[HN Gopher] Breakthrough for 'massless' energy storage
___________________________________________________________________
Breakthrough for 'massless' energy storage
Author : reimertz
Score : 211 points
Date : 2021-03-30 10:40 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.chalmers.se)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.chalmers.se)
| bjornsing wrote:
| We all know massless energy storage is impossible. Einstein
| proved it. :P
| mrfusion wrote:
| Would photons need true massless energy storage?
| jliptzin wrote:
| If I remember correctly Tesla already has plans to incorporate
| their next gen batteries into the structure of the car
| netman21 wrote:
| Sailboats! Would be easy to embed this in the hull.
| reimertz wrote:
| A thought.
|
| Imagine working and spending your entire scientific career on a
| specific problem, hoping to create positive change and then to be
| meet with this type of skepticism. I can't help but feel sad for
| everyone involved in this scientific research if they end up
| seeing this.
|
| I do value skepticism but it feels somewhat unfair here because
| they are very transparent with how they relate to current
| existing lithium-ion technology while discussing their
| differences and how they could potentially innovate and iterate
| on their solution. All of of this while referring to their peer-
| reviewed paper.
|
| What more could they have done? Shouldn't we celebrate events
| like this?
| gameswithgo wrote:
| Yes we should.
| hannob wrote:
| > What more could they have done?
|
| Oh this one is simple. Be transparent in your communication
| about the limitations of what you've done. Be clear whether
| this is early research or something likely to find its way into
| products any time soon. And above all: Avoide terms like
| "breakthrough" unless they're really deserved (which is
| exceptionally rare).
| gameswithgo wrote:
| All of that was clear in the article. It is research, it has
| way less energy density than a normal battery, and it WAS a
| breakthrough.
| jnwatson wrote:
| But it isn't the researchers doing this. This is university
| PR.
| polack wrote:
| It might not be a breakthrough that takes us to Mars, but
| saying that an 10x improvement over existing versions isn't a
| breakthrough feels a bit unfair and a bit narrow minded. In
| this space it's obviously an breakthrough, you just don't
| happen to be interested or directly affected by it.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| We continue to disseminate this type of news by linking to
| university press releases or technology news sites rather than
| the paper directly.
|
| 90% of the time press releases oversimplify results and
| overstate the research impact when the actual paper strives to
| be on point and accurate.
|
| I appreciate it's hard to stay true to the original research
| and explain things in a simple but engaging way. On the other
| hand it sometimes feel like creative freedom in second hand
| reporting does more harm than good.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Strongly agree, but my experience is that linking to papers
| directly usually means your thread will die with only a few
| comments; most people don't want to put in the effort to read
| the paper and many either don't read or quibble with the
| abstract. Also, a lot of business websites and Github pages
| are fluffy and PR and boring academic papers don't stand out
| well by comparison.
|
| Sadly commercial logic means that most third party science
| news reporting reverts to a sensational mean because there
| isn't that much money in accessible-but-serious journalism.
| _Scientific American_ used to occupy a sweet spot of being
| informative yet accessible, but as the market at that spot
| shrank they watered down the quality of their coverage, and
| that was over 20 years ago. _Quanta_ seems like the best
| online science writing in recent years but at the cost of
| fairly limited scope.
| graderjs wrote:
| I totally feel that. But it's OK. It's only HN. There's plenty
| of places to feel hopeful about the future and optimistic.
| Research departments are one place. Your own head could be
| another. Maybe some of reddit. Some blogs. And like minded
| people in atomspace.
|
| HN values "intellectualism" so it has to be very cautious to
| throw its unbridled enthusiasm behind something new that it
| doesn't understand, unless it turns out wrong. The memory of
| being wrong, and having to face that stupidity or ignorance I
| think is too much for the intellectual HN superego to bear, so
| instead it hedges toward caution and skepticism. These are the
| default and "sensible" positions if you value not being wrong,
| and seeming right, and if the cost of "looking stupid" is too
| perceptually high.
|
| I'm not being too bearish on HN. The flipside is you can have
| great informed discussions, with less noise and fluff than
| elsewhere. But you can't find people so readily welcoming of
| brave new worlds here. They are here, it's just that the
| community sentiment / mass consciousness / superego of the
| place shames and punishes any such enthusiasm that isn't backed
| by hard facts and Wikipedia pages and common knowledge, etc.
| And even then it's not on the whole welcomed as much as
| scrutinized, pushed-back against, cross-examined and
| interrogated. So that's a reaction limiter on those voices
| speaking up here enthusiastically. Hey, they still do tho. Me
| included.
|
| I disliked it at first, and extreme examples I still dislike.
| But I get it's just someone else's way of engaging or seeing
| the world. That's a valid perspective, just as much as mine.
| Even if I don't share it. It doesn't matter. Different
| perspectives are normal.
|
| And I find the awareness I now have of how the HN organism
| might react to some post a useful different perspective. I
| don't temper my enthusiasm for new stuff with it, but before
| posting here, maybe I'll consider how people might react. Maybe
| they won't be able to appreciate it.
