April 25, 2014 • 44 mins
Why has battery technology lagged behind other advancements? Are we doomed to have batteries hold us back?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
podcast that looks at the Future says we're gonna rock
down to Electric Avenue and then we'll take a higher
(00:20):
I'm Jonathan and I'm Joe McCormick. That was a good one,
Thank you. It was relevant to today because we're going
to talk about something that has to do with electricity. Yes,
in fact, we're going to talk about batteries and why
you know, I think in any discussion about the future
and we talk about like the amazing electronics we have
(00:40):
right now in the present, there's always this discussion that
happens about why aren't batteries better yet? Yeah, people overlook
the fact that batteries are awesome. They like, they don't
pay attention to batteries being such an integral part of
all the technologies we really enjoy. Well, it's really easy
also to to kind of wench on about how, you know, oh,
(01:03):
my iPhone only keeps a charge for a day. It
keeps a charge for a day, it keeps a charge
at all, Like you can unplug it from the wall
and it still works. Yeah, that's pretty incredible in itself.
I mean, imagine if every electronic device you owned had
to constantly be plugged into the power grid in order
to work, or have an internal combustion engine or something
(01:26):
like that. Everything is, everything is either connected by cables
or has some other form of generating power. But on
the battery lets us store energy for later use, right,
So you don't have to use all this energy now.
You can use it later if you want. You can
use in it, use it at different times later on.
And that that's actually pretty incredible. It it enables all
(01:49):
kinds of things we don't even take the time to
think about. That's right. So batteries they share a lot
in common with another technology, the fuel cell. Fuel cells
are differ from batteries, and that with fuel cells you
keep adding fuel into the compartments of the fuel cell
and then you generate electricity. And you have to keep
filling up the fuel cell with fuel in order for
(02:11):
it to continue to generate electricity. Batteries have an electrochemical
reaction at the heart of them, just like a fuel
cell does, but everything is contained within the battery itself. Right.
Batteries are, at bottom, I would say, a good way
to put it, Is there an easy way to get
electricity from chemistry? Yes? Yeah, So you have these chemicals
that are reacting to produce an excess of electrons, something
(02:33):
that happens with certain chemical reactions. So you get this
excess of electrons that are gathering on one side of
the battery that's the anode side, and then you have
an electrical difference between the anode side of the battery
and the cathode side of the battery. Right, So if
you think about a battery with two sides, the anode
side has all these little minor symbols on it. Yeah,
(02:54):
and those minor symbols, if they could, would really love
to go to the opposite end of the bat right.
It's it's almost as if you've got a pipe full
of water that's tilted way up on one side at
the an outside and down at the bottom is the
cathode side, right, and there's something that's blocking the water
from running down that pipe. So if you were to
(03:15):
create a pathway, a different path that has lot lots
of little curly cues and crazy straw like uh contraptions
and maybe even a little water wheel in there, but
it led to that bottom side and you allowed gravity
to do the work. The direct route down to the
bottom would be blocked off, but this other pathway would
be open the water would flow through. That's kind of
similar to what happens with a circuit. A circuit is
(03:38):
where you've built a pathway for electrons to move from
the anode to the cathode, so that you have the
electrons moving over into that to fill up the holes,
the positive slots on the opposite side of the battery,
and while they're in motion, you can make them do work,
turn those little water wheels, the little electron wheels. If
you don't if you don't have anything, if you don't
(03:58):
have a load attack to the circuit, you're gonna burn
out that battery really quickly because all all it's doing
is electrons are just going to rush from one side
to the other through this pathway. But by putting a
load on there, then the electrons have to do work
along the way. So that might be something as simple
as lighting an led, or it could be something as
complicated as playing my favorite music on my MP three player,
(04:20):
because that it's drawing its power from the battery. Here's
the thing about these electrochemical results, right you know the
electrochemical reactions. You get these, you get this stuff that
essentially becomes a NERT. Right, it's no longer able to
produce the electrons needed to continue this reaction. You're essentially
using up the useful chemicals within the battery. They're turning
(04:41):
into something that is no longer going to generate those electrons.
This is when the battery goes dead, when you've completely
drained the charge and there's nothing there's not enough there uh,
not enough active chemicals left within the battery to keep
it going. So you know, you might have a battery
like you may have used a flashlight, where it starts
going dim before it goes out. It's because the battery
is able to still generate some electricity flow, but not
(05:04):
enough to continuously power that that bulb. Now, that's if
you have what's called a primary cell battery or a
single use battery. But there are also batteries called secondary
cell batteries. These are rechargeable batteries. You're essentially reversing the
chemical reaction by reversing the flow of electricity. That's right,
You reverse the polarity. So you just think about it
(05:27):
working the opposite way. Whereas when the battery is discharging,
you're having electrons flowing out of one end to the
other and doing work on the way. Uh. To make
it go back the other way, you put work into
the battery to force electrons to go back from the
cathode to the anode. Right now. The issue here is
that as you do this over and over, you start
(05:47):
to lose some of the active ingredients inside this battery
and they start degrading. Yeah, so eventually the battery will
still be dead, or at least will be It will
store only enough juice for it to be moderately useful,
and then you have to replace it with a new
battery anyway, But it does mean you can reuse the
same battery multiple times before that actually happens. It's not
(06:10):
like you know, most batteries have lots of cycles charge
cycles they can go through before they're they're inactive. But yes,
that that is the major difference. So a primary cell,
once it's used up, that's it. You cannot recharge it.
You've got to toss it away, especially since most of
these chemicals when they're done are corrosive and will eventually
(06:32):
start to eat through the casing of the battery. Itself
and can cause damage to people in property. Well, when
you think about a battery, it's kind of amazing that
they're as safe as they are because what is a battery. Well,
it's a huge amount of potential energy stored up into
a tight little space. Yeah. Yeah, you've got to essentially
was amounts to a paste that can create this this
(06:56):
chemical reaction. Although this is why, i mean, one of
the reasons why you don't generally want to apply say
fire to batteries. Oh yeah, and why sometimes batteries can
catch on fire. Sure, yeah, yeah. There's also issue with
other basic things in electronics, Like you've probably heard the
term resistance. Uh, generally, we we talked about resistance in
the way that that something will start to generate heat
(07:18):
because there's there's not a perfect path for the electrons
to flow through. There's going to be some energy lost
in the form of heat. And uh, if you're charging
a a secondary cell battery for too long, or if
you have placed a rechargeable battery in the wrong type
of charger, then you can overcharge one of those batteries
and you end up generating a lot of resistance and
(07:41):
damaging the battery in the process. Which could result in
something as catastrophic as a fire, or it could just
significantly decrease the useful life of that rechargeable battery. Either way,
it's a negative outcome. This one is obviously way more
negative than the other one. But yeah, that's an issue. Okay,
So let's talk about what are the main ways of
(08:03):
making batteries today. But main oh you mean like the
different types. Yeah, sure, okay, So we got alkaline cell.
Those are the probably the those are the most common. Yeah,
if you go out to the store and buy you
some double A batteries to probably alkaline cell. If it
if it doesn't say rechargeable on them, then they are
most likely alkaline batteries. There are also lithium non rechargeable
(08:24):
batteries those those do exist too, so those are also
primary cell batteries. But uh, you know, if it in general,
you're gonna see alkaline ones which are using sodium hydroxide
or potassium hydroxide as the electrolyte and like we said,
not rechargeable. They produce about one point five four volts
and the chemicals created as the battery produces electricity are corrosive.
(08:46):
These are the ones that are gonna eat through that
zinc case eventually and possibly cause damage. They have to
be really careful when when you get rid of them.
They are the most widely used batteries in the world.
They're inexpensive relatively speaking. I know that anyone who has
gone to a convenience store because they desperately needed to
get those double A batteries for something or or mine
(09:08):
is always getting like the nine volt battery for the
smoke detector. When I realized that, oh it's beeping, I
need to go out and get a battery in the
closest place is this is this convenience store, then it
feels like it's the most expensive thing I've ever seen
in my life. But in general, they're They're much more
practical and cheap than say, the chargeable batteries often are okay.
But let's say you go to traffic court and you
(09:28):
do what they actually tell you to do, but nobody does,
which is take the battery out of your cell phone.
What's in that battery? Ah, So those are lithium ion batteries.
