Alternative to Lithium batteries.

[Ianab]

This came up on a local news site. A different battery technology, using conductive plastic and graphene rather than lithium. It seems aimed more at fixed storage for backup power. From what I can see it runs a liquid electrolyte, and probably isn't very "power dense". But if you don't have to move it the size and weight are less of a problem. It's also relatively cheap, and not very flammable. 

Local dairy company has been trialling a unit, as backup power for farm milking sheds or even dairy factories.  But if it's practical in the long term it's a partial solution to that pesky intermittent renewable wind and solar power problem.

https://www.polyjoule.com/technology

[Ventryjr]

That's a interesting idea!   I wonder how it performs compared to a NiFe "Edison"battery. There's claims of railroad companies getting 50+ years of use out of glass NiFe batteries on a maintenance schedule.  But they don't hold a candle to lithium batteries.  

I wonder what the recharge rate is and the self discharge is.  

[peakbagger]

There are reports coming out weekly on new battery technologies to replace lithium. Lithium chemistries were pushed into service for backup power despite being the wrong tech but it gave Tesla an excuse to ramp up production. 

Nickel Iron tech has significant issues, yes they can last "forever" with electrolyte change outs every ten years but they are notoriously inefficient wire to wire and go through a lot of electrolyte. Sodium Ion tech sounds promising.  

[Don P]

I hapened across this last night, looks interesting and possibly homebrew-able;
Water activated disposable paper battery | Scientific Reports (nature.com)

They saturated a piece of paper with salt and dried it. Then printed one side with a graphite ink, the other side with a zinc ink and printed carbon contacts. The battery sits there inert till the paper is wetted and then provides a couple of hours of power. The easy use for me is to stick a buzzer on the battery and put these 1" off the basement floor in a house. When it gets wet it buzzes. But many devices only need a small amount of power to do their job with each outing. We use fancy batteries to do mundane jobs in those cases.

[SwampDonkey]

Researchers at Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, discovered manufacturing flaw in lithium batteries. PET tape used inside the battery is depleting battery power in electronic devices.

Canadian team discovers power-draining flaw in most laptop and phone batteries | CBC News

[nativewolf]

That's a interesting idea!   I wonder how it performs compared to a NiFe "Edison"battery. There's claims of railroad companies getting 50+ years of use out of glass NiFe batteries on a maintenance schedule.  But they don't hold a candle to lithium batteries.  

I wonder what the recharge rate is and the self discharge is.  

Lots of work on Edison's basic iron battery.  Capacity is huge but charge and discharge is low.  These can be iron/ air iron/ water , etc.   
https://m.startribune.com/xcel-to-add-large-battery-installation-in-becker/600246701/
This is just an example.  For stationary uses iron batteries will be hard to beat.  Go 100 years and iron is what the earth is made of so almost limitless raw material.  
You can see the discharge rate is a fraction of capacity, that is the weakness.  

[nativewolf]

Researchers at Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, discovered manufacturing flaw in lithium batteries. PET tape used inside the battery is depleting battery power in electronic devices.

Canadian team discovers power-draining flaw in most laptop and phone batteries | CBC News

You will be glad to know that the Canadian team is funded by Tesla in a long running research contract.   It is a top notch group.  

[SwampDonkey]

I already know that and I told you some time ago. :D

[Don P]

We were remarking the other day just how long batteries will sit there full charged nowadays compared to even a few years ago. It is thanks to folks like that doing destructive testing. I don't run my batteries at 185°F, but I'm happy they are pushing the edges and making them more rugged.

Now the nut that unwrapped lithium, rolled out a thin wide sheet and stuck his face in that reactive metal to take a picture. Well we probably lost a few cigar chomping photogaphers when gasoline was new  :D

[SwampDonkey]

It can get pretty warm inside of a laptop with those big CPU's, Don. A laptop is a good leg warmer if shovelling snow in your cotton pyjamas in -20F. ;D No, I've never tried shovelling in pyjamas. :D

[Hilltop366]

I was wondering why you would put all that snow in your pyjamas.

Batteries have come a long way in the last 30 years. I think it just the tip of the iceberg, I suspect in the next 10 years or so there will be batteries with way more capacity and a fraction of the weight and i'm a rather sceptical person I guess, I can remember when my middle school got it's first desktop computer and thinking " this will never go anywhere".  :

[SwampDonkey]

Ah, there is a difference between 'in' and 'into' pyjamas. :D



8-bit computers were way more user friendly and they came with a complete set of documents on how to program it, the schematics of the board (even those for the disk drives), programming language (MS Basic) and DOS built in or on floppy (CDOS, CP/M, MSDOS ). Now all you get for documents are ad. brochures and a booklet about the physical features, nothing on how to program it, and don't even ask for a schematic. Asking for that makes you a real suspicious character. :D

[Ianab]

I don't know about "user friendly". They were more techie friendly, for the folks that want do dig into machine code and hardware. But for the non computer user,  they needed to open and read the manual to do anything... And I was a PC tech back in those days. The idea that a computer would start up and show icons to access your stuff was a revolution. (and a mouse was a new concept)  We used to write simple DOS batch file menus to make life easier for clients. 

It's almost gone full circle now, that you can buy a $50 open source computer board, the OS is all open source, and it's relatively user friendly. Only the serious geeks are looking at the source code of the Web Browser, as that's a a huge chunk of code. 8 bit computers are now in toasters, and with some clever software a couple of sensors could do a decent job of making toast.   :D


Back in the 8 bit days your computer was in the keyboard, to save cost. 
Not much has changed, except it's a 4 core / 64bit / 4 gb Ram now. 

[SwampDonkey]

There's a difference between wanting to know stuff and just playing video games and point and click through code already programmed. If you wanted to know, many people learned to code at home on 8-bits. No need for computer programming degrees. :D Today's computer sophistication pretty much requires easier interfaces to do the work. You're talking tons of code and ram space. Point and click was available in the 80's, slow, but available. And if a disk was inserted at boot up, you went directly into the icon based desktop, no DOS commands to type or batch programs to write. RAM cards made it even more efficient, it worked more like ram or disk swapping. The C-128 was the only 8-bit I know of to do this. The early Macintosh was 16-bit I believe. By the time the C128 came out, everyone was moving on to 16 bit machines. I don't think the Apple II did this until the II-GS appeared and then again we had moved on.

The guys that wrote the computer interfaces, many had no degrees until later. And Gates, never did have a degree and now he's allowed to talk about medical stuff with no qualifications whatsoever, just $$. :D

[RetiredTech]

By the time the C128 came out, everyone was moving on to 16 bit machines. I don't think the Apple II did this until the II-GS appeared and then again we had moved on.

That takes me way back. I remember buying the C128 because it would run some of the old CP/M software. CP/M was the predecessor of DOS which won over the market. As hard as Microsoft has tried to kill it DOS still runs many companies custom software.