|
| But at the same time. HN is not homogenous. It's amorphous and
| ever changing. The superego sentiment shifts, and there can be
| many examples of HN embracing the new.
|
| Given all that, it's good to see voices actually seeking to
| engage more enthusiastically and openly with newness emerge
| from the codified skeptical pit that is HN. I think this
| picture that I paint above misses alot of the details and it
| probably only 61-62% accurate but it's a fair enough take on HN
| that I think might clarify some things for people, and
| certainly does for me.
|
| Tho honestly in the case of this article I would love to see
| more technical analysis and less skepticism (or meta posts like
| mine). I know I'm contributing to that, I'm just not skilled
| enough in this area right now to analyze it, but would love to
| read discussion of the technical details.
| stocknoob wrote:
| Excellent description of the HN mentality. Many are so afraid
| of false positives they'll do a middlebrow dismissal of
| everything. "Actually, XYZ isn't that great because..."
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24613148
| fabian2k wrote:
| University press releases are often just that bad, especially
| the ones that lead to papers getting this kind of attention.
| And this kind of dramatic overselling does deserve all this
| skepticism.
| arithmomachist wrote:
| The relatively low energy density means it won't be replacing li-
| ion batteries in vehicles any time soon. Where I could see this
| technology shining is in low-power consumer electronics. For
| example, since it's flexible, it could be used to make an e-ink
| reader that's paper thin and flexes (somewhat) like paper.
| jdhn wrote:
| I like how they call out that it has 20% of the capacity of a
| lithium ion battery of the same mass. I'd rather be realistic
| about technological advances, and then be pleasently surprised
| when it shows up in consumer products rather than have a glowing
| press release and then we don't see it in production ever.
| vardump wrote:
| I wonder how this compares with Tesla's upcoming structural
| batteries. They're also supposed to eliminate unnecessary
| material by making the battery itself a part of car's structural
| chassis.
|
| https://electrek.co/2021/01/19/tesla-structural-battery-pack...
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/22/future-teslas-will-have-ba...
| vlovich123 wrote:
| This literally is a structural battery. Says that in the first
| sentence. This is about making a structural battery that's 10x
| more efficient by using carbon fiber. How it compares to Tesla
| is obviously unknown since both are technically vaporware. The
| concept does sound revolutionary though so hopefully the
| engineering pans out.
| bildung wrote:
| To add to that, what Tesla apparently calls structural
| battery means integrating the battery _enclosure_ into the
| chassis, whereas this research means integrating the battery
| chemistry _itself_.
| Geee wrote:
| Tesla's structural battery is production-ready and will be
| used first in the Berlin-made Model Y, with the new 4680
| cells.
| eloff wrote:
| I would give the OP the benefit of the doubt that they
| understand both are structural batteries and is wondering how
| they compare in other battery metrics.
|
| From this article, Tesla's blow these ones away - except
| possibly as a structural element - and they're much closer to
| being a real product.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| I tried but this phrase stood out to me:
|
| > They're also supposed to eliminate unnecessary material
| by making the battery itself a part of car's structural
| chassis.
|
| That implies they're believing the article isn't talking
| about a structural chassis. Why are you treating this like
| a fanboy competition? It can both be true that Tesla is
| coming to market with a real product & that this
| announcement is an important advancement in the state of
| the art for structural batteries. They are totally
| different ends of the spectrum with the latter portending
| where the tech may be heading whereas the former is focused
| on proving that it's ready for large scale prime time.
| eloff wrote:
| > That implies they're believing the article isn't
| talking about a structural chassis.
|
| "The're _also_ " The use of the word also means they
| fully understand that both are structural.
|
| > Why are you treating this like a fanboy competition?
|
| WAT?
|
| > It can both be true that Tesla is coming to market with
| a real product & that this announcement is an important
| advancement in the state of the art for structural
| batteries.
|
| Why not? If we take Tesla's statements at face value, it
| does seem like they intend to reduce weight by using the
| battery cells between two sheets of metal to function
| sort of like corrugated cardboard and provide structural
| support to the frame - as opposed to just being dead
| weight.
|
| If we look at this article, these guys have made a
| battery using carbon fiber and fiberglass to make a
| material that can store energy and provider structural
| support.
|
| Why would you think only one can be true? They're
| independent.
| shireboy wrote:
| Tesla mentioned similar in their battery presser a few months
| ago. One question that I have with the whole concept is if a
| "structural battery" means you have to throw out the whole car
| once the battery is EOL. I would hope Tesla is better than this,
| but could totally see this happening, since it's the model many
| laptop manufacturers are going for and it generally benefits them
| to push consumers to refresh laptops/cars more frequently.
| AstralStorm wrote:
| Carbon electrode is resilient, you could get away with
| refurbishing the anode in a process similar to painting or
| soundproofing the car.
| asattarmd wrote:
| Since everyone is highly skeptical of this, is there an
| alternative to Lithium ion batteries that is close to production
| currently?
| jleahy wrote:
| No
| scythe wrote:
| This _is_ a lithium-ion battery. About half of the technologies
| cited as "replacements" for Li-ion are actually different Li-
| ion chemistries. Cf. Li-S, "graphene", "nanowire", "solid-state
| batteries", etc.