These are the batteries that okay, so weill. Alkaline batteries
are technically the most popular batteries in the world. The
ones that people are having more and more experience with
these days tend to be in the lithium ion side
(09:49):
because it would be a huge pain in the butt
to have to change out the double as in your
cell phone. Yeah, not that there aren't phones out there
that do that kind of thing. Certainly, you know you
need a good burner phone then, obviously. But now lithium
ion batteries are rechargeable. They are UM. They are often
found in things like computers and electronics UM as well
as other places. They store about hundred fifty what hours
(10:12):
per kilograms, so their energy density is pretty good, especially
compared to some of the other batteries. Lithium ion are
sort of the primo consumer rechargeable batteries these days. Yeah,
there there are some people would say this is the
barrier that's holding us back. Right the lithium ion is
as good as we can do right now. But there
(10:32):
are people who are working on creating better battery technologies
in the future, and we're going to talk a lot
about those in just a little bit. But right now,
lithium I on I mean, that's when you look at
the different kinds of batteries that are out there, and
the energy density energy densities. Really we're talking about how
much energy is packed in per unit of weight, and
when it comes to packing a punch, lithium ion has
(10:52):
one of the bigger punches in the game. Yeah. Even then,
it's typically described in terms of a few hundred watt
hours per legram. Yeah, you're not. We're not at a
point where it's equivalent to say, the amount of power
you would generate from an internal combustion engine with a car.
But but the voltage isn't bad for these guys compared
to the size of those alkaline batteries. We're talking like
(11:15):
four volts here. So, uh, that's for for a regular
lithium ion cell. Okay, But let's say I pop open
the hood of my old car, my old, rusty, beat
up car, and look at the battery in there. What
is it? Probably that's more than likely than not a
lead acid battery. So that we're not talking about electric
vehicles or hybrid vehicles necessarily here, but in your classic
(11:38):
internal combustion engine that needs to have a battery so
that it can fire off the spark plugs and and
also operate all the cabin electronics. That kind of stuff.
You're talking about a lead acid battery. These do not
have a very good energy density. No, not at all
hours per kilogram. Compare that back to the lithium ion.
It's just not doesn't pack a huge wallum. No, What
(11:59):
these things are really good at is hanging out and
then giving you a big jolt right when you need it. Yeah,
and a last a really long time, and you know
it's it's another one of those things where if you
start to run out of juice, you really need to
go and get a new battery. You're not going to
be recharging these like I'm sure most of us have
(12:19):
been a situation either where we had to get a
jump start from someone or we helped someone else get
a jump start from our vehicles. So usually that means
you just give it enough electricity for the vehicle to
to start up so you can get it to the
closest place where you can get a replacement battery. But yeah,
lead acid, and you know it's pretty much what sounds like.
You've got some electrodes made out of lead and you've
(12:40):
got sulfuric acid as a as a component. So this
is also a battery you do not want to bust
open Um, it's got calastic material and don't give it
to your baby to play with. No, this is dangerous stuff.
After that, you've also got nickel based batteries, don't you
like You used to have nickel cadmium a lot. Now
you've got nickel metal hydra yep. And these are often
(13:01):
used in hybrid vehicles. They use rare earth materials. We
talked a lot about that in our last episode about
solar powered vehicles, the idea of rare earth elements and
why that's such a big issue in electronics. Uh, it's
a big issue with batteries as well. There are a
lot of different batteries that are reliant upon some form
of rare earth element in as part of the components.
(13:23):
They also combine these rare earth elements with some some
stuff that's a lot more common, like nickel being a
big one, aluminum, cobalt, other stuff as well. They store
about a hundred wide hours per kilogram, so again not
as energy dense as lithium ion, but much more so
than say lead acid. And they also are rechargeable, so
you can just uh buy these there. There are several
(13:47):
that are in the same kind of style as alkaline batteries.
So most of the time, when you see a rechargeable
battery that's like a double a rechargeable battery ends up
being a nickel metal h hydride. So those are your
basic types. I mean there are others as well. Of course,
we didn't even go into the historic batteries like voltaic
(14:07):
piles and all that kind of stuff, which is fascinating.
You don't really use those to power a laptop. Might
you might you might use it as a science fair project,
right to build to build your own homemade battery, But yeah,
it's not something that's going to be used in any
real capacity for modern conveniences or anything like that. Okay, well,
let's talk about the problems that exist with the batteries
(14:30):
we have today and how could batteries be improved for
future uses. So that energy density thing, yeah, that's a
big one. That's a big limiting factor. It's big, especially
for say like hybrid or electric vehicles. Sure. Yeah, if
you you know, one of the complaints a lot of
people had, or at least one of the things like
a misgiving people have about electric vehicles is this idea
(14:52):
of I don't want to be driving this vehicle and
then run out of charge and then be stranded somewhere. Uh.
And then even if I'm someplace where I can plug in,
I'm stuck there for hours on end until I get
a full charge. Never mind the fact that most of
us drive well below the driving range of one of
these electrical vehicles in our day to day activities. So
(15:12):
if you're talking about using an electric vehicle for just
your daily driving, like you know, you're driving around from
to and from work, that kind of stuff, generally speaking,
you're pretty much okay because you can just recharge at
night and you're fine. It's when you're when you're want
to go on an extended trip then it might become
more of a concern. I think. Also, most people who
have who have driven a gas engine car have at
(15:35):
some point run out of gas because they really thought
that they should go to Starbucks first before they hit
the gas station. He doesn't, He doesn't mean empty, E
means enough. Yeah, nobody who used to say that until
you had to call Triple Aid help him out too
many times? One too many times? Yeah. Um. So yeah.
Here's the thing though, with energy densities, there's only so
(15:56):
much we can do because unlike microprocessors, you know, you
know More's law, this idea that within every two years
or so, the power of microprocessors doubles because we are
able to cram more discrete components onto these these chips
were able to manaturize. That doesn't apply to batteries because
we're talking about chemical reactions, not some sort of electronic circuitry.
(16:20):
So we can make electronics more efficient so they sip
less power, but we can't, you know, just make a
magical maturization machine for batteries and get the same kind
of advances that we've seen on the electronic side. Although
certainly different chemicals are more efficient at creating these reactions,
so we can't. We can't make chemicals. We can't make
these same chemicals better at what they do necessarily, but
(16:43):
we can experiment with different chemicals and different approaches to
making these chemicals and and exploiting different physical properties of
materials to make better batteries. In any case, it's going
to be really hard to create a battery that comes
close to compete eating with the energy density of gasoline. Yes, um,
that's one of the main appeals of gasoline today. I mean,
(17:07):
it's it's cheap and it's got great energy density. So
the energy density of gasoline is something like twelve thousand
or thirteen thousand watt hours per kilogram. Compare that to
the lithium ion batteries, which store, as we said, like
a hundred and fifty or maybe a few hundred watt
hours per kilogram. So it's a huge difference. If you're
(17:28):
trying to make electric cars an attractive proposition, increasing the
energy density of electric batteries is huge. What you end
up with is this large, extremely heavy brick in your
car that won't let you drive as far as the
tank of gasoline. Now, as you've said, that's exactly it's
exactly right that people have misconceptions about the range anxiety
(17:49):
of electric cars. Well, there's also there's also the issue
that you're talking about twelve thousand and thirteen thousand watt
hours per kilogram energy density of gasoline, but an internal
combustion in and is not as as efficient as an
electric motor. That's exactly right. So a lot of that
energy is lost as heat in an internal combustion engine.
But still that difference is gigantic, and we'll talk about
(18:12):
some ways that energy density gap might be closed by
different battery designs. But we've still got a lot more
problems that batteries have that we have to contend with.
Some depending upon what approach we use, some of these
are bigger concerns than others. Some batteries are more prone
to some of these problems than others. So one of
them is the self discharge problem. So this is where
(18:33):
you've taken a battery of the package, you put it
into some form of electronics, and it starts to essentially
leak electricity. It's it's it's leaking its effectiveness, and depending
upon the type of battery, that could be significant. We're
talking like up to in the first day losing the charge,
so it goes from a charge to eighty percent charge.
(18:55):
You haven't even turned anything on, You've just plugged the
battery in and let sit just from the circuit being completed. Now,
not all of them are are prone to this. Nickel
metal hydride are particularly vulnerable to self discharge, but not
everything is. And if you if you are storing stuff
in a cool not cold, but a cool environment, then
(19:16):
you you slow this down because we're talking about chemical reactions.
Chemical reactions tend to happen faster when you apply heat,
and they tend to be slower when you take heat away.
