

IBM creates breathing, high-density, light-weight lithium-air battery - palmar
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/126745-ibm-creates-breathing-high-density-light-weight-lithium-air-battery

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51Cards
This is slightly off topic but simply stated I just love IBM these days. There
aren't many corporations that dedicate as much focus on research and yet, for
a large corp. they also keep their nose surprisingly clean (these days). While
we watch the swirling tech scandals ebb and flow they just quietly sit off to
the side and keep changing the world.

~~~
Drakim
I work for a help-desk part of IBM. We use IE6. :(

~~~
Peaker
IE6 worries you? There's Lotus Notes!

~~~
mitchty
Oh god Lotus, very few things are worse than IE6, VERY few.

~~~
RollAHardSix
Hey, watch it! We use Lotus Notes at work. - "It's what the President already
knows." "Oh...good reason." =)

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unwind
So ... As the battery is used, bonds are formed between oxygen molecules in
the air, and the lithium ions on the battery's electrodes. Weight is saved by
"borrowing" those O2s from the air, as compared to carrying them around fixed
in an oxide. Fine.

Does that mean that as the battery charge is depleted (=it runs out of free
lithium ions, I guess), it's _mass increases_ due to all the newly bound
oxygen being stored in there? That's counter-intuitive enough to just be
awesome!

Also, a large-scale battery whose charge level is directly related to its mass
(albeit inversely so, from my intuition) and supports recharging is almost a
bit like magic. I hope they pull this off, so I can learn to weigh my car
before going on long trips, in the future. :)

~~~
stephengillie
Imagine NASCAR with these batteries - Cars covered in solar panels. Drivers
carefully timing their recharge pitstops to keep their weight down. Every fan
in the stands has a big reflector to reflect sunlight at their favorite car.

~~~
protomyth
NASCAR fans are not very happy with "fuel mileage" races, and I would imagine
what you describe would be far worse.

// also not very fond of people who say we watch for the wrecks

~~~
dhimes
But wouldn't it catch on if they actually thought they could help their
favorite driver win? Seems like an idea like that could be revolutionary.

~~~
protomyth
As organic_code pointed out, blinding the drivers is a real possibility. Also,
races are fairly long and holding a mirror up for two or three hours doesn't
sound like a lot of fun. New drivers in the sport have no chance of winning
(see last years Daytona 500). Never mind the problem track owners will have
selling concessions to a group of people who cannot eat / drink for most of
the race.

I want to watch a driver's skill, not the energy output of his / her fans.

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reneherse
If the amount of oxygen exchanged between the battery and atmosphere is enough
to make the battery "much lighter" in its charged/non-oxygenated state, wow,
that's got to be a lot of oxygen!

I didn't see any numbers in the article, but a commenter (name, moishep) on
the site posted the relative atomic masses of the elements and compounds
involved:

Li ~7, O ~16, LiO2 ~39

If someone with a better understanding of the chemistry could answer, does
this mean that a discharged battery would have over _five times_ the mass of a
charged one?

And if that much oxygen is being released in the charging process, that's
quite a fire hazard that will need to be designed around.

Or am I missing part of the physics/chemistry involved?

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encoderer
I think there's no question that the Li-Air battery is one of the most
important, game changing technologies that we'll see in the next 10
(hopefully) years.

It changes everything. It's not just about better battery life on your
MacBook. There are so many things held back right now by poor battery
technology.

~~~
andrewflnr
Quadcopters will have better range, among other things, allowing them to be
used for more things.

~~~
ronaldj
Like taco delivery.

~~~
andrewflnr
Precisely.

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dnda
Sorry to be skeptical, but I can't help but think: Number of "battery
breakthrough" news I heard in the last 15 years: >100, Actual battery
breakthroughs: 0

~~~
jnorthrop
To add weight to your skepticism the article states, "Eventually (in another
10 years or so), li-ion batteries could be replaced with li-air batteries." !0
years is a long time-frame.

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papagino
Exactly. 10 years is way past the Technological Event Horizon, which is about
2 years.

Which means that unlike, for example, memristors, lithium air batteries most
likely won't happen, and if they do happen, their happening will be a
consequence of other research.

(Which is an argument why most research should be fundamental and open-ended,
i.e. not directed towards specific outcomes.)

~~~
Retric
If you follow Intel's R&D they have consistently gotten projects from 10-15
years out to come online on time.

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frankus
Another cool thing about this (aside from not needing to carry around it's own
oxidizer) is that a car-sized pack would be small and light enough to make
battery swapping a reality.

Li-Ion and older technologies make battery swapping hard because the pack is
large and heavy enough that it really needs to be integrated into the vehicle
chassis, which means that each model of vehicle—or at a minimum each class of
vehicle—needs a different pack.

Something roughly the size and weight of a gas tank would be much easier to
swap out and could probably come in only a few different sizes.

Another thing I'm wondering is if the battery could be simplified by
"reprocessing" rather than recharging it. For instance, maybe the anode could
be a big spool of lithium "tape" that is slowly unwound as it gets oxidized,
with the spent lithium oxide wound around another spool. The whole thing could
be mounted in a "cassette" that would be swapped out a reprocessing station,
where it could be de-oxidized in a controlled environment and at a controlled
rate using off-peak grid power.

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smountcastle
So do these batteries still suffer from the same problem of permanent damage
if completely discharged? That's the biggest thing that scares me away from
buying a Tesla (well, that and the high price of Tesla Motors models).