|
| Sodium-sulfur batteries are _in_ production currently and can
| compete on density with Li-ion, but lithium is cheaper and the
| cost trend is expanding the gap. Silver oxide likewise (silver
| is expensive!). We do have alternatives, but we _don 't_ have
| good reasons to use them.
| Causality1 wrote:
| Funny that the usability study pop-up doesn't fit on my screen in
| landscape orientation and totally breaks the site since I can't
| dismiss it.
| intrasight wrote:
| My take is that there is some good science and engineering being
| done here, so we should look past the marketing-speak. I could
| totally see carbon fiber cylinders of this material landing in a
| future bicycle, and I do see an eBike in my future.
| mekkkkkk wrote:
| If Leif is right in that it will eventually have triple the
| energy density and stiffness, it might become really useful for
| electric powered flight. You want to be in a situation were
| having isolated internal supporting structures made of batteries
| is enough. With the current specs you'll probably have to replace
| every single structural component with batteries. Even that might
| not do it.
| the_french wrote:
| This may be rather naive but wouldn't using an energy storage
| mechanism for structural purposes be a bad idea?
|
| That could mean that every fender bender now risks igniting the
| hood of your car.
| whoomp12342 wrote:
| sounds like a great idea for consumerism.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| I wonder about performance/capacity over time as the material is
| stressed/flexed. If its structural, it'll take mechanical load.
| Thin films may not thrive.
| lstodd wrote:
| It will burn pretty.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| My concern with structural batteries is that if your battery
| wears out (like all batteries before) then you not only need a
| battery replacement but also a replacement of your cars subframe
| or underbody. I think this would lead to cars being even more
| disposable.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| And what about small dings? If it's anything like e.g. a li-ion
| battery, just a small ding will already cause a short. In the
| best case, that panel will no longer work as a battery. Worst
| case it starts a fire.
| gloryless wrote:
| Using "massless" instead of "structural" should tell you that
| this is in sales pitch mode
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| STRML wrote:
| At 24 Wh/kg, it's going to take _a lot_ of this to produce an
| amount of storage relevant to the needs of a vehicle, and that 's
| ignoring the very high cost of the material.
|
| For instance, the Alfa Romeo 4C had an (expensive) all-carbon tub
| that weighed 65kg. At this storage efficiency, that's only 1.5
| kWh... about enough to drive 5 miles in a standard-size vehicle.
|
| Interesting nevertheless, but I can't see getting excited at this
| density just yet, even if it is true.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| "about enough to drive 5 miles in a standard-size vehicle."
|
| Are you accounting for the fact that the alpha romeo would no
| longer have the mass of a separate battery pack? Might it be 10
| miles?
|
| Still needs improvement! Would it work out better in something
| like an aptera?
| ainiriand wrote:
| It is infinitely greater than 0 anyway. You need the chassis in
| any case, right? I think this is not meant as a replacement but
| as a complement of other parts.
| iandanforth wrote:
| If this worked would it be compatible with wireless
| communication? I know hardly any EE, but I wonder, if there are a
| bunch of currents in your component housing doesn't that mean it
| will be hard for an internal antenna to send and receive?
| rexreed wrote:
| "Massless" batteries are as much about lack of mass as
| "Serverless" apps are about a lack of servers.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I've been interested for awhile in how structural computing could
| be done in this vein. Generally less important for cars right
| now, but as self-driving technology evolves, I imagine auto
| manufacturers may become increasingly interested in how to tuck
| away enough processing power without sacrificing an entire trunk.
| neals wrote:
| There's a check-list floating around here on HN with all the
| possible reasons why we won't be seeing this in production any
| time soon, but I can't seem to find it. Hope some fellow HN'er
| posts it so we can stop being all excited.
| 7373737373 wrote:
| ---------------------------------------------------------------
| -
|
| Dear battery technology claimant,
|
| Thank you for your submission of proposed new revolutionary
| battery technology. Your new technology claims to be superior
| to existing lithium-ion technology and is just around the
| corner from taking over the world. Unfortunately your
| technology will likely fail, because:
|
| [ ] it is impractical to manufacture at scale.
|
| [ ] it will be too expensive for users.
|
| [ ] it suffers from too few recharge cycles.
|
| [ ] it is incapable of delivering current at sufficient levels.
|
| [ ] it lacks thermal stability at low or high temperatures.
|
| [ ] it lacks the energy density to make it sufficiently
| portable.
|
| [ ] it has too short of a lifetime.
|
| [ ] its charge rate is too slow.
|
| [ ] its materials are too toxic.
|
| [ ] it is too likely to catch fire or explode.
|
| [ ] it is too minimal of a step forward for anybody to care.
|
| [ ] this was already done 20 years ago and didn't work then.
|
| [ ] by this time it ships li-ion advances will match it.
|
| [ ] your claims are lies.
|
| ---------------------------------------------------------------
| -
| mromanuk wrote:
| I would love to see a timely spreadsheet with each
| breakthrough and how it went.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| * this was already done 20 years ago and didn't work then.*
|
| This is a standard wet-blanket unhelpful remark that doesn't
| belong in the list.