But you don't want to put batteries in the fridge
or freezer because then you just slow it down so
much that it's going to take you forever for the
juice to start flowing when you actually want to use
(19:36):
the batteries. I've heard this myth before that you should
put batteries in the freezer to prolong their life. Apparently
that is not true. In fact, the battery manufacturers have
facts on their website telling you not to do this
because it actually doesn't improve it. And in fact, if
you put a battery in the freezer, they say that
the condensation that forms on it could cause damage to
the batteries and in fact cut down on its its
(19:58):
life well. And when you see with electric vehicle producers,
one of the things they talk about is testing the
electrical vehicles in uh in cold environments because there's this
concern that the cold weather would retard the function of
the battery, so you wouldn't get your vehicle started when
you would want to. So let's say you're heading out
the door to go to work and you have to wait,
you know, a half hour for the car to warm
(20:20):
up enough to be able to drive it. That would
be another example. Then you have the memory effect. This
is when you recharge a device, and each time you're
recharging it, it's not quite going all the way back
to percent normally because you have the old rechargeable batteries
really had this problem where let's say I've got my
(20:40):
cell phone and I plug it in and I let
it charge up to and I think that's good enough.
I need my phone. I'm going on the way way,
and I unplugged it and I go on, I'm married
a little way. The next time I plug in my
cell phone, it charges up, but now the new one
is just the percent of what it's original full capacity was,
So it gets up eighty percent of its original full capacity,
(21:02):
and that's the stops. Yeah, I don't I don't have
access to that extra power. So now I'm saying, you know,
this phone used to give me like twenty four hours
of service before I had to plug it in, but
now I'm only getting like eighteen or sixteen hours or whatever. Um.
That would be the memory effect, And with some batteries
(21:22):
it's worse than with others. There are other things that
come into play here. Sometimes it's not just the battery.
There might be a sensor in the electronic device you're using,
and that can get out of whack where the sensor
actually shuts down the recharging. So it's trying to avoid
overcharging the battery, right, So the sensor shuts it down,
the battery has not received a full charge. Uh, and
(21:44):
it's because the sensor needs to be recalibrated. Usually you
have to, you know, reset a phone or other computer device,
sometimes completely power it down and power back up and
then normally will reset. That's usually one of the basic
things that happens with electronics. That's also an issue. So
sometimes it's not just the battery. Sometimes it's the electron
device itself. And then we have overcharging, which I've already
mentioned this idea that you have poured too much energy
(22:07):
into the battery in some way or another and that
ends up damaging the battery, sometimes catastrophically. More often than not,
you've just reduced the useful life of the battery. Uh.
Then there's charging cycles. This is kind of similar to
the memory effect. It's it's really the number of times
you can fully drain and fully recharge a battery and
still like and expect it to give you useful operating life.
(22:29):
So you usually get this in the number of thousands.
Like again, that's that's the degradation of the chemicals over
a period of time, right. Yeah, so even even rechargeable
batteries are not going to stay absolutely perfect forever. They're
They're going to degrade, some more slowly than others, and
eventually you will need to replace them, which is why
you get people who like, um, not to pick on
(22:52):
a particular company, but people who talk about Apple products
saying that, you know, they make the batteries inaccessible. There's
no way to get in there and change the battery. Now,
for most of us, we're probably going to upgrade our
phones more frequently than it would require you to worry
about the battery. Yeah, so it's you know, especially when
it comes to Apple, which wants you to re re
(23:15):
upgrade your phones twice as frequently as anybody else does.
Although I'm an Android user and a new Android phone
comes out every week, so I get phone in v
all the time. So yeah, that's that's another issue. Then. Um,
you know, it's just again, we don't have a magic
a magic switch to make battery technology catch up to
other types of tech that we rely upon in our electronics.
(23:38):
So this is one of those conversations that's on going about, Hey,
my my computer can do all this amazing stuff, why
have it batteries uh kept pace right right? Well, one
of the reasons is, as we talked about before, you
can't just keep scaling down. It's not a direct line
of descent. It's not like you're just doing what you
(23:58):
did before, but acting a little bit more power into it.
You have to explore new areas of chemical configuration. And
there is one big one that people have talked about,
especially in the area of energy density, and that's lithium
air batteries. Yeah. Now this is some crazy energy density.
We're actually talking about approaching the energy density of something
(24:21):
like gasoline. Yeah, lithium air based batteries have the potential
to offer way way more energy density than standard lithium
ion batteries. In fact, I've seen claims that they could
reach up to say eleven thousand watt hours per kilogram. Now,
remember the watt hours per kilogram of gasoline. We're just
like twelve or thirteen thousands, so that's really close. And
(24:43):
then when you coupled that with the fact that electrical
motors are actually much more efficient, as we said, than
internal combustion engines. You've actually got a more efficient total
system there, and that's really cool. Okay, so how does
it work? I got this. So we're talking about the
process of oxidation. This is the same process where we
see rust forming. I mean, you know, it's the whole
(25:05):
oxidizing thing, except in the case of lithium, we're talking
about electrons being released as part of this process, and
so that is where you've got the anode. And then
it's the same model as old batteries. You're just talking
about different chemicals. Yeah, as you still have an anode
and you still have a cathode. You still have electrics,
electrons being generated and released or at least released really
(25:26):
is what. You're not generating them, you're just releasing them
into the wild. So the anode side is the oxidation
of lithium, and then the cathode side is where you
have a reduction of oxygen and that induces the electron flow. So, um,
it's not not the not the easiest thing in the
world to do. We've got lots of different groups working
on lithium air batteries. But it's not it's difficult to
(25:48):
make a stable one. Uh, it's more than difficult. I mean,
it's a real problem right now. In fact, I've seen
it described as it's not just one research problem, it's
multiple research problems at the same time. But yeah, like
we said, people are actually working on it. IBM has
a lithium air battery research project. It's called Battery five hundred,
(26:09):
and their stated goals are to create a powerful new
battery for electric cars that is a as good as gasoline,
b gets five hundred miles or eight hundred kilometers range
per charge, and see has a total electric drive system
comparable in size, weight and price to a gasoline drive train.
Though they admit that quote this is a very high risk,
(26:32):
very high reward, long horizon project, so they're saying in
their sort of mission statement that's public facing, that this
may very well not work. It's just sort of research
into something that would be a big score if it does.
With the timetable they gave was three years basic science
to know what the commercial applications would be before around. So, yeah,
(26:58):
this is one of those things that could end paying off.
But it may be that we aren't able to find
a practical means of harnessing it. We know it works.
The principle is sound. It's just making it practical so
that we can actually harness it. That's the problem. Yeah,
they're just all kinds of problems with implementing this. One
that I read about is the fact that lithium has
(27:20):
an explosive reaction with water when they come in contact, right, Yeah,
which is problematic because well, water exists as vapor in
the air, and if you're talking about exposing this lithium
to the air, that that's a problem. Becomes an external
combustion engine. Yeah, so you'd obviously need to find ways
around that, and they're just it's really tricky from what
(27:43):
I understand. Well, then you also have another potential lithium solution,
lithium silicon batteries. So your lithium ion batteries usually they
have graphine as part of the components. Not graphine, Uh
is okay, but silicon actually is able to to hold
a much larger energy density than the graphine based lithium
(28:05):
ion batteries. It's hypothetically like ten times as energy densit.
So yeah, you've got you know, if you're talking a
hundred fifty hours. Now you're talking, you know, a thousand,
five hundred one hours. That's that's a big leap. But
there's another problem, which is that when silicon starts to
when when you're charging this battery, the silicon starts to
swell to it's normal volume. So designing a battery that
(28:27):
can handle that, the fact that you have a component
that's going to grow in size by volume, uh, that
is an engineering problem too, although there is research that
is looking at making this possible. Um A team from
Stanford has been working on a pomegranate inspired design wherein
nanoparticles of silken are encased in carbon capsules and then
(28:50):
kind of clustered together like seeds in tougher carbon rhymes.
And this helps a protect that that's super expansive and
and also very brittle silicon from from bursting out of
the battery or falling apart during charging, and be minimizes
its contact with the electrolyte, which helps prevent build up
of this like reaction gunk on the anode that will
degrade the battery's performance pretty quickly. Right right, Yeah, it's
(29:13):
kind of think about it as uh, some folks get
stuck in the doorway, and you can't have as many
electrons passed through the path because you've got this build up,
all right, So we got we got pomegrads, so we
got our fruit based batteries, as I understand it, because
I was totally listening just then, though not the only
batteries from the produce section, as you will soon learn.
But no, no, Lauren, I know that you also have
(29:35):
something in here about liquid based batteries. Are you telling
me we're like, we're going going back in time, because
I'm thinking like the ancient batteries here, the heady yeah,
or even voltaic piles and things like that. I kind
of like that, except a lot more efficient and less dangerous. UM.
