
Breakthrough: solid-state alkaline batteries a viable alternative to lithium-ion - WheelsAtLarge
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/01/technology/alkaline-batteries-replace-lithium-ion.html
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mrob
>Ionic can help us get lithium-ion past cobalt and completely eliminate it
with alkaline

There are already lithium-ion chemistries that don't use cobalt, eg. lithium
iron phosphate[0]. This has lower energy density than lithium cobalt oxide,
but it's safer and survives more charge cycles. It's already commercially
available. Solid-state alkaline might be able to beat it on cost, but it's a
long way from commercial availability and lithium ion technologies keep
improving, so that's far from certain.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate)

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DiabloD3
You kinda had me sold on more charge cycle.

And as for commercially available, it seems all the good
"professional/industrial" work tools (drills, etc) use LiFePO, even though
it's bulkier and heavier (and probably explains why Milwaukee is so goddamned
expensive).

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e2e8
Do power tools really use LiFePO? Based on everything I have seen they all use
the common Li-ion chemistry cells. For example a common cell in power tools is
the Samsung INR18650 25R, which is not LiFePO I think.

~~~
Animats
DeWalt used LiFePO for years, but now seems to be using generic lithium-ion
batteries.

LiFePO has the nice "doesn't blow up and catch fire" feature. Boosted
Skateboards first generation used LiFePO, and worked great, but was expensive.
So they switched to generic lithium-ion for the second generation. Their
battery recall followed shortly thereafter.[1]

[1] [https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2017/boosted-recalls-
electric-s...](https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2017/boosted-recalls-electric-
skateboards)

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dmritard96
Really curious about self discharge. We make super low power wireless systems
and one of the best parts of alkaline is that they are effectively shelf-
stable unlike most lithium chemistries that loose a lot to leakage. For
phones, tablets, computers etc, this is fine since the charge/discharge cycle
is frequent, but for applications were devices are either sleeping most of
their life or are off most of their life, low self discharge is huge. Hoping
for the holy grail for this application in this but not holding my breath as
it always seems that breakthroughs are never in the market...

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theatrus2
Well, primary lithium cells are among the highest shelf life commercial
batteries. If shelf life is important, why are you running on rechargeable?

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dmritard96
I'm not - we ship our stuff with alkalines. but regardless of what current
chemistries are best at today, one time use blows. Lets say we get 1 year on
our alkalines and would get 1.8 years on lithium, after just a couple years, I
will have one or two sets of battery waste even though we are specc'ing our
hardware for at least 6 years (when we expect a decent number of units flash
memory to start dying. There aren't yet good reusable batteries with good
shelf life but there are plenty of applications where that would substantially
prevent waste and generally make things simpler. I'm agnostic/indifferent to
chemistry (assuming their externalities are similar, which they're not btw),
but having a few AAAs for my whole life would be fantastic and probably reduce
the environmental consequences of society quite dramatically.

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CamperBob2
_There aren 't yet good reusable batteries with good shelf life but there are
plenty of applications where that would substantially prevent waste and
generally make things simpler_

I wonder if Eneloop NiMH rechargeables would be a good fit? Their self-
discharge characteristics are pretty decent. 6 years is probably pushing it, I
guess.

~~~
dmritard96
Yeah these aren't bad. Only complaint on these is the discharge curve. For
some reason they run a little low for their middle voltage range making them
work for devices designed/spec'd to run at that lower voltage point. Out of
curiosity, anyone know any good sources for ultra low power consumption
battery performance charts? Does anyone publish these?

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ScottBurson
> So far, the company, which is backed by William Joy, a pioneering Silicon
> Valley computer designer, has demonstrated up to 400 recharge cycles for its
> prototypes.

Skepticism is certainly warranted, but Bill Joy is no fool. Here's hoping this
comes to something.

~~~
DonHopkins
Bill Joy??! I hope you don't have to switch the batteries into "insert mode"
to charge them.

~~~
hyperbovine
At the least it will turn on instantly.