| jandrese wrote:
| Maybe it should say "didn't explain why it will work now
| when it failed in the past"?
| C4stor wrote:
| >Your new technology claims to be superior to existing
| lithium-ion
|
| To be fair, it doesn't. The article is explicit that it's
| only 20% as mass efficient s lithium-ion battery.
|
| On the other hand, it's also true that the vehicle aluminium
| mass is mostly dead weight, so exploiting it to serve as a
| battery doesn't seem insane.
|
| Except now, they need to know what to do when something hits
| it, breaks it, etc... So I'm not convinced this is a good
| idea for cars (or for anything), but at least, it goes in a
| direction that actually seems new instead of just doing "same
| but better". I could actually see that used as a support for
| solar panels so that they would litterally ship "batteries
| included".
| azernik wrote:
| Or even as a supplement to a conventional battery - being
| able to squeeze in 10% more energy capacity without
| expanding the battery could be a way to incrementally
| improve range. And also possibly provide a small backup
| power source in case of main battery failure.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > To be fair, it doesn't
|
| Well yeah, there's no check in the checklist, nobody
| claimed that.
| immmmmm wrote:
| good points! having worked a bit in a close field i'd add:
|
| [ ] is impossible to recycle
| darksaints wrote:
| I've seen this checklist before and it is infuriatingly lazy,
| like taking the famous HN lowbrow dismissal and turning it
| into a meme, but actually taking the meme seriously.
|
| Lithium-Ion batteries are not the most superior battery. They
| might be the best we have for _some_ use cases, but obviously
| not all, or they would have 100% market share. They haven 't
| replaced disposable alkaline batteries. They haven't replaced
| AGP batteries. They haven't replaced Lead Acid batteries.
| They haven't replaced Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries. There
| are plenty of reasons why: cost, weight, safety, shelf life,
| etc.
|
| Since Lithium Ion doesn't have 100% market share, a useful
| comparison does not have to be with Lithium Ion in order for
| a battery technology to be a meaningful advance. And even if
| it did, sometimes an advance in just one area can be enough
| to overcome its disadvantages in other areas.
|
| Example: I use Lithium Iron Phosphate in my sailboat. Yes, it
| has lower energy density. Yes, it has lower power density.
| Yes, it is more expensive. Yes, it has shorter lifecycle.
| Yes, it has a slow charge rate. It has one solitary advantage
| over lithium ion, and that single advantage is the difference
| between life and death: it is more chemically stable and
| thermally stable, and less likely to result in fires.
|
| If you have a fire in your car, that sucks...but you can just
| open up your car door and walk 20 feet to safety. You hop on
| your cell phone and call AAA or a taxi or a friend. If you're
| on a sailboat in the middle of the ocean, you can't do that.
| Even if you've planned well, with a ditch kit, a liferaft,
| and an EPIRB, you are still potentially several hours or even
| days before someone can get to you to get you to safety. In
| the meantime, you're floating on an ocean with waves taller
| than your liferaft, with a limited supply of food and water,
| and you have a tiny plastic membrane separating you from a
| place where you would need constant energy to survive and
| where you are no longer the top of the food chain.
|
| So with all due respect, fuck lithium ion. And fuck this
| list. There is plenty of room for advances in battery
| technology, and we don't need religious charlatans from the
| Cult of Musk shitting on every single battery tech
| announcement.
| _ph_ wrote:
| The point isn't that Lithium Ion batteries are that great,
| but that most of the press articles are hyping something
| which at best is a few years in the future. There is a huge
| gap between even the best science and a technology which is
| ready for production and can be rolled out into large-scale
| manufacturing. Even if there are for-real samples around
| for people to play with, it could take years until they
| make it into a car. And then of course, there is some risk
| that the initial science isn't even good. That happens too.
| OliverJones wrote:
| Batteries are a kind of semiconductor. They're bigger than
| others, but still semiconductors.
|
| Most kinds of semiconductors have a stage in the history of their
| development where their cost / performance ratio does am
| exponential Moore's - law plunge. Batteries could get there. So,
| all sorts of research are good.
|
| In the meantime, maybe this kind of tech could be used to combine
| PV solar panels with electrical storage.
| fabian2k wrote:
| There's an article in German that is very critical of the
| comparisons they make:
|
| https://www.golem.de/news/akkutechnik-das-maerchen-von-der-m...
|
| Essentially the author argues that a comparison with state-of the
| art cells would mean that they achieve only 8-10% of the capacity
| per weight of conventional cells. There's a bunch of other
| specific criticisms in there about comparisons made in the paper.
| yayr wrote:
| My main concern would be about reusability. Current battery tech
| is quite limited with respect to how many charging cycles it
| supports. So do we need to throw away a bike with structural
| battery pack then in future, once the charging cycles have
| expired or someone forgot to regularly keep the battery charged?
| geocrasher wrote:
| "Researchers from Chalmers University of Technology have produced
| a structural battery that performs ten times better than all
| previous versions"
|
| It's 10 times more everything, just like every other battery
| breakthrough in the last several decades. AND, you get to use it
| as a building material?