These are sometimes called flow batteries, and the idea here
is that you've got two chemical storage tanks hooked up
(29:56):
to an electrochemical conversion hardware p thing UM and it's
a technical thing, is the very technical term. So the
fluids are pumped through and then the amount of energy
that can be stored is really only limited by the
capacity of your tanks. UM. This tech is really being
looked at for for solar and wind energy kind of
(30:16):
applications in order to to make them cheaper. You know,
solid batteries are so expensive and so heavy, and you
need a lot of them to effectively store the energy
that's created through these these greener methods, and this, this
could kind of solve that. Traditionally, the um electrolytes in
flow batteries have been expensive metals like vanadium. I don't
even know how to say that. I didn't look at Yeah,
(30:39):
I'm pretty sure that's what Captain America's shields made out of.
That's vibranium wat brain stuff. I'm looking this up because
I don't believe it's real. No, it's real. You're right,
it's unobtainium. Now, these things are in use right now
and in like Japan and China to help manage the
power grids, so they are in fact effective, but at
the price of some seven d dollars per kill a
(31:00):
lot hour of storage capacity, like on the average, it
can go way up from there. Um. According to the U.
S Department of Energy, they need to hit more like
a hundred dollars per kill a lot hour to make
wind farms really economical. Now, all right, so you talked
about pomegranates, and now on the next note on our list,
here I see rue barb. What a potato battery. It's
(31:24):
not really ruebar but it's just similar to a molecule
found in rubarb. It's almost identical to a molecule that
occurs naturally in ruebarb. This is research out of Harvard.
They they've been making a carbon based molecule called quine on. Yes,
I'm gonna say quine on um. It's found in green
plants and crude oil and can be pretty cheaply, uh,
(31:46):
turned into this thing that you can use. UM that
the molecules in this case are housed in water, which
makes the batteries pretty non flammable, which is excellent all around. UM.
It's it's performing as well as the vanadium so far
and isn't degrading after repeated cycles. UM, although it needs
a whole lot more testing. I mean they've they've got
like a hundred cycles under their belt, and they would
(32:07):
need thousands and thousands too. So the vanadium, the big
problem there was that they're really expensive. You're talking about
seven per kill a one hour or something like that.
How do how does this approach measure up compared to that?
According to the Harvard team, that could reduce storage costs
to dollars per kill a lot hour. How does that
(32:28):
compare to a potato battery. I don't know. Well, we'll
get right favorably. What is what is the price per
pound of rhubarb versus potatoes? Rubarb is fairly expensive, but
I think they can grow it in many home gardens.
We're looking at a molecule here that we can synthesize. Okay,
we have the technology. What about the problem of disposing
(32:50):
of batteries because batteries, like we've been talking about, tend
to have things in them that you just don't want
to get in to say, your water supply or in
your body. Yeah, and there are certain things like there
are people who who their lives depend upon medical devices
that are implanted inside their bodies that require some form
of power, usually provided by a battery. So what solutions
(33:12):
are we looking at? Their researchers are indeed working on it.
There's a team out of Carnegie Melon that's created a
a sodium ion battery using the melanin from cuttlefish inc.
For the anode and magnese oxide is the cathode that
the whole thing breaks down into non toxic materials in
the body. So you know, like like imagine being able
to to swallow a smart pill that can release drugs
(33:33):
after it's cleared the stomach. The stomach, of course, will
destroy a lot of medications. That's why, for example, UM
patients who have arthritis have to go into a doctor's
office for injections. And then this way you could actually
get more of the effective ingredient in that medication to
enter your system. You wouldn't lose so much of it
through you know, just going through your stomach, which also
(33:54):
means that you could have a much more controlled dosage,
which also means that you have reduced side effect if
there are any. So yeah, there are a lot of
reasons why this would be a huge benefit to medicine,
right or you know, okay, forget about wearable technology. What
if you had swallowable fitness deck. Okay, so yeah, like
what if what if I could put something inside me
(34:14):
that can completely monitor everything from caloric burn to caloric intake.
Like there are devices out there right now that say
they can, uh, they can measure your caloric intake, but really,
the technology right now for us to be able to
measure that noninvasively exists, but exists in like big old
(34:34):
macro bulk format. It's usually a machine where you you
connect a device that's using light to go through your
your veins and say your ear lobe or your fingertips.
So that's not something that you can easily wear, but
this could actually change that, yeah, or something that dispenses
emergency medication. Like for example, if if your doctor knows
(34:56):
that you are prone to epileptic seizures, you could have
something it that could be triggered by that seizure to
control it for you right away. Um or hey, outside
the human body, these things could be useful as well,
like like if you have an oil spill or another disaster,
the whole army of these things could be dropped into
the site and they would biodegrade into something that isn't harmful,
(35:17):
isn't causing more harm right right, So it's not it's
not further damaging the environment, and yet it's letting you
keep an eye on what the conditions are that that
definitely does have its use sure, And and this isn't
the only that this Carnegie melon cuttlefish batteries is not
the only one in development. All of the ones that
I created are food based, aren't they wrote about it.
(35:40):
This car's got forty cuttlefish power. I absolutely want that measurement.
Cuttle Fish are not for eating, there for cuddling. That's
very true. Then you don't eat cuttle fish. They're very nice. Um,
I get really upset about cuttlefish. Okay, But so there's
a team from the University of Illinois that is using
(36:01):
a magnesium foil, anodes and cathodes made of stuff like iron, a, tungsten,
all of which are non toxic in low concentrations UM
and a staline electrolyte, and biodegradable packaging. They're they're estimating
that that with this particular configuration, realistically, with with further
research and improvements, could could create a quarter centimeter square
(36:23):
by one micrometer thick battery that could power a wireless
implant for an entire day. Wow, that's pretty incredible stuff.
That's that's thinner than a sheet of paper. It's tiny.
Have you heard Have you heard about the Robust Affordable
Next Generation Energy Storage Systems a k A. Robust Affordable
(36:46):
Next Generation Energy Storage Systems program also known as RANGE. Yeah,
thank you for repeating exactly what I said. Adding program
at the bottom of it. Yeah. I read an interview
with r PASE Deputy Director Dr Cheryl Martin from last
year and she mentioned some cool battery innovation ideas that
are going on under the Range program, and that's having
(37:08):
to do with vehicles mostly um So, she talks about
the idea of like doubling the role of a battery
in an electric car, so it's not just a battery,
it's not just providing energy, but it also plays some
other important function within the structure of the car that
helps you cut down on the total weight of the car. Say,
for example, it absorbs impact and crashes. She actually talked
(37:29):
about that there was a project led by oak Ridge
National Laboratory where they're creating an impact resistant electro light.
