Posted on 07/12/2016 6:07:12 PM PDT by Swordmaker
Well it seems the battery gods have heard our call and bestowed upon us a miracle.
Researchers at the University of California Irvine (UCI) may have discovered a way to drastically increase the life of modern day batteries. And the best part is that they stumbled upon this solution by accident.
To be more specific, the discovery was made by fifth-year PhD student, Mya Le Thai. Mya was working on an electrolyte gel that was to substitute the electrolyte liquid currently found in batteries in an attempt to make it more affordable. But in a coincidental twist of fate (thank you battery gods), her solution also happened to significantly extend the lifespan of a battery.
Up until now, the most promising venture into the evolution of battery technology had come in the form of nanowire filaments, wires comprised of various materials that are thousands of times thinner than a human hair.
For a long time now, scientists have aimed to replace the graphite anode currently used in lithium batteries with these nanowire filaments. These nanowires are considerably more powerful, have the ability to store greater amounts of energy and retain that energy for a much longer time period.
But if nanowires are such a great alternative to lithium batteries, why does the world still predominantly use the latter? Well, the problem with nanowires is that they are extremely fragile and tend to break when repeatedly charged. It’s not hard to see why electronic manufacturers would rather stick with the less resilient yet more reliable lithium batteries.
This is where Mya Le Thai’s magic gel comes in. Typically, a Lithium Ion battery can go through between 5000 and 7000 recharge cycles before it dies and will also gradually lose its energy storage capacity over time. When researchers applied Thai’s plexiglass-like gel to gold nanowires in a manganese dioxiode shell, it increased that number to over 200,000 and the battery didn’t lose any of its power or storage capacity over a period of three months.
This is a colossal difference, which could lead to multiple positive implications in our daily lives. Smartphones, laptops, battery cars, wireless remotes, digital cameras… pretty much anything that isn’t connected to a power socket requires a battery. With this innovation all these items will be powered, and remain powered, for a much, much longer time.
I’m sure my tiny mind is only scratching the surface of this great discovery and the extent of its real-world applications. But I’m pretty sure that over the next few years we will probably realise just how dependent on batteries we are and how significant this discovery actually is.
It will most probably be quite some time before we see this discovery in commercial action, though. For now, all we can do now is wait. Like most scientific discoveries, there is always more testing to be done and lab rats to torment.
“For this research right now the plan is to understand the mechanisms of how this gel electrolyte could prolong the cyclibility so well,” Thai said. “The future bigger plan would be to optimize these gel electrolytes to see if it can improve even more.”
Don’t take too long, Ms. Thai. I’m sure most of us are waiting in intense anticipation.
Those of you who are more scientifically-inclined can read a detailed report of the research titled “100k Cycles and Beyond: Extraordinary Cycle Stability for MnO2 Nanowires Impacted by a Gel Electrolyte”, published in the American Chemical Society’s publication, Energy Letters.
Feature image: Steve Zylius via UCI
The battery doctoral candidates from 1973 are retiring today...and still trying to make their wonderful breakthroughs work in the market.
Someday soon...
Just a quick read and review .... seems to be more promising than the “E-Cat”!
That may be an important consideration. Battery manufacturers survive on people buying replacements for batteries that wear out. If you can continually re-charge the ones you have, you will never need to replace them.
However, there is another consideration. Re-charging older batteries that are more and more resistant to taking a charge is when they are more likely to over-heat and catch fire. It strikes me that these longer life batteries would not be prone to that problem because they would not develop the resistance. Ergo, far fewer fires. Safer.
Also, I think being non-liquid, you could make them more compact and of different shapes. This means engineers could find better ways to fit them in smaller places in devices such as our phones and other devices. That means more battery in our devices for longer lasting devices.
In vehicles, more batteries could be placed in nooks and crannies. . . adding more capacity which translates to more mileage per charge.
And until then, I’ll use lead-acid batteries in builds.
;-)
This one is far more than most such stories. Going from 4000 to 5000 recharge cycles to 200,000 is a tremendous increase in the technology.
I was being a little facetious, but I’m actually excited about this and do view it as a game changer.
Ping to tech discovery. The Ever-ready bunny will never run down!
Ping to tech discovery. The Ever-ready bunny will never run down!
Microwave ovens... the story I read is that a guy working on a radar setup in 1945 happened to have a chocolate bar in his shirt pocket, and noticed it melting. Totally accidental start of tinkering to create a microwave oven. All because the guy liked chocolate snacks.
They are:
Stainless steel
Anesthesia
Dynamite
Cornflakes
Penicillin
Play Doh
Super Glue
Velcro
X Rays
Safety Glass
Mauve (Which led the way for other dye colors)
Pacemaker
Post-It Notes
Microwave
Slinky
Ice Cream Cones
Teflon
Vulcanized Rubber
Plastic
Radioactivity
Saccharin
Smart Dust
Potato Chips
Coca Cola
Popsicles
penicillin...
I think a lot of this success has to do with using gold nanowires. Gold doesn't corrode as easily as other materials over time when in an electrolyte solution with electrical activity. Corrosion would reduce power and storage capacity over time.
Mr. President!!! We Must Not Allow An Electrolyte Gel GAP!!!!
The side effect is that this will distrupt Apple’s business model, because they time their product announcements to match their battery lifetime.
It happened in a Battery Lab! Pretty far from a random discovery.
The only catch is you have to buy All New Equipment to use it
Viagra
Penicillin was discovered by accident in a laboratory sink when someone ate a cantaloupe and placed the rind in the sink with open petri dishes that had bacteria on the growth media.
Then someone a day or so later noticed large areas of the bacterial growth had died upon exposure to the mold growing on the rind.
Thank God no one cleaned up the messy sink!
The same strain of Penicillin mold from that rind is still in use if I am not mistaken.
Many lives were saved because of a messy sink.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.