|
| - Sounds too good to be true: Check
|
| - Sounds like every other "big" breakthrough: Check
|
| - Article light on science and heavy on assertions: Check
|
| - Skepticism engaged: Check
| michaelt wrote:
| _> It 's 10 times more everything, just like every other
| battery breakthrough in the last several decades._
|
| Has the article been changed since you posted this comment?
| Because the article I've seen was pretty clear:
|
| "Its multifunctional performance is ten times higher than
| previous structural battery prototypes. [...] The battery has
| an energy density of 24 Wh/kg, meaning approximately 20 percent
| capacity compared to comparable lithium-ion batteries currently
| available."
|
| A battery strong enough to be a structural component, at the
| cost of 80% of its capacity-per-unit-weight, doesn't sound so
| hard to believe.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| You didn't read the article carefully. One of the things it
| mentions is that it is 20% less energy dense than lithium ion.
| Sounds terrible, but the upside is you make the car chassis out
| of battery, so you haven't added weight to it. The net result
| could be very good, or maybe they need to work on it and
| improve on the 20%.
|
| Going further with the battery news cynicism idea, batteries
| have steadily improved over the last 50 years, to an amazing
| degrees, because of steady breakthroughs causing small
| improvements. It is why we can have iphones and tesla today.
| nybble41 wrote:
| > 20% less energy dense than lithium ion
|
| That's 20% _as_ dense (1 /5 the density), not 20% _less_
| dense (4 /5 the density).
|
| As for replacing the chassis--a Tesla Model S has 1,200 lbs
| of batteries, and the aluminum chassis weighs 410 lbs.
| Assuming this new material replaces the aluminum pound-for-
| pound, that would store enough energy to displace about 82
| lbs of ordinary lithium ion batteries for a ~5% reduction in
| total weight. If the energy density were somehow on par with
| lithium ion then it would save 410 lbs, or 25% of the total
| weight.
| tromp wrote:
| 5x less dense is 80% less dense.
| nybble41 wrote:
| "5x less" would be "x - 5x" or -4x, which of course is
| nonsense as density can't be negative. "5x as sparse" works
| if you define sparsity as the inverse of density.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| Even the term "massless" is kind of silly. "Structural" should
| be sufficiently descriptive as most people can infer that if
| you build the structure out of the material you don't incur any
| ADDITIONAL weight penalty for the battery (assuming the
| mass/strength characteristics of the battery are similar to
| other structural material).
| jlg23 wrote:
| The article explicitly states that is comparing against other
| prototypes of massless storage, and that energy density is 20%
| of lithium ion batteries. It then goes on to explain why they
| still think it is a breakthrough.
| jxramos wrote:
| "heavy on assertions", I'm going to remember that one. That's a
| good bottom line characterization to ask oneself.
| ok123456 wrote:
| In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I know what my next (self) carved den plaque is going to say
| now.
| michaelbuckbee wrote:
| I wonder if the switch from Nickel Cadmium to Lithium Ion
| batteries was also hyped the same way (my google fu is failing
| me).
|
| But even there, I feel like you can't just sum things up and
| say "LiIon are 10x better than Nickel Cadmium" there's a whole
| range of requirements.
| raducu wrote:
| I couldn't find anything about net inprovement over "massfull"
| batteries.
| eganist wrote:
| In reality, it's 5x worse than current LiIon tech(from the same
| article):
|
| > The battery has an energy density of 24 Wh/kg, meaning
| approximately 20 percent capacity compared to comparable
| lithium-ion batteries currently available. But since the weight
| of the vehicles can be greatly reduced, less energy will be
| required to drive an electric car, for example, and lower
| energy density also results in increased safety. And with a
| stiffness of 25 GPa, the structural battery can really compete
| with many other commonly used construction materials.
|
| This seems a bit more believable. Whether it'll actually be
| used in that manner is to be seen, but this seems more down to
| earth. And while the article seems to put emphasis on using it
| to save weight, it's probably more effective to use it to add
| capacity while maintaining weight.
| Animats wrote:
| For a Tesla Model 3, the vehicle is about 1600Kg with
| battery, and the battery is about 500Kg. The battery is
| heavy, but less than a third of the vehicle weight.
|
| Aircraft, though... Aircraft already have "wet wings", which
| are fuel tanks. If the battery provided some of the wing's
| structural strength, that might work. Probably worth trying
| in military drones first.
| pizzazzaro wrote:
| Dont forget, it the battery still needs replacing eventually.
| Oh, its in the structure of the device?
|
| Well that sucks. Talk about planned obsolesence.
| callesgg wrote:
| Presumably that should be read: Better than previous "massless
| battery's". "... produced a structural
| battery that performs ten times better than all previous
| versions"
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| I recommend people read the article, it actually has some
| information. More info:
|
| "The battery has an energy density of 24 Wh/kg, meaning
| approximately 20 percent capacity compared to comparable
| lithium-ion batteries currently available. But since the
| weight of the vehicles can be greatly reduced, less energy
| will be required to drive an electric car, for example"
|
| "the researchers did not choose the materials to try and
| break records - rather, they wanted to investigate and
| understand the effects of material architecture and separator
| thickness." - this implies there may be a lot of room for
| improvement with this design.
| ThomPete wrote:
| then the question becomes how are they solving for the
| increased heat.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| In increased surface area-to-mass ratio would probably
| make this easier.
| ThomPete wrote:
| Which makes it heavier no?