So when the battery gets hit with a strong force,
like if you're in a car crash, the liquid electro
light suddenly thickens up and it absorbs the energy from
the impact. You know. I've also heard interesting ideas of
(37:51):
incorporating new battery uh structures, so it's using using the
same chemicals essentially as as sort of the stuff you're
talking about here, but actually incorporating it so it ends
up like molded to the frame of the vehicle itself. Yeah,
like new solid state batteries to sort of fit the
natural structure of the car instead of just being this
(38:12):
big heavy brick sitting in part of the car. That's
pretty cool. Or on a much smaller scale, if you
use our good friend now technology in order to uh
create materials that have a a larger surface area, then
you can you can improve some of the efficiency of
some of this stuff. Yeah, and again a lot of
the improvements and batteries aren't from the batteries themselves, Like,
(38:32):
it's figuring out how to make more efficient electronics that
make better use of the power, so that if we
do get to a point where we have a real
battery breakthrough, like some of the ones that are potentially
could happen based on the ones we've we've just been
talking about, we're really sitting pretty then, But what about
electronics that don't need batteries at all? So are we
going what back to plugging it into the wall as
(38:53):
I was, you're talking about No, we're talking about wireless electronics,
talking about like Tesla podcast towers. No, no, no, we're
not talking about say, inductive coupling or any of these
things we've talked about before, where it is possible to say,
charge a device without necessarily touching it. Sure, sure an
induction I mean, for examples of those medical applications that
(39:15):
we were talking about. A moment ago is really great
for stuff that could be implanted near the skin, But
if you needed to swallow it or put it behind
a bone or something like that, that would make it
really difficult to use. Right, So that's not what we're
talking about. Instead, we're talking about very small devices that
work on what's called ambient back scatter. So last year,
researchers at the University of Washington announced they had created
(39:38):
a group of small communication devices that did not require batteries,
but they were able to transmix signals based on ambient
back scatter from the transmissions that are going on all
around us. So you've got TV towers broadcasting signals and
your wireless router broadcasting signals. Basically, they designed them in
such a way to reflect ambient train mission signals for
(40:01):
their own purposes, to sort of create a Morse code
of automatic reflection without having local power, so they can
these little devices can communicate with devices around them. Now,
this probably can't be translated into any big power hungry
device like a laptop or a smartphone. But it might
be really useful for small sensors and communication tags. That
(40:23):
would be really important if we were ever going to create, saying,
the Internet of things in our home. Now, this really
reminds me of, uh, you know if I don't know
if you guys ever built your own radio, but the
old crystal radio kits, there are some where you could
just you build a little crystal radio and you didn't
have a battery, You had no power source whatsoever, except
you use the antenna and the antenna would pick up
(40:46):
radio waves and that would generate just enough power to
operate the radio itself. It doesn't need another source. This
sounds to me like engineers have figured out a similar
way based on that same principle to make actual use
of that. Because the little radio transmitter you could make
where it doesn't need external power, it required an incredibly
(41:07):
long antenna to work properly. Like it was not something
that was practical. It was more of a here's how
you can learn about electronics and radios, but not like
this is going to be something that you're not going
to be jamming in your in your dorm room listening
to Pink Floyd on this The models that I saw
were less than palm size, a few inches across. Yeah,
(41:32):
that's pretty cool. Yeah. One of the really cool things
about it that I saw on the video demonstrating this
idea was that it could make in a way ideas
along these lines, could make a technology I've been wanting
for so long, which is the control f function for
the real world. So like when you have lost your
keys despite having had them in your hands no less
(41:54):
than five minutes ago. Right, Yeah, So the idea they
showed was that say you've got your key is or
maybe your couch stamped with these communication devices. They don't
need to have power batteries or anything. They can just
reflect signals that are ambilently going through your home to
send a signal to your phone that says your keys
are on the couch, right, Like your couch would text
(42:15):
your phone and be like, hey dude, you left your
keys here. Wow, And that's a great I mean, that
would save me so much time and sanity. I would
love that. Well, you know, this has been a fun conversation.
We we definitely acknowledge the fact that batteries have been
kind of a a stumbling block for a lot of
(42:35):
the technology we that could be all around us right
now if it weren't for the fact that it's pretty
power hungry and we don't have the power to supply
to them. But I think also people should remember to
be grateful for how amazing batteries are today. You don't
even think about it. You've got a cell phone that
you can carry around with you without plugging in and
(42:57):
it will work for hours. Our batteries today. So yeah,
we were got to wrap this up. But thank you
for coming along with us on our journey down Electric Avenue,
which actually isn't Atlanta by the way, There is an
Electric Avenue in Atlanta I've been down at. But anyway,
thanks so much for coming along with us. We uh,
(43:19):
we're really excited about these kind of topics, you know,
the challenging things in the future that that seemed to
be pretty simple on the surface, but as you start
to dig down you realize, oh, so these are these
are real you know, science and engineering issues that lots
of smart people are working very hard on to try
and get the next development so that we're not held
(43:41):
back by some fundamental issue from our potential. So if
you guys have any potential electricity joke. If you guys
have any suggestions for future topics of forward thinking, you
should let us know. Send us an email right just
as FW thinking at discovery dot com, or drop us
a line on Twitter, Facebook or Google Plus. Our handle
(44:02):
at all three is f W Thinking and we will
pop to you again really soon. For more on this
topic in the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot
Com brought to you by Toyota Let's Go Places,
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
podcast that looks at the Future says we're gonna rock
down to Electric Avenue and then we'll take a higher
(00:20):
I'm Jonathan and I'm Joe McCormick. That was a good one,
Thank you. It was relevant to today because we're going
to talk about something that has to do with electricity. Yes,
in fact, we're going to talk about batteries and why
you know, I think in any discussion about the future
and we talk about like the amazing electronics we have
(00:40):
right now in the present, there's always this discussion that
happens about why aren't batteries better yet? Yeah, people overlook
the fact that batteries are awesome. They like, they don't
pay attention to batteries being such an integral part of
all the technologies we really enjoy. Well, it's really easy
also to to kind of wench on about how, you know, oh,
(01:03):
my iPhone only keeps a charge for a day. It
keeps a charge for a day, it keeps a charge
at all, Like you can unplug it from the wall
and it still works. Yeah, that's pretty incredible in itself.
I mean, imagine if every electronic device you owned had
to constantly be plugged into the power grid in order
to work, or have an internal combustion engine or something
(01:26):
like that. Everything is, everything is either connected by cables
or has some other form of generating power. But on
the battery lets us store energy for later use, right,
So you don't have to use all this energy now.
You can use it later if you want. You can
use in it, use it at different times later on.
And that that's actually pretty incredible. It it enables all
(01:49):
kinds of things we don't even take the time to
think about. That's right. So batteries they share a lot
in common with another technology, the fuel cell. Fuel cells
are differ from batteries, and that with fuel cells you
keep adding fuel into the compartments of the fuel cell
and then you generate electricity. And you have to keep
filling up the fuel cell with fuel in order for
(02:11):
it to continue to generate electricity. Batteries have an electrochemical
reaction at the heart of them, just like a fuel
cell does, but everything is contained within the battery itself. Right.
Batteries are, at bottom, I would say, a good way
to put it, Is there an easy way to get
electricity from chemistry? Yes? Yeah, So you have these chemicals
that are reacting to produce an excess of electrons, something
(02:33):
that happens with certain chemical reactions. So you get this
excess of electrons that are gathering on one side of
the battery that's the anode side, and then you have
an electrical difference between the anode side of the battery
and the cathode side of the battery. Right, So if
you think about a battery with two sides, the anode
side has all these little minor symbols on it. Yeah,
(02:54):
and those minor symbols, if they could, would really love
to go to the opposite end of the bat right.
It's it's almost as if you've got a pipe full
of water that's tilted way up on one side at
the an outside and down at the bottom is the
cathode side, right, and there's something that's blocking the water
from running down that pipe. So if you were to
(03:15):
create a pathway, a different path that has lot lots
of little curly cues and crazy straw like uh contraptions
and maybe even a little water wheel in there, but
it led to that bottom side and you allowed gravity
to do the work. The direct route down to the
bottom would be blocked off, but this other pathway would
be open the water would flow through. That's kind of
similar to what happens with a circuit. A circuit is
(03:38):
where you've built a pathway for electrons to move from
the anode to the cathode, so that you have the
electrons moving over into that to fill up the holes,
the positive slots on the opposite side of the battery,
and while they're in motion, you can make them do work,
turn those little water wheels, the little electron wheels. If
you don't if you don't have anything, if you don't
(03:58):
have a load attack to the circuit, you're gonna burn
out that battery really quickly because all all it's doing
is electrons are just going to rush from one side
to the other through this pathway. But by putting a
load on there, then the electrons have to do work
along the way. So that might be something as simple
as lighting an led, or it could be something as
complicated as playing my favorite music on my MP three player,
(04:20):
because that it's drawing its power from the battery. Here's
the thing about these electrochemical results, right you know the
electrochemical reactions. You get these, you get this stuff that
essentially becomes a NERT. Right, it's no longer able to
produce the electrons needed to continue this reaction. You're essentially
using up the useful chemicals within the battery. They're turning
(04:41):
into something that is no longer going to generate those electrons.
This is when the battery goes dead, when you've completely
drained the charge and there's nothing there's not enough there uh,
not enough active chemicals left within the battery to keep
it going. So you know, you might have a battery
like you may have used a flashlight, where it starts
going dim before it goes out. It's because the battery
is able to still generate some electricity flow, but not
(05:04):
enough to continuously power that that bulb. Now, that's if
you have what's called a primary cell battery or a
single use battery. But there are also batteries called secondary
cell batteries. These are rechargeable batteries. You're essentially reversing the
chemical reaction by reversing the flow of electricity. That's right,
You reverse the polarity. So you just think about it
(05:27):
working the opposite way. Whereas when the battery is discharging,
you're having electrons flowing out of one end to the
other and doing work on the way. Uh. To make
it go back the other way, you put work into
the battery to force electrons to go back from the
cathode to the anode. Right now. The issue here is
that as you do this over and over, you start
(05:47):
to lose some of the active ingredients inside this battery
and they start degrading. Yeah, so eventually the battery will
still be dead, or at least will be It will
store only enough juice for it to be moderately useful,
and then you have to replace it with a new
battery anyway, But it does mean you can reuse the
same battery multiple times before that actually happens. It's not
(06:10):
like you know, most batteries have lots of cycles charge
cycles they can go through before they're they're inactive. But yes,
that that is the major difference. So a primary cell,
once it's used up, that's it. You cannot recharge it.
