
Lithium-air batteries: Their time has come - mdani
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21703358-new-type-electrical-cell-may-displace-lithium-ion-design-their-time-has
======
Animats
Lithium-air potentially has great energy density. The theoretical limit is
near that of gasoline. So there's been a lot of work in this area, going back
decades. There are lots of problems. This is a possible solution to one of
about six major problems with this chemistry. It's a step forward, though.

This research project used iridium, which is a problem. Total world production
of iridium is only about 10 metric tons a year, and it sells for about
$14,000/kg. A production technology is going to need something cheaper.

~~~
bonzini
Do you have a reference to the usage of iridium?

~~~
elevensies
(multiple estimates since they don't exactly line up squarely)

...

[PDF]
[http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/platinum/my...](http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/platinum/myb1-2014-plati.pdf)

On page 4, it says 2014 global consumption of Ir was 6100kg. (3rd last para).

...

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

Wikipedia article para 2 says global consumption and production is three
tonnes.

...

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-02-19/iridium-
cl...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-02-19/iridium-climbs-
to-3-month-high-amid-buying-after-annual-slump)

This (2014) article estimates global production as 129,000 ounces to 322,000
ounces, which is about 3500 kg to 9000 kg.

~~~
bonzini
Sorry, I meant usage of iridium for this battery. The article only mentions
cobalt.

~~~
elevensies
Oh, in that case, I don't see any mention of it either, or in the paper,
[http://li.mit.edu/Archive/Papers/16/Zhu16KushimaNatureEnergy...](http://li.mit.edu/Archive/Papers/16/Zhu16KushimaNatureEnergy.pdf)

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ChuckMcM
Talk to me when you can make 10,000 of them and sell them at a profit at only
10% more than equivalently sized LiPo chemistries.

Seriously battery breakthroughs have a reputation of being nice tricks in the
lab that are infeasible in production. So before I get excited I really want
to see a mass quantity of batteries made.

All that aside, I think finding a way to finesse the reaction one proton at a
time like cells do would be a bigger win. I want a battery that runs on ATP.

~~~
6stringmerc
When I participated in the Local Motors LITECAR challenge I believe a good 50%
of the entries said "USE GRAPHENE!" as a premise for their entries. Sure,
graphene shows merit in a lab in perfect conditions, but when I suggested
using organic based composites to rival aluminum for chassis &/or body panels
/ components I got jumped on for being impractical. Yes, I'll admit I'm still
sore about the whole thing.

~~~
ayuvar
I have also wondered why Duroplast (stamped panels made up of leftover cotton
and resin) never made it outside of the Trabant to the wider automotive world.

If anything, the bodies lasted too long.

~~~
6stringmerc
Whoa, I'd never even heard of that! This kind of learning is why I keep coming
back and talking honest. Thanks for mentioning that.

There's something to be said for understanding manufacturer profit objectives,
but in the context of the contest reaching for something "iffy" like what won
didn't make sense when a reasonable alternative could show statistically
significant benefits.

Basically I pointed out we could "grow our own" panels with further research
and the judges picked an unproven but Uni backed submission instead. Made me
feel like Galileo for a hot minute there.

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tim333
Sounds very promising. There is more detail in the MIT News article:

[http://news.mit.edu/2016/new-lithium-oxygen-battery-
greatly-...](http://news.mit.edu/2016/new-lithium-oxygen-battery-greatly-
improves-energy-efficiency-longevity-0725)

Sounds quite stable:

>“With a typical battery, if you overcharge it, it can cause irreversible
structural damage or even explode,” Li says. But with the nanolithia battery,
“we have overcharged the battery for 15 days, to a hundred times its capacity,
but there was no damage at all.”

>In cycling tests, a lab version of the new battery was put through 120
charging-discharging cycles, and showed less than a 2 percent loss of
capacity, indicating that such batteries could have a long useful lifetime.

> Overall, the new battery system is “very scalable, cheap, and much safer”
> than lithium-air batteries, Li says.

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sevenless
There are more dangerous combinations of chemicals than lithium superoxide
mixed intimately with lithium, but there aren't _many_.