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| No. A rectangular block of a typical battery has a much
| lower surface area-to-mass ratio than a tube, even if
| their weights are the same. It's why cooling fins on a
| CPU are long and skinny. Such length and skinniness makes
| heat dissipation much easier.
| ThomPete wrote:
| But if the energy density is higher wouldn't you need
| more material to cool down the area?
| m463 wrote:
| Add a qualifier and you can claim almost anything!
|
| The Fastest Sports car! [1]
|
| [1] _with a 3.2-liter horizontally opposed flat 6-cylinder
| engine_
| rzwitserloot wrote:
| Indeed. From the perspective of battery chemistry
| technology this paper is utterly unremarkable.
|
| But then that's not what it is about. The breakthrough is
| (oversimplifying here) that they invented a way to whack a
| bog-standard smartphone battery into the middle of a bunch
| of layers of building material, such that about 20% of the
| weight of the end product is battery, whilst the material
| is still strong enough to not cause a Samsung Galaxy Note
| style oopsie when structurally compromised, and to be
| strong enough to build with, and to have some of the mass
| of the battery improve the structural integrity of the
| whole, even.
|
| The idea being: Take your tesla. Take the batteries out.
| Smash em to paste. Remove ~20% of the atoms from the
| chassis materials and replace them with your paste.
|
| Voila - made your car 20% lighter.
| m463 wrote:
| btw, tesla is already doing that in production now. They
| have a new structural battery, although no carbon fiber
| yet.
|
| I think there might be lots more low hanging fruit, their
| cars weigh quite a bit.
| teekert wrote:
| For me has gotten down to this: "New" and "Battery" in title =>
| Don't read, not worth enthusiasm.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Yet we have had massive increases in battery performance over
| the last couple decades.
| rzwitserloot wrote:
| It may really be 10x, but you've mischaracterized what the
| paper is claiming a 10x breakthrough for. In fairness, the
| linked article is light on the specifics.
|
| The claim is:
|
| __This battery holds 10x more charge per kilo of material than
| previous attempts at STRUCTURAL (massless) battery materials__.
|
| To be specific, this material holds only _ONE FIFTH_ the charge
| of what your smartphone's battery can hold per kilo of battery.
| No laws of thermodynamics is being broken and this is not at
| all about battery chemistry. It's all about the 'physics' of
| construction materials: About how this stuff is made in the
| factory and layered. The basic battery chemistry going on is
| not much different from what's been available for years - the
| interesting part is how this material encases it.
|
| You can't make a car by building the chassis out of smartphone
| batteries. But the promise of this paper is that you CAN build
| the car chassis out of this battery, and even if this battery
| is only 20% as effective, a car chassis is rather large, and
| you needed it anyway, so every drop of power you can store in
| the chassis itself was effectively 'free' - hence the somewhat
| hyperbolous 'massless' terminology.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Having the chassis of the car be the battery seems
| problematic. Once the battery is worn out the whole car must
| be disposed of.
| mattrick wrote:
| I'm wondering if these batteries will maintain their capacity
| over time. I think part of the appeal of traditional battery
| packs is you can replace them as they wear out and hold less
| charge. If they do degrade, hopefully a chassis/ battery
| replacement won't be too expensive.
| reader_mode wrote:
| I've seen estimates that put modern battery at the expected
| age/mileages comparable to ICE expected lifetimes - at
| 300-500k miles you usually replace the car anyway,
| especially modern ones with so much electronics inside,
| those will probably get outdated way faster
| Justsignedup wrote:
| Leads to a lot of potential if the support structure is also
| the battery. Even as you said, if you have to still have more
| of it, you don't add weight to store a charge, and if you
| already need a lot of structure, you're fine.
|
| Having said that, the car chasis is not juuuust about holding
| up a roof and the humans inside. You also have to handle
| impact stresses, you don't want it discharging on the poor
| inhabitants as the car is being hit, etc.
|
| This sounds like a step, out of many, the the direction of
| lighter cars or aircraft that are electrically powered. It
| also doesn't have to be the only tech. If we can eliminate
| say 20% of the battery weight by making the frunk/trunk
| casings out of this material, some other inner parts of the
| car, we can use it as part of the solution.
| rini17 wrote:
| What about bicycles?
| mromanuk wrote:
| Even more interesting for aviation industry.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Cars? Probably not.
|
| Drones? Military drones or aircraft? (The paper mentions ARL)
| Quite possibly. What this promises is that anywhere you would
| have a strut or panel made from carbon fiber as a load-
| bearing element, you can have it store some energy for you as
| well.
| [deleted]
| extropy wrote:
| Drones not likely. Their improved stiffness of 75 gpa is 2x
| less than carbon fiber.
|
| So you could literally make the frame 2x lighter with
| carbon fiber and put that 50% of weight in batteries
| getting you 2x+ more capacity.
