batteries such as those planned for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles can be charged is likely to be limited by the available power: 180 kW is needed to charge a 15 kWh battery (a typical size estimated for a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle) in 5 min.
Well, 15 kilowatt-hours is about what the Chevy Volt needs — but the GM plug in is designed to go 40 miles on a charge, and that is almost certainly a longer range than most other early PHEVs will have (see “CMU study suggests GM has wildly oversized the batteries in the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid“). Of course, super fast charging is not really what PHEVs need to be viable. Lower cost is. Moore notes:
Japan’s NEDO (New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization) has … issued a technology roadmap that sees battery costs eventually dropping significantly below current levels by 2020..
The roadmap forecasts the development will be focused on two types of batteries: an output density-oriented type intended for plug-in hybrid and hybrid cars, and an energy density-oriented type for electric cars.
Currently, energy-dense battery packs (not cells) are estimated to cost approximately US$2,016/kWh, NEDO researchers estimate. By 2020, their goal is to achieve a price of one-tenth that figure and to increase the Watt hours/kg two-and-half times, from 100Wh/kg to 250Wh/kg.
That would be a game changer indeed.
And for folks who really want to some really far out stuff, how about a real “breakthrough” announcement — a magnetic spin battery:
Researchers at the University of Miami and at the Universities of Tokyo and Tohoku, Japan, have been able to prove the existence of a “spin battery,” a battery that is “charged” by applying a large magnetic field to nano-magnets in a device called a magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ)…..
The device created by University of Miami Physicist Stewart E. Barnes, of the College of Arts and Sciences and his collaborators can store energy in magnets rather than through chemical reactions. Like a winding up toy car, the spin battery is “wound up” by applying a large magnetic field –no chemistry involved. The device is potentially better than anything found so far, said Barnes.
“We had anticipated the effect, but the device produced a voltage over a hundred times too big and for tens of minutes, rather than for milliseconds as we had expected,” Barnes said. “That this was counterintuitive is what lead to our theoretical understanding of what was really going on.”
The secret behind this technology is the use of nano-magnets to induce an electromotive force. It uses the same principles as those in a conventional battery, except in a more direct fashion. The energy stored in a battery, be it in an iPod or an electric car, is in the form of chemical energy. When something is turned “on” there is a chemical reaction which occurs and produces an electric current. The new technology converts the magnetic energy directly into electrical energy, without a chemical reaction. The electrical current made in this process is called a spin polarized current and finds use in a new technology called “spintronics.”
The new discovery advances our understanding of the way magnets work and its immediate application is to use the MTJs as electronic elements which work in different ways to conventional transistors. Although the actual device has a diameter about that of a human hair and cannot even light up an LED (light-emitting diode–a light source used as electronic component), the energy that might be stored in this way could potentially run a car for miles. The possibilities are endless, Barnes said.
I generally don’t post these way out “breakthrough” announcements since so few make it to commercial fruition. But it it is indicative of how exciting and vibrant — and well funded — the advanced battery sector is.
Related Posts:
- Everything you could want to know about the plug-in hybrid and electric vehicle announcements at the Detroit auto show
- Plug in Hybrids are Green (Duh!)
- Hybrid production costs may drop two-thirds within 10 years
- World’s first mass-market plug-in hybrid is from … China, for $22,000?
- The energy tax credits in the bailout bill, Part 1: Solar power and plug in hybrids win big
- All things Chevy Volt, including the new House tax credit for plug ins
- Chrysler, Mazda, Hyundai, and Nissan announce plug-ins — Honda stands alone against PHEVs
- Why I don’t agree with James Kunstler about peak oil and the “end of suburbia”
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Unfortunately, on NPR’s “Science Friday” last week the M.I.T. guy said it would be more like 5 or 6 years.
Even 5 or 6 years will be good, putting it in the second generation of Volts and other PHEV equivalents.
15kwh doesn’t seem like all that much to me. That’s about 20 horsepower for an hour.
But the bigger deal is definitely the energy supply. Forget about anybody getting 180kw from a residential outlet any time in the near future. That’s the same as plugging in 1800 100watt bulbs into one outlet, and would turn any extension chord into a line of melted rubber next to a red hot piece of exposed wire.
Even charging a 15kwh battery in 5 hours will require 3kw, which is about appropriate.
