Posted on 11/03/2018 12:15:15 PM PDT by Zhang Fei
Brightly colored molecular models line two walls of Yet-Ming Chiang’s office at MIT. Chiang, a materials science professor and serial battery entrepreneur, has spent much of his career studying how slightly different arrangements of those sticks and spheres add up to radically different outcomes in energy storage.
But he and his colleague, Venkat Viswanathan, are taking a different approach to reach their next goal, altering not the composition of the batteries but the alignment of the compounds within them. By applying magnetic forces to straighten the tortuous path that lithium ions navigate through the electrodes, the scientists believe, they could significantly boost the rate at which the device discharges electricity.
That shot of power could open up a use that has long eluded batteries: meeting the huge demands of a passenger aircraft at liftoff. If it works as hoped, it would enable regional commuter flights that don’t burn fuel or produce direct climate emissions.
Viswanathan, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon, initiated and is leading the research project. He and Chiang are now collaborating with 24M, the lithium-ion battery manufacturer Chiang cofounded in 2010, and Zunum Aero, an aircraft startup based in Bothell, Washington, to develop and test prototype batteries specifically designed for the needs of an advanced hybrid plane.
High stakes
Eliminating greenhouse-gas emissions from airplanes is one of the hardest challenges in the climate puzzle. Air travel accounts for around 2% of global carbon dioxide emissions and is one of the fastest-growing sources of greenhouse-gas pollution.
But there are no clean alternatives today for more than a tiny sliver of air travel, because the batteries powering electric cars are still too expensive, heavy, and otherwise poorly suited for aviation.
More than a dozen companies, including Uber, Airbus, and Boeing, are already exploring the potential
(Excerpt) Read more at technologyreview.com ...
Check out post 28. It won’t be happening anytime soon.
No kidding. I don’t think so.
An electric plane?
No thanks.
LOL
Or at least a sudden drop.....
Better batteries are always good. Mucho better batteries would be a game changer. I hope they can make this work.
Very cool if legit and dependable.
21st Century “steampunk” tech, yaknow.
Or, everybody in the back could just pedal a bicycle hooked to generators to charge up the batteries.
Fly and exercise at the same time. You have great incentive to keep pedaling. That Los Angeles to Sydney route can be rough, though.
All they would need to do is mount a windmill on the airplane to charge the batteries in flight.
Sorry folks I know you wanted to go to LA but we have to fly upwind to stay up so now routing to NYC .
petro based fuel tank = energy container
electrical battery = energy container
which one is a problem when contained energy is expended?
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Bad news!
A higher rate of discharge will male the batteries even more dangerous than they already are.
There is no legitimate basis for this quest in the first place. We have extremely clean air just about everywhere, and an inexhaustible supply of fuels.
Send the enviro-loons straight to hell!
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Both
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Not cool at all!
An incredible waste of rare and valuable resources to avoid using resources that are safer and in abundant supply.
Envirolunacy at its very worst.
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I think it was the Kendig carb that GM bought and buried.
About the only thing feasible, when it comes to batteries, is something along the lines of a Chevrolet Volt, where you use the gasoline you are burning the charge the batteries and use the batteries in the descending part of midflight so hydrocarbons don’t have to be used.
Otherwise, imo, this technology is never going anywhere.
I'll wait 10 years to see how dependable those batteries really are.
I don’t envy the test pilot for the first proof of concept flight.
Read posts 28 and 39.
I’m well aware that batteries cannot, in any form, replace hydrocarbons. I think they can play a bigger role, as technology develops, but they will never be something that planes can rely on solely. It is hydrocarbons forever. :)
I was thinking along similar lines. The big power need is while the plane is still on the ground!
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