|
| Cars more likely as it's roughly on par with aluminum.
| Still the cost will be way more than plain aluminum or even
| steel body.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| Doesn't the carbon fibre argument work for cars as well?
| CF is becoming increasingly common and affordable, as are
| normal batteries.
| erikerikson wrote:
| > Cars? Probably not.
|
| Why not cars?
| Pokepokalypse wrote:
| When the battery needs replacement, what do you do?
|
| You toss the car in a landfill and stamp out a new one in
| the factory.
|
| So probably better for drones and things that have a
| short lifetime anyway.
| [deleted]
| ajuc wrote:
| Because structure makes up a small percent of an electric
| car mass and batteries make up a big percent of electric
| car mass.
|
| Let's say that it's 10% for structure and 30% for
| batteries.
|
| If you decrease energy density of batteries several times
| now they take up let's say 90% of the car mass and the
| only thing you saved was 10% :)
| framecowbird wrote:
| 10% for structure might be an underestimate. I did a
| Google and it suggested 25% for suspension and chassis
| and another 25% for body. Obviously that includes more
| than what you could make a battery, but I reckon it's
| more than 10%.
|
| Also, even if it's only 10% weight you are saving, that
| sounds pretty good to me!
| ctdonath wrote:
| Note that Tesla Cybertruck is using battery pack as a
| structural element.
| geocrasher wrote:
| The battery _pack_ yes. The _batteries_? I would guess not.
| ctdonath wrote:
| It's a step in that direction others haven't made yet.
| znpy wrote:
| You comment is more useful than the article, just so you
| know.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Hopefully it'll be easy to repair. I'd hate to replace entire
| chassis because of light collision.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I would like a very simple electric car, simple motor(s),
| simple electronics to repair, no GPS or phone home
| necessary (I want to download on my time, send me a
| text/email/whatever about critical downloads). I want
| something easy and cheap to repair, have the simplicity of
| electric motors, and run 20 years with very little
| maintenance. I don't 30 computers running on my computer. I
| just want to get from A to B and it not cost me 80-100k for
| a decent electric vehicle. Tesla and others are
| overengineered for what they do and that complexity adds to
| failure rate and cost of ownership.
| waiseristy wrote:
| You're not going to get around the 5-10 computers
| required for basic 21st century automotive safety. But,
| the rest of what you are describing is the status-quo for
| quite a few Chinese 'budget' brands.
|
| I'm betting once EVs start making their way into fleets,
| you'll find your 300k mile, low maintenance, minimal
| electronics American/German brand.
| Afton wrote:
| Aren't you describing a Nissan Leaf? I can't really speak
| to the repairability, because even though I've had it 2
| years, I haven't had to do anything but charge it. Oh,
| once I had to put more air in the tires. Great little
| car, with about a 70 mile range on my 2017 model.
| gmueckl wrote:
| If your fender bender short-circuited your battery and
| ignited it, you might need a wee bit more than just a new
| chassis.
|
| (This is not a claim that the batteries described in the
| article are a fire hazard - I don't know)
| bbarnett wrote:
| A mechanic working on a car, with enough juice to fry
| him, and no way to separate the battery from car?
|
| I guess a full discharge first.
|
| But what about your accident, and the jaws of life? Will
| they conduct? Will the wrenched apart car have conductive
| edges?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Interestingly, these are actual concerns that
| firefighters have regarding both Teslas and self-driving
| cars. The relevant companies put out explainers and
| training videos on how to do a rescue in these vehicles.
|
| In the Teslas, the power system is shunted through a
| single disconnect point... Cutting that line isolates the
| battery from the rest of the vehicle.
|
| In Waymo cars, firefighters needed to be made aware that
| high-power electrical conduit and liquid cooling channels
| go up through the pillars, which are usually empty of
| energized components or contain only low-power channels
| (for things like overhead lights).
| bmurphy1976 wrote:
| That's interesting. I never considered this to be a
| problem but it makes sense. This could be quite
| challenging if every car manufacturer does something
| different, but I suspect over time just like with ICE
| cars they'll iterate towards some local optimum and
| things start to be very similar.
| omegaworks wrote:
| >I suspect over time just like with ICE cars they'll
| iterate towards some local optimum and things start to be
| very similar.
|
| This doesn't happen organically. Manufacturers were
| happily iterating toward a different optimum before
| regulation forced their hands.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/27/automobiles/50-years-
| ago-...
| Frost1x wrote:
| My thoughts exactly. Load bearing structures tend to be
| permanent or not frequently changed (on the order of
| decades). Now someone wants to place a battery in that
| structure?
|
| I hope they develop a mechanism that allows exchange of the
| battery and can bear load without the battery with some
| sort of mechanical movement that can shift the load to a
| more permanent structure (not that this is necessarily a
| good idea either but proposing an option). Or, perhaps the
| battery never needs changed, and by that I mean the life of
| the product lasts as long as it would with a replaceable
| battery. They can't just redefine the life of the product
| as the life of the battery to get around this (unless the
| life if the product was already defined by the life of the
| battery for a long time before).