You've got to toss it away, especially since most of
these chemicals when they're done are corrosive and will eventually
(06:32):
start to eat through the casing of the battery. Itself
and can cause damage to people in property. Well, when
you think about a battery, it's kind of amazing that
they're as safe as they are because what is a battery. Well,
it's a huge amount of potential energy stored up into
a tight little space. Yeah. Yeah, you've got to essentially
was amounts to a paste that can create this this
(06:56):
chemical reaction. Although this is why, i mean, one of
the reasons why you don't generally want to apply say
fire to batteries. Oh yeah, and why sometimes batteries can
catch on fire. Sure, yeah, yeah. There's also issue with
other basic things in electronics, Like you've probably heard the
term resistance. Uh, generally, we we talked about resistance in
the way that that something will start to generate heat
(07:18):
because there's there's not a perfect path for the electrons
to flow through. There's going to be some energy lost
in the form of heat. And uh, if you're charging
a a secondary cell battery for too long, or if
you have placed a rechargeable battery in the wrong type
of charger, then you can overcharge one of those batteries
and you end up generating a lot of resistance and
(07:41):
damaging the battery in the process. Which could result in
something as catastrophic as a fire, or it could just
significantly decrease the useful life of that rechargeable battery. Either way,
it's a negative outcome. This one is obviously way more
negative than the other one. But yeah, that's an issue. Okay,
So let's talk about what are the main ways of
(08:03):
making batteries today. But main oh you mean like the
different types. Yeah, sure, okay, So we got alkaline cell.
Those are the probably the those are the most common. Yeah,
if you go out to the store and buy you
some double A batteries to probably alkaline cell. If it
if it doesn't say rechargeable on them, then they are
most likely alkaline batteries. There are also lithium non rechargeable
(08:24):
batteries those those do exist too, so those are also
primary cell batteries. But uh, you know, if it in general,
you're gonna see alkaline ones which are using sodium hydroxide
or potassium hydroxide as the electrolyte and like we said,
not rechargeable. They produce about one point five four volts
and the chemicals created as the battery produces electricity are corrosive.
(08:46):
These are the ones that are gonna eat through that
zinc case eventually and possibly cause damage. They have to
be really careful when when you get rid of them.
They are the most widely used batteries in the world.
They're inexpensive relatively speaking. I know that anyone who has
gone to a convenience store because they desperately needed to
get those double A batteries for something or or mine
(09:08):
is always getting like the nine volt battery for the
smoke detector. When I realized that, oh it's beeping, I
need to go out and get a battery in the
closest place is this is this convenience store, then it
feels like it's the most expensive thing I've ever seen
in my life. But in general, they're They're much more
practical and cheap than say, the chargeable batteries often are okay.
But let's say you go to traffic court and you
(09:28):
do what they actually tell you to do, but nobody does,
which is take the battery out of your cell phone.
What's in that battery? Ah, So those are lithium ion batteries.
These are the batteries that okay, so weill. Alkaline batteries
are technically the most popular batteries in the world. The
ones that people are having more and more experience with
these days tend to be in the lithium ion side
(09:49):
because it would be a huge pain in the butt
to have to change out the double as in your
cell phone. Yeah, not that there aren't phones out there
that do that kind of thing. Certainly, you know you
need a good burner phone then, obviously. But now lithium
ion batteries are rechargeable. They are UM. They are often
found in things like computers and electronics UM as well
as other places. They store about hundred fifty what hours
(10:12):
per kilograms, so their energy density is pretty good, especially
compared to some of the other batteries. Lithium ion are
sort of the primo consumer rechargeable batteries these days. Yeah,
there there are some people would say this is the
barrier that's holding us back. Right the lithium ion is
as good as we can do right now. But there
(10:32):
are people who are working on creating better battery technologies
in the future, and we're going to talk a lot
about those in just a little bit. But right now,
lithium I on I mean, that's when you look at
the different kinds of batteries that are out there, and
the energy density energy densities. Really we're talking about how
much energy is packed in per unit of weight, and
when it comes to packing a punch, lithium ion has
(10:52):
one of the bigger punches in the game. Yeah. Even then,
it's typically described in terms of a few hundred watt
hours per legram. Yeah, you're not. We're not at a
point where it's equivalent to say, the amount of power
you would generate from an internal combustion engine with a car.
But but the voltage isn't bad for these guys compared
to the size of those alkaline batteries. We're talking like
(11:15):
four volts here. So, uh, that's for for a regular
lithium ion cell. Okay, But let's say I pop open
the hood of my old car, my old, rusty, beat
up car, and look at the battery in there. What
is it? Probably that's more than likely than not a
lead acid battery. So that we're not talking about electric
vehicles or hybrid vehicles necessarily here, but in your classic
(11:38):
internal combustion engine that needs to have a battery so
that it can fire off the spark plugs and and
also operate all the cabin electronics. That kind of stuff.
You're talking about a lead acid battery. These do not
have a very good energy density. No, not at all
hours per kilogram. Compare that back to the lithium ion.
It's just not doesn't pack a huge wallum. No, What
(11:59):
these things are really good at is hanging out and
then giving you a big jolt right when you need it. Yeah,
and a last a really long time, and you know
it's it's another one of those things where if you
start to run out of juice, you really need to
go and get a new battery. You're not going to
be recharging these like I'm sure most of us have
(12:19):
been a situation either where we had to get a
jump start from someone or we helped someone else get
a jump start from our vehicles. So usually that means
you just give it enough electricity for the vehicle to
to start up so you can get it to the
closest place where you can get a replacement battery. But yeah,
lead acid, and you know it's pretty much what sounds like.
You've got some electrodes made out of lead and you've
(12:40):
got sulfuric acid as a as a component. So this
is also a battery you do not want to bust
open Um, it's got calastic material and don't give it
to your baby to play with. No, this is dangerous stuff.
After that, you've also got nickel based batteries, don't you
like You used to have nickel cadmium a lot. Now
you've got nickel metal hydra yep. And these are often
(13:01):
used in hybrid vehicles. They use rare earth materials. We
talked a lot about that in our last episode about
solar powered vehicles, the idea of rare earth elements and
why that's such a big issue in electronics. Uh, it's
a big issue with batteries as well. There are a
lot of different batteries that are reliant upon some form
of rare earth element in as part of the components.
(13:23):
They also combine these rare earth elements with some some
stuff that's a lot more common, like nickel being a
big one, aluminum, cobalt, other stuff as well. They store
about a hundred wide hours per kilogram, so again not
as energy dense as lithium ion, but much more so
than say lead acid. And they also are rechargeable, so
you can just uh buy these there. There are several
(13:47):
that are in the same kind of style as alkaline batteries.
So most of the time, when you see a rechargeable
battery that's like a double a rechargeable battery ends up
being a nickel metal h hydride. So those are your
basic types. I mean there are others as well. Of course,
we didn't even go into the historic batteries like voltaic
(14:07):
piles and all that kind of stuff, which is fascinating.
You don't really use those to power a laptop. Might
you might you might use it as a science fair project,
right to build to build your own homemade battery, But yeah,
it's not something that's going to be used in any
real capacity for modern conveniences or anything like that. Okay, well,
let's talk about the problems that exist with the batteries
(14:30):
we have today and how could batteries be improved for
future uses. So that energy density thing, yeah, that's a
big one. That's a big limiting factor. It's big, especially
for say like hybrid or electric vehicles. Sure. Yeah, if
you you know, one of the complaints a lot of
people had, or at least one of the things like
a misgiving people have about electric vehicles is this idea
(14:52):
of I don't want to be driving this vehicle and
then run out of charge and then be stranded somewhere. Uh.
And then even if I'm someplace where I can plug in,
I'm stuck there for hours on end until I get
a full charge. Never mind the fact that most of
us drive well below the driving range of one of
these electrical vehicles in our day to day activities. So
(15:12):
if you're talking about using an electric vehicle for just
your daily driving, like you know, you're driving around from
to and from work, that kind of stuff, generally speaking,
you're pretty much okay because you can just recharge at
night and you're fine. It's when you're when you're want
to go on an extended trip then it might become
more of a concern. I think. Also, most people who
have who have driven a gas engine car have at
(15:35):
some point run out of gas because they really thought
that they should go to Starbucks first before they hit
the gas station. He doesn't, He doesn't mean empty, E
means enough. Yeah, nobody who used to say that until
you had to call Triple Aid help him out too
many times? One too many times? Yeah. Um. So yeah.