A small point, the gentleman who was interviewed on NPR, Gerd Ceder of MIT, said it would be four or five years before this technology could be made commercial – that everything in technology took three years and that he was hedging his bet.
So if I understand the idea of a ‘spin battery,’ it sounds similar to the way ferromagnetic metals can become magnets themselves for a short while when they’re exposed to strong magnetic fields. But in this case, instead of holding a magnetic field, it holds an electric charge.
Damn. That’s some cool science. And sustainable too, right? No chemicals needed.
If these become widely used though, high voltage sources could be implemented easily. Houses have slowly climbed from 50, 60, 100 and now a standard 200A service. Couple that with 220V in the home, or even higher in more industrial settings (charging bay at work, perhaps?) and the idea of a 1 inch diameter cable that just coils out of the garage ceiling isn’t so bad.
Not like you would have to run 100ft of cord out the garage and into the back 9 or anything. It is certainly something that will have to be engineered properly, as with any new technology.
“Battery advances seems to be flowing as fast as electrons these days — and super fast charging batteries may hit the market in as little as 2 to 3 years.”
Not to nitpick here but this may not be the analogy you want to go for if your talking about the speed of conducting electrons in a wire. Electrons only travel about 0.5 mm per second under standard loads.
Good piece though, I’m glad to see current materials being stretched further.
No one has mentioned the real benefit of this. Not just better PHEV’s, but it makes the pure EV much more practical. If you can recharge an EV in 5 minutes you have a whole new ballgame. Also with a pure EV you lose all that weight and maintenance costs lugging that gasoline engine around all day. Therefore you have room for twice the battery capacity of a Volt, so you can go 80 miles and recharge in 5 minutes (you have 2 Volt-sized batteries each with a charging port).
True, not nearly the range of a typical car (300 – 400 miles) but certainly viable.
Russell you solve the energy supply by charging from battery to battery with a big cable. One battery is stationary and recharges from your 20amp circuit over several hours. But it discharges into your car in 5 minutes.
Service stations could have banks of batteries instead of gas pumps and giant underground tanks.
Does this make pure EV’s viable? Not by itself, but it does solve that “too long to charge” problem. Now just need to increase the energy density by 3 to 4x and EV’s start to look good.
Comments?
Joe,
First, the MIT breakthrough was in power density and not energy density. So the batteries may not be useful for EVs.
Second, does it really matter if LiOns can be charged faster if there are no outlets capable of charging a car in 5 to 10 minutes or even 1 hour?
Consider the battery pack in the Tesla Roadster. It’s rated at 53 KWh. A standard 110 home outlet can push about 2 KW hours max. Now if you go to a 240 volt 2 phase outlet at 50 amps you can get 12 KWh. That’s still going to require 2hrs and 40 minutes to charge the pack assuming a battery SOC from 20% to 80% roughly. So how do you get to something like an outlet that can produce 318 KWh to get you your charge without generating vast amounts of heat in the battery pack, possibly blowing it up? I worked in an aluminum plant were large voltages were used and they generated magnetic fields large enough to cause a spade shovel to stick to the bumper of a pick up truck. How do you generate that much voltage without generating a massive electromagnetic field that will cause your car keys and any other ferrous metals to stick to the charge paddle?
[JR: I think I was clear on what the advance was. Fast-charging is not the key benefit here. The authors assert it will useful for EVs, as does the editor at EV World. It appears to me the advance may allow energy batteries to act more like power batteries.]
I thought the whole point of this new breakthrough is that the battery can take the major amperage w/o heating up or blowing up because the ions are moving much more efficiently.
Also remember you charge from a battery *at home*, not from the outlet directly. The home battery auto charges whenever you are away so it’s always topped off.
Let’s not get so excited about the spin batteries. It’s scientifically exciting because they found a way to produce a voltage directly from magnetic energy. But they didn’t find a way to increase the energy stored in a magnetic material. The very highest “energy product” permanent magnets available have an “energy product” of about 0.5 kJ per liter; the very best experimental ones have 1 kJ per liter. That’s a little higher than usable energy stored, but let’s gloss over that detail. Compare that to Li-ion which is presently 1-2 MJ per liter. So even if (big if) the research went fabulously, and it were possible to use the highest energy storage magnetic materials, and the rest of the hardware used to make it into a battery didn’t weigh anything or take up space, you’d still be three orders of magnitude away from competing with Li-ion
The claim is only a novel kind of battery, not a better kind of battery. One of the authors was quoted out of context saying “the device is potentially better than anything found so far”, presumably meaning better than any other magnetic battery, but not meaning any better than the lead acid batteries we used for electric cars 100 years ago.