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honestoHeminway
I wish there was a series not - on breakthroughs and tech-pr releases, but
really on the obsticles that keeps those inventions and advances from becoming
every day reality. Sort of like a progress blog, which updates the timeline
with every new obsticle.

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scythe
>that can be recharged hundreds of times

In the world of rechargeable batteries, "hundreds" of charges isn't very many.
You could use that up in six months if you're a heavy user. In cars you want
thousands of cycles, so the battery outlives the car (charging every day for
15 years = 5478 cycles), which prevents very costly replacements.

So, it's cool, but by itself, not the breakthrough we're looking for.

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greglindahl
Big battery cars like the Bolt and Tesla do not need to fully cycle every day.

~~~
PhantomGremlin
Exactly right.

5478 cycles at 200 miles per is greater than 1,000,000 miles. Few people will
put that many miles on a car.

OTOH, given how there are fewer moving parts in EVs, there's certainly a
better chance for an EV to make it the distance than for an IC car.

~~~
chongli
Batteries don't maintain their maximum charge cycle to cycle. High cycle count
batteries hold a fraction of the charge of new batteries. You may get 200 per
cycle at the beginning but after a few hundred cycles that could drop down to
150. Depending on your daily commute, the car may become unusable long before
the battery is completely exhausted.

~~~
Robotbeat
Usually the "cycle life" of a battery is when the capacity drops to 80% of new
when fully discharged and recharged.

You can extend the life of most lithium batteries dramatically by not charging
all the way and not discharging all the way. Use the middle 50% of the
battery's capacity for the vast majority of the cycles, and your battery may
last 4 times as many cycles.

~~~
chongli
But that means your 200 mile battery is now a 100 mile battery from day one.
If your daily commute is 150 miles, that means you need to carry the weight of
a 300 mile battery. With all the extra expense of moving the additional weight
plus the extra initial cost of the larger battery, are you really further
ahead?

~~~
kwhitefoot
If your daily commute is 150 miles perhaps you are living or working in the
wrong place. :-)

Of course if you have access to electricity at your workplace you only need 75
miles anyway. A Hyundai Ioniq charging from a normal 230V 16A circuit charges
fully in about 8 hours giving you about 150 miles. But 75 miles to get there
means it will be only half empty when you arrive so it will only take 4 hours.

The real challenges with electric cars now for the near and medium future are
infrastructure not range. There is a project starting, in the UK I think, to
turn lamp posts in to charging stations. One could imagine a scenario where
companies used the availability of charging stations in company car parks as
incentives to work there.

~~~
Robotbeat
Range helps address infrastructure by not needing as many charging stations.
Since EV owners typically charge every night, that means only trips that last
over 200 miles need any kind of public charging infrastructure at all.

Also, if evenly spaced over an area, you need only a quarter as many charging
stations as you do with 100 mile range (besides the above effect of having to
do fewer trips that require charging stations to begin with). And with a
larger battery, the vehicle can accept a much higher rate of charge. That's
partly why 75-100kWh Teslas can do 120kW Supercharging and 30kWh Nissan Leafs
can only do 44kW DC fast charging at most.

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SoMisanthrope
Agreed with Aphextron. This is old, stale news. Until someone gets one of
these "promising technologies" into production, I'm not going to read about
"new batteries." Information, like this, has been circulating for a decade.
I've still yet to see any of the nanotech in a battery.... yawn.

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ChuckMcM
iGo Green's rechargable alkaline batteries from 2011
([http://www.zdnet.com/article/igo-green-rechargeable-
alkaline...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/igo-green-rechargeable-alkaline-
batteries/))

In my experience "any" battery is rechargable if you are willing to wait long
enough but recharging _rate_ has always been a killer for alkalines.

~~~
Robotbeat
I have a battery charger that, in addition to typical NiMH batteries, is
designed to recharge regular disposable alkaline batteries. It doesn't work
every time, and you don't get the same capacity as the original, but you
definitely can get a few more uses out of most disposable alkalines.