Here's the thing though, with energy densities, there's only so
(15:56):
much we can do because unlike microprocessors, you know, you
know More's law, this idea that within every two years
or so, the power of microprocessors doubles because we are
able to cram more discrete components onto these these chips
were able to manaturize. That doesn't apply to batteries because
we're talking about chemical reactions, not some sort of electronic circuitry.
(16:20):
So we can make electronics more efficient so they sip
less power, but we can't, you know, just make a
magical maturization machine for batteries and get the same kind
of advances that we've seen on the electronic side. Although
certainly different chemicals are more efficient at creating these reactions,
so we can't. We can't make chemicals. We can't make
these same chemicals better at what they do necessarily, but
(16:43):
we can experiment with different chemicals and different approaches to
making these chemicals and and exploiting different physical properties of
materials to make better batteries. In any case, it's going
to be really hard to create a battery that comes
close to compete eating with the energy density of gasoline. Yes, um,
that's one of the main appeals of gasoline today. I mean,
(17:07):
it's it's cheap and it's got great energy density. So
the energy density of gasoline is something like twelve thousand
or thirteen thousand watt hours per kilogram. Compare that to
the lithium ion batteries, which store, as we said, like
a hundred and fifty or maybe a few hundred watt
hours per kilogram. So it's a huge difference. If you're
(17:28):
trying to make electric cars an attractive proposition, increasing the
energy density of electric batteries is huge. What you end
up with is this large, extremely heavy brick in your
car that won't let you drive as far as the
tank of gasoline. Now, as you've said, that's exactly it's
exactly right that people have misconceptions about the range anxiety
(17:49):
of electric cars. Well, there's also there's also the issue
that you're talking about twelve thousand and thirteen thousand watt
hours per kilogram energy density of gasoline, but an internal
combustion in and is not as as efficient as an
electric motor. That's exactly right. So a lot of that
energy is lost as heat in an internal combustion engine.
But still that difference is gigantic, and we'll talk about
(18:12):
some ways that energy density gap might be closed by
different battery designs. But we've still got a lot more
problems that batteries have that we have to contend with.
Some depending upon what approach we use, some of these
are bigger concerns than others. Some batteries are more prone
to some of these problems than others. So one of
them is the self discharge problem. So this is where
(18:33):
you've taken a battery of the package, you put it
into some form of electronics, and it starts to essentially
leak electricity. It's it's it's leaking its effectiveness, and depending
upon the type of battery, that could be significant. We're
talking like up to in the first day losing the charge,
so it goes from a charge to eighty percent charge.
(18:55):
You haven't even turned anything on, You've just plugged the
battery in and let sit just from the circuit being completed. Now,
not all of them are are prone to this. Nickel
metal hydride are particularly vulnerable to self discharge, but not
everything is. And if you if you are storing stuff
in a cool not cold, but a cool environment, then
(19:16):
you you slow this down because we're talking about chemical reactions.
Chemical reactions tend to happen faster when you apply heat,
and they tend to be slower when you take heat away.
But you don't want to put batteries in the fridge
or freezer because then you just slow it down so
much that it's going to take you forever for the
juice to start flowing when you actually want to use
(19:36):
the batteries. I've heard this myth before that you should
put batteries in the freezer to prolong their life. Apparently
that is not true. In fact, the battery manufacturers have
facts on their website telling you not to do this
because it actually doesn't improve it. And in fact, if
you put a battery in the freezer, they say that
the condensation that forms on it could cause damage to
the batteries and in fact cut down on its its
(19:58):
life well. And when you see with electric vehicle producers,
one of the things they talk about is testing the
electrical vehicles in uh in cold environments because there's this
concern that the cold weather would retard the function of
the battery, so you wouldn't get your vehicle started when
you would want to. So let's say you're heading out
the door to go to work and you have to wait,
you know, a half hour for the car to warm
(20:20):
up enough to be able to drive it. That would
be another example. Then you have the memory effect. This
is when you recharge a device, and each time you're
recharging it, it's not quite going all the way back
to percent normally because you have the old rechargeable batteries
really had this problem where let's say I've got my
(20:40):
cell phone and I plug it in and I let
it charge up to and I think that's good enough.
I need my phone. I'm going on the way way,
and I unplugged it and I go on, I'm married
a little way. The next time I plug in my
cell phone, it charges up, but now the new one
is just the percent of what it's original full capacity was,
So it gets up eighty percent of its original full capacity,
(21:02):
and that's the stops. Yeah, I don't I don't have
access to that extra power. So now I'm saying, you know,
this phone used to give me like twenty four hours
of service before I had to plug it in, but
now I'm only getting like eighteen or sixteen hours or whatever. Um.
That would be the memory effect, And with some batteries
(21:22):
it's worse than with others. There are other things that
come into play here. Sometimes it's not just the battery.
There might be a sensor in the electronic device you're using,
and that can get out of whack where the sensor
actually shuts down the recharging. So it's trying to avoid
overcharging the battery, right, So the sensor shuts it down,
the battery has not received a full charge. Uh, and
(21:44):
it's because the sensor needs to be recalibrated. Usually you
have to, you know, reset a phone or other computer device,
sometimes completely power it down and power back up and
then normally will reset. That's usually one of the basic
things that happens with electronics. That's also an issue. So
sometimes it's not just the battery. Sometimes it's the electron
device itself. And then we have overcharging, which I've already
mentioned this idea that you have poured too much energy
(22:07):
into the battery in some way or another and that
ends up damaging the battery, sometimes catastrophically. More often than not,
you've just reduced the useful life of the battery. Uh.
Then there's charging cycles. This is kind of similar to
the memory effect. It's it's really the number of times
you can fully drain and fully recharge a battery and
still like and expect it to give you useful operating life.
(22:29):
So you usually get this in the number of thousands.
Like again, that's that's the degradation of the chemicals over
a period of time, right. Yeah, so even even rechargeable
batteries are not going to stay absolutely perfect forever. They're
They're going to degrade, some more slowly than others, and
eventually you will need to replace them, which is why
you get people who like, um, not to pick on
(22:52):
a particular company, but people who talk about Apple products
saying that, you know, they make the batteries inaccessible. There's
no way to get in there and change the battery. Now,
for most of us, we're probably going to upgrade our
phones more frequently than it would require you to worry
about the battery. Yeah, so it's you know, especially when
it comes to Apple, which wants you to re re
(23:15):
upgrade your phones twice as frequently as anybody else does.
Although I'm an Android user and a new Android phone
comes out every week, so I get phone in v
all the time. So yeah, that's that's another issue. Then. Um,
you know, it's just again, we don't have a magic
a magic switch to make battery technology catch up to
other types of tech that we rely upon in our electronics.
(23:38):
So this is one of those conversations that's on going about, Hey,
my my computer can do all this amazing stuff, why
have it batteries uh kept pace right right? Well, one
of the reasons is, as we talked about before, you
can't just keep scaling down. It's not a direct line
of descent. It's not like you're just doing what you
(23:58):
did before, but acting a little bit more power into it.
You have to explore new areas of chemical configuration. And
there is one big one that people have talked about,
especially in the area of energy density, and that's lithium
air batteries. Yeah. Now this is some crazy energy density.
We're actually talking about approaching the energy density of something
(24:21):
like gasoline. Yeah, lithium air based batteries have the potential
to offer way way more energy density than standard lithium
ion batteries. In fact, I've seen claims that they could
reach up to say eleven thousand watt hours per kilogram. Now,
remember the watt hours per kilogram of gasoline. We're just
like twelve or thirteen thousands, so that's really close. And
(24:43):
then when you coupled that with the fact that electrical
motors are actually much more efficient, as we said, than
internal combustion engines. You've actually got a more efficient total
system there, and that's really cool. Okay, so how does
it work? I got this. So we're talking about the
process of oxidation. This is the same process where we
see rust forming. I mean, you know, it's the whole
(25:05):
oxidizing thing, except in the case of lithium, we're talking
about electrons being released as part of this process, and
so that is where you've got the anode. And then
it's the same model as old batteries. You're just talking
about different chemicals. Yeah, as you still have an anode
and you still have a cathode. You still have electrics,
electrons being generated and released or at least released really
(25:26):
is what. You're not generating them, you're just releasing them
into the wild. So the anode side is the oxidation
of lithium, and then the cathode side is where you
have a reduction of oxygen and that induces the electron flow. So, um,
it's not not the not the easiest thing in the
world to do. We've got lots of different groups working
on lithium air batteries. But it's not it's difficult to
(25:48):
make a stable one. Uh, it's more than difficult. I mean,
it's a real problem right now. In fact, I've seen
it described as it's not just one research problem, it's
multiple research problems at the same time. But yeah, like
we said, people are actually working on it. IBM has
a lithium air battery research project. It's called Battery five hundred,
(26:09):
and their stated goals are to create a powerful new
battery for electric cars that is a as good as gasoline,
b gets five hundred miles or eight hundred kilometers range
per charge, and see has a total electric drive system
comparable in size, weight and price to a gasoline drive train.