| ud_0 wrote:
| Repairability is guaranteed to be impossible if you have
| that level of integration, and I suspect that is a big part
| of the motivation behind adopting this.
| duckfang wrote:
| Indeed. And having worked with a wide variety of
| batteries.... I would hate to see a 'load bearing battery
| under torsional stress'. Just ow.
| stainforth wrote:
| Explosion?
| woah wrote:
| If you damage carbon fiber you generally won't be repairing
| it. This doesn't sound like it will be a very big
| limitation for similar use cases.
| hasmolo wrote:
| carbon fiber repair is definitely a thing. i've had a few
| carbon bike frames break and had them repaired without
| any issues. there's a few places that specialize in this
| Gravityloss wrote:
| Many ultramodern carbon fiber processes don't use an
| autoclave so one might be able to do production grade
| repairs in-place.
| westurner wrote:
| > _You can 't make a car by building the chassis out of
| smartphone batteries_
|
| They're called _Structural batteries_ (or _[micro]structural
| super /ultracapacitors_)
|
| "Carmakers want to ditch battery packs, use auto bodies for
| energy storage" (2020,)
| https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/11/carmakers-want-to-
| ditch...
| falcor84 wrote:
| This is literally what TFA is about
| mromanuk wrote:
| It's surprising how all breakthroughs are precisely, always, 10
| times better. Let's wait until a HN battery expert tell us
| [deleted]
| k__ wrote:
| Maybe nobody does research on tech that isn't at least 10
| times better than the stuff we already have?
| mratzloff wrote:
| A 2x increase for battery storage would be game changing
| for a wide variety of use cases. Electric vehicles,
| industrial applications...
| xbmcuser wrote:
| Battery tech is improving at around 10% a year. Lithium
| Battery density has tippled in the last 10 years people
| on hacker news like to comment on how new battery
| technology has not done anything but since those comments
| started a decade ago battery density has trippled.
|
| https://cleantechnica.com/2020/02/19/bloombergnef-
| lithium-io...
| tartoran wrote:
| If it's improving at a rate of 10% per year, a 2x would
| take 4-5 years to achieve so a 2X is really a good
| improvement. I wonder where we'd be right now had we not
| gone the ICE route.
| xbmcuser wrote:
| Reality is most new technologies need to be 10 times better
| to get investment. Otherwise it is generally assumed that
| by the time new technology gets into production the older
| tech will still have cost advantage. This is the main
| reason why we need government investments for unprofitable
| research.
| noworld wrote:
| http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-03/28/artificial-
| le...
| cinntaile wrote:
| "Its multifunctional performance is ten times higher than
| previous structural battery prototypes."
|
| The problem is we don't really know what multifunctional
| performance means or how it's defined, but maybe this is a
| common metric in battery technology?
|
| edit: I skimmed the actual paper linked in the article and it
| doesn't mention a 10x improvement.
|
| "Structural battery composite materials, exploiting
| multifunctional constituents, have been realized and
| demonstrate an energy density of 24 Wh kg-1 and an elastic
| modulus of 25 GPa. Their combined electrochemical and
| mechanical properties outperform all previous structural
| battery materials reported in the literature. "
| davesque wrote:
| Also, "ten times better _than all previous versions_. " So how
| good were the previous versions?
| briangerman wrote:
| Yeah if its not from this guy
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Goodenough then its not
| good enough.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Seems like making it part of the mass of the car results in a
| lot of waste when the car is eventually retired as it would
| probably be hard to separate anything recyclable.
| macspoofing wrote:
| I understand your skepticism (or maybe cynicism). These kinds
| of articles have been coming out for years. Usually it's some
| research group in some University that improved on some narrow
| aspect of the particular part of material science they focus on
| and then wildly extrapolate the benefits (with the help of
| media) ... like here where they say: "Super light electric
| bikes and consumer electronics could soon be a reality" ... I'm
| sure this 'COULD' be a reality. Will it though?
| jonplackett wrote:
| If it's part of the structure, what happens when you have a
| crash?
| reimertz wrote:
| I understand and value the skepticism but for those who wants the
| science behind their claim, please read their paper "A Structural
| Battery and its Multifunctional Performance"(also referenced in
| the article).
|
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aesr.202000093
| h2odragon wrote:
| I'm thinking "backing, bracing, encasing" solar cells...
| wondering about interactions with heat and insulation; they
| used to sell "precast wall panels" that were aluminum over foam
| and cool to work with. This might be "powerwall" bait.
| mikkelam wrote:
| perhaps the title should reflect that this is not a regular
| battery per se, but a structural battery, i.e, a battery that can
| give mechanical integrity.
| covfefeblack wrote:
| Carbon fibre. There is nothing it can't do. Except leave the lab.
| nabla9 wrote:
| > Funding has come from the European Commission's research
| program Clean Sky II, as well as the US Airforce.
|
| Carbon fiber structural battery would be ideal for aviation.
|
| Of course, scientific discovery is not the same as engineering
| solution, this is just early stage research.
| dcanelhas wrote:
| In applications where the battery is only providing auxiliary
| power, such as for bicycles this would be really neat.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I was joking the other day but when are we getting regenerative
| crashing ?
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