~~~
NickM
It may be a theoretical problem, but there are very sophisticated mechanisms
in place to prevent this from actually happening in practice with current li-
ion batteries. There was a big scare about it with Tesla vehicles a while back
that turned out to mostly be one blogger spreading unsubstantiated claims.

It's true that if you keep driving an electric car until the car stops
running, and then leave it for weeks or months without recharging as the
battery pack continues to slowly trickle out, you could cause damage. Then
again, if you keep driving a gasoline car for too long without changing the
oil, you can also cause damage.

~~~
falling
And if you drive any recent diesel engine until you run out of gas, you _will_
cause damage.

~~~
jacquesm
Not to the engine, but to the (low pressure) fuel pump. And that's because
that pump is cooled/lubricated by the fuel. A few seconds won't hurt but
longer is definitely not good.

You'll likely also have to bleed the system because the injectors won't open
on air pressure alone, but that's not really damage (it just makes it a lot
harder to get it started again once it is out of fuel).

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jmah
If I read this right, much of the weight reduction is because a large
component of the electricity-generating reaction is already plentiful in the
atmosphere, so it doesn't have to be carried around with the battery.

But as the battery is discharged, the oxygen molecules are altered (according
to the video) and presumably stored in the battery - which implies when
discharged, the battery gains (significant?) mass. During charging, the oxygen
is released again, so the weight goes down.

Is that right?

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grannyg00se
This would be mind blowing but did they in fact create such a battery as the
title suggests? The video talks about year 2030. If they had created working
prototypes already I would expect that commercialization would be years away,
not decades.

~~~
iRobot
18 Years to market - WTF, we should have mr-fusion by then

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Groxx
From the video:

> _If all continues to go well, we could see air-breathing batteries powering
> cars some time between 2020 and 2030_

Ouch. Maybe laptops will come sooner?

~~~
easp
Seems likely. Automotive engineers, and the companies that employ them, are
(appropriately) conservative about things, give the $ involved, and the safety
issues.

Toyota is only just starting to ship Lithium batteries in some of their
hybrids, but they've been common in consumer electronics for years.

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kenrikm
When these can be used in laptops it would give a whole no meaning to "MacBook
Air" - Sorry couldn't resist.

~~~
kijin
Urgh. Just when we thought we might finally say goodbye those noisy CPU fans,
now the battery needs its own fan!

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bicknergseng
"Today, with graphene and carbon nanotubes and fancy membranes coming out of
our ears"

Made me shudder. One, for the violent imagery, two, for the trivialization of
remarkable science and technology.

~~~
Groxx
'coming out of our ears' is a colloquialism meaning roughly 'more than we know
what to do with'.

~~~
bicknergseng
It was a joke... visualize tubes coming out of someone's ears. Just because
it's a colloquialism doesn't mean you should ignore the imagery it conjures.

~~~
Groxx
On the internet, nobody can hear you <sarcasm> :)

I would think carbon nanotubes coming out of my ears would look more like
extremely fine hair. Probably good for keeping bugs out, but it'd creep my
wife out too.

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bizodo
Great to c alternative energy making headway. Looking forward to replacing
gasoline and removing oil as global power force.

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ta12121
I think Paul Graham's goal to prevent Eternal September on Hacker News can be
officially declared a failure.

~~~
oskarth
Self-fulfilled prophecy?

Please read <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html> especially this bit:

 _Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate
for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to
its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there
is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that
you did.

If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying
that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)_

~~~
ta12121
First, it's not the comments I'm complaining about, it's the content, so no,
my comment is not fulfilling any prophecy.

Second, the title is sensationalistic and misleading. To a casual reader the
it implies that the battery is ready for use ("creates") and that it's unique
to IBM. Neither are true. A more accurate title would be: IBM research
department is trying to develop commercial lithium-air batteries, just like
lots of other people.

The article is not in-depth, nor does it describe anything new or interesting
in science. It is a brief, shallow overview of a line of research that has
existed for decades. That is not news.

Battery research is slow and plodding, yet linkbait link this is often all
over reddit and other technology blogs. Hacker News was supposed to be free,
or at least low, on this kind of garbage, but the fact that this is the second
time I see this very article (or an equivalent one) shows that the Hacker News
userbase is no more discriminating than any other news site based on user
voting.