That’s why, Joe, it’s good that you don’t usually bite the hook and report these things.
But the improved Li-ion charge rate is interesting, and Joe’s explanation of where and why that might be useful is right on.
The importance of these batteries is two-fold.
First, very rapid charging ability means that these batteries make regenerative braking feasible.
Current lithiums accept power too slowly for regenerative braking to be effective and people have been working with hybrid lithium battery/ultra capacitors to solve this problem.
They also simplify the problems of supplying lots of power for rapid acceleration. Rapid charging lithiums eliminate the need for more complex solutions.
Second, rapid charging lithiums make long distance all-electric travel possible without resorting to battery swap schemes.
We (the majority of us) don’t need rapid charing for our daily lives. In fact, most could get by with a 40 mile range electric and the ability to plug in both at home and work. Expand that range to 100 miles or more and only “traveling salesmen” would routinely need anything more.
Rapid charge batteries would make it possible to drive long distances with only short stops for recharging. For example, we would need only a handful of rapid charge stations between SF and LA to get the system going.
Rapid charging could be done with either “big wire”/HVDC feed in or with banks of ultra capacitors which would be continuously charged.
Direct electricity for cars is the solution. After that you can take advantages of new batter technology. Direct electric plug-in hybrids. Nice to take your electricity out of the small grid above the main roads and streets.
. . . or charging on the fly electromagnetically, or by some other means . . .
(As you can see I’m still dreaming of delivering juice to the car somehow while it’s on the road. Rapid charge/discharge removes one stumbling block.)
Phoenix Motor Cars was claiming a ten minute charge capability using a 480 volt charger. The lithium-titanate battery was from AltairNano. Anybody know what happened with that?
I know their initial shipment of batteries were somehow defective, which has delayed production plans. But I am curious if the claim is valid. Their light utility pickup, which they are planning to sell in Mexico, is supposed to have a range of about 130 miles.
I agree with Bob Wallace
The issue of needing a large power supply to get a quick charge doesn’t seem like that big of a problem to me. It’s on long trips that a quick charge would be needed most. Otherwise, slower charging at home should be adequate for most situations. Commercial charging stations could fill the need for longer trips. It’s always seemed to me that the biggest issue that will keep people from buying electric cars is range limitation. These charging stations could fill that need. Which is what makes the PHEV attractive at least as a transition vehicle.
Even with a PHEV you would want to charge the battery, if it can be done quickly, on a long drive. (cheaper and greener than gasoline)
I’m trying to keep Joe’s warning in mind — this improved Li-ion battery is only in the lab, at least 3 years from production (if ever), but . . .
What it might do is make a series hybrid a reality. Prius hybrid synergy drive rules the roost now, but its transaxle is heavy, complex, and expensive. A Toyota engineer discusses it here:
http://www.calcars.org/calcars-news/848.html
A better battery could make a simpler, more efficient, less expensive series hybrid a reality.
Don’t overlook the “smaller, lighter, less materials” part of the MIT lithiums.
Smaller means more design flexibility and less interior room eaten by batteries.
Lighter means less means less mass to haul around.
Less materials means lower costs.
Those things are just as important to all-electric cars as is a 18x to 36x faster charge rate.
Lighter and less expensive is what we need to move quickly through the PHEV stage and on to a personal transportation system free of petroleum.
Yes. It’s getting harder to keep the caveats in mind. . . . It’s only in the laboratory . . . it’s not in production yet . . .
MIT’s Technology Review just ran an excellent, short interview with Toyota engineer/executive Masatami Takimoto. He describes Toyota’s hybrid research and some battery considerations.
What fascinated me was that Toyota tried several hybrid configurations before settling on its current “Hybrid synergy drive”, and that a pure series hybrid was the runner-up. I suspect that highway cruising is when you want the most direct connection between the ICE and the wheels.
This suggests that vehicles that only cruise rarely, like mail and other delivery vehicles, and city buses, are already perfect for series hybrids. It also suggests that this new battery could tip the scales toward series hybrid for most cars.
Oops. That MIT Tech Review interview with the hybrid engineer is at:
http://www.technologyreview.com/business/22298/?a=f