~~~
etatoby
Which means we are on the right track towards standard science fiction "power
packs," which notoriously double as improvised bombs.

~~~
NeutronBoy
With 'safety limiters' that you can reprogram or disable in about 5 seconds
with no other tools.

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chubs
The place to watch re battery tech, in my opinion, is the RC hobby scene. Eg
hobby king will sell you, for $10, a lithium graphene battery which will pump
out 60C (eg for a 2 amp-hour battery, it'll give you 120A!). It's incredible
whats out there for the non-risk-averse hobbyists.

~~~
dharma1
[http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2592234](http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2592234)

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devindotcom
Interestingly, NASA just announced Li-Air batteries are one of its long shot
research programs:

[http://www.nasa.gov/aero/five-new-ideas-to-be-explored-by-
na...](http://www.nasa.gov/aero/five-new-ideas-to-be-explored-by-nasa-
aeronautics-teams)

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notacoward
Am I the only one who noticed that the author's name is Li, which is also the
chemical symbol for lithium?

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slfnflctd
Finding a way to so dramatically reduce energy loss during recharges and also
retain capacity so well over 100+ cycles is pretty significant. I was not
expecting to read about that level of advance.

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Fej
> The new battery, brainchild of Ju Li of the Massachusetts Institute of
> Technology, is some way from commercialisation, but its design is such that
> commercialising it should not be hard.

Well, here's hoping. I always feel skeptical of technologies that just can't
leave the lab, though.

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tgb
So LiO2 has only been isolated at temperatures up to 40K, says Wikipedia.
Oxygen is a solid at that temperature. Is this prototype also at 40K?

~~~
notimetorelax
Article explains that they don't use pure oxygen molecules. Basically two
solids oscillating between themselves.

~~~
tgb
My point of bringing up the melting point of oxygen is that if the LiO2 is
only stable at temperatures where O2 is solid and the advantages of the method
are that it avoids the state change in O2, then why not just operate a
'normal' Li-air battery at that temperature? This would also avoid the state
change. I'm sure there are good reasons, and just pointing out that the
article's motivation is a little lacking.

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zeristor
A matrix of cobalt oxide?

Isn't that going to make it heavy?

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JoeAltmaier
I don't get it. It contains its own oxygen in an electrolyte matrix. So it
isn't any lighter than existing lithium batteries? What's the point?

~~~
cptskippy
Did we not read the same article?

Lithium Air batteries could offer up to 4x the energy density, this one is 2x.

Part of the reason this hasn't been done before is that previously the oxygen
introduced to the battery was from the air and other components of air damaged
and degraded the battery rapidly.

This battery is sealed with all the Oxygen it needs as a LiO mixture stored in
a cobalt matrix to stabilize it. Thus is doesn't degrade.

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hristov
Please warn us if something is paywalled.

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Aelinsaar
Prove that it can survive in the wild without becoming a firebomb, and we'll
talk.

~~~
thatcat
This is an unreasonable standard that doesn't hold true for gasoline or other
fuels.

The byproduct of having something that has a high energy density is that it
has a lot of energy to dissipate when things fail.

~~~
altcognito
Yes and no. Yes it is an unreasonable standard of safety for cars (and maybe
planes) today. No, it's unreasonable to allow things to blow up in close
quarters like on a laptop.

~~~
enraged_camel
I don't get how a laptop exploding is less acceptable than a car or an
airplane exploding.

~~~
tim333
In cars the flammable bits are normally fairly separated from the passengers
so if the engine goes up in flames you can just get out and watch. Laptops
less so.

~~~
Aelinsaar
Of course, you may find that the impact which caused the fire has also
rearranged those fairly separated parts. Still, that's predicated on a crash,
which is at the very least, fair warning that more things are likely to be
going wrong. "My laptop seems war- OH GOD", less so.