Though they admit that quote this is a very high risk,
(26:32):
very high reward, long horizon project, so they're saying in
their sort of mission statement that's public facing, that this
may very well not work. It's just sort of research
into something that would be a big score if it does.
With the timetable they gave was three years basic science
to know what the commercial applications would be before around. So, yeah,
(26:58):
this is one of those things that could end paying off.
But it may be that we aren't able to find
a practical means of harnessing it. We know it works.
The principle is sound. It's just making it practical so
that we can actually harness it. That's the problem. Yeah,
they're just all kinds of problems with implementing this. One
that I read about is the fact that lithium has
(27:20):
an explosive reaction with water when they come in contact, right, Yeah,
which is problematic because well, water exists as vapor in
the air, and if you're talking about exposing this lithium
to the air, that that's a problem. Becomes an external
combustion engine. Yeah, so you'd obviously need to find ways
around that, and they're just it's really tricky from what
(27:43):
I understand. Well, then you also have another potential lithium solution,
lithium silicon batteries. So your lithium ion batteries usually they
have graphine as part of the components. Not graphine, Uh
is okay, but silicon actually is able to to hold
a much larger energy density than the graphine based lithium
(28:05):
ion batteries. It's hypothetically like ten times as energy densit.
So yeah, you've got you know, if you're talking a
hundred fifty hours. Now you're talking, you know, a thousand,
five hundred one hours. That's that's a big leap. But
there's another problem, which is that when silicon starts to
when when you're charging this battery, the silicon starts to
swell to it's normal volume. So designing a battery that
(28:27):
can handle that, the fact that you have a component
that's going to grow in size by volume, uh, that
is an engineering problem too, although there is research that
is looking at making this possible. Um A team from
Stanford has been working on a pomegranate inspired design wherein
nanoparticles of silken are encased in carbon capsules and then
(28:50):
kind of clustered together like seeds in tougher carbon rhymes.
And this helps a protect that that's super expansive and
and also very brittle silicon from from bursting out of
the battery or falling apart during charging, and be minimizes
its contact with the electrolyte, which helps prevent build up
of this like reaction gunk on the anode that will
degrade the battery's performance pretty quickly. Right right, Yeah, it's
(29:13):
kind of think about it as uh, some folks get
stuck in the doorway, and you can't have as many
electrons passed through the path because you've got this build up,
all right, So we got we got pomegrads, so we
got our fruit based batteries, as I understand it, because
I was totally listening just then, though not the only
batteries from the produce section, as you will soon learn.
But no, no, Lauren, I know that you also have
(29:35):
something in here about liquid based batteries. Are you telling
me we're like, we're going going back in time, because
I'm thinking like the ancient batteries here, the heady yeah,
or even voltaic piles and things like that. I kind
of like that, except a lot more efficient and less dangerous. UM.
These are sometimes called flow batteries, and the idea here
is that you've got two chemical storage tanks hooked up
(29:56):
to an electrochemical conversion hardware p thing UM and it's
a technical thing, is the very technical term. So the
fluids are pumped through and then the amount of energy
that can be stored is really only limited by the
capacity of your tanks. UM. This tech is really being
looked at for for solar and wind energy kind of
(30:16):
applications in order to to make them cheaper. You know,
solid batteries are so expensive and so heavy, and you
need a lot of them to effectively store the energy
that's created through these these greener methods, and this, this
could kind of solve that. Traditionally, the um electrolytes in
flow batteries have been expensive metals like vanadium. I don't
even know how to say that. I didn't look at Yeah,
(30:39):
I'm pretty sure that's what Captain America's shields made out of.
That's vibranium wat brain stuff. I'm looking this up because
I don't believe it's real. No, it's real. You're right,
it's unobtainium. Now, these things are in use right now
and in like Japan and China to help manage the
power grids, so they are in fact effective, but at
the price of some seven d dollars per kill a
(31:00):
lot hour of storage capacity, like on the average, it
can go way up from there. Um. According to the U.
S Department of Energy, they need to hit more like
a hundred dollars per kill a lot hour to make
wind farms really economical. Now, all right, so you talked
about pomegranates, and now on the next note on our list,
here I see rue barb. What a potato battery. It's
(31:24):
not really ruebar but it's just similar to a molecule
found in rubarb. It's almost identical to a molecule that
occurs naturally in ruebarb. This is research out of Harvard.
They they've been making a carbon based molecule called quine on. Yes,
I'm gonna say quine on um. It's found in green
plants and crude oil and can be pretty cheaply, uh,
(31:46):
turned into this thing that you can use. UM that
the molecules in this case are housed in water, which
makes the batteries pretty non flammable, which is excellent all around. UM.
It's it's performing as well as the vanadium so far
and isn't degrading after repeated cycles. UM, although it needs
a whole lot more testing. I mean they've they've got
like a hundred cycles under their belt, and they would
(32:07):
need thousands and thousands too. So the vanadium, the big
problem there was that they're really expensive. You're talking about
seven per kill a one hour or something like that.
How do how does this approach measure up compared to that?
According to the Harvard team, that could reduce storage costs
to dollars per kill a lot hour. How does that
(32:28):
compare to a potato battery. I don't know. Well, we'll
get right favorably. What is what is the price per
pound of rhubarb versus potatoes? Rubarb is fairly expensive, but
I think they can grow it in many home gardens.
We're looking at a molecule here that we can synthesize. Okay,
we have the technology. What about the problem of disposing
(32:50):
of batteries because batteries, like we've been talking about, tend
to have things in them that you just don't want
to get in to say, your water supply or in
your body. Yeah, and there are certain things like there
are people who who their lives depend upon medical devices
that are implanted inside their bodies that require some form
of power, usually provided by a battery. So what solutions
(33:12):
are we looking at? Their researchers are indeed working on it.
There's a team out of Carnegie Melon that's created a
a sodium ion battery using the melanin from cuttlefish inc.
For the anode and magnese oxide is the cathode that
the whole thing breaks down into non toxic materials in
the body. So you know, like like imagine being able
to to swallow a smart pill that can release drugs
(33:33):
after it's cleared the stomach. The stomach, of course, will
destroy a lot of medications. That's why, for example, UM
patients who have arthritis have to go into a doctor's
office for injections. And then this way you could actually
get more of the effective ingredient in that medication to
enter your system. You wouldn't lose so much of it
through you know, just going through your stomach, which also
(33:54):
means that you could have a much more controlled dosage,
which also means that you have reduced side effect if
there are any. So yeah, there are a lot of
reasons why this would be a huge benefit to medicine,
right or you know, okay, forget about wearable technology. What
if you had swallowable fitness deck. Okay, so yeah, like
what if what if I could put something inside me
(34:14):
that can completely monitor everything from caloric burn to caloric intake.
Like there are devices out there right now that say
they can, uh, they can measure your caloric intake, but really,
the technology right now for us to be able to
measure that noninvasively exists, but exists in like big old
(34:34):
macro bulk format. It's usually a machine where you you
connect a device that's using light to go through your
your veins and say your ear lobe or your fingertips.
So that's not something that you can easily wear, but
this could actually change that, yeah, or something that dispenses
emergency medication. Like for example, if if your doctor knows
(34:56):
that you are prone to epileptic seizures, you could have
something it that could be triggered by that seizure to
control it for you right away. Um or hey, outside
the human body, these things could be useful as well,
like like if you have an oil spill or another disaster,
the whole army of these things could be dropped into
the site and they would biodegrade into something that isn't harmful,
(35:17):
isn't causing more harm right right, So it's not it's
not further damaging the environment, and yet it's letting you
keep an eye on what the conditions are that that
definitely does have its use sure, And and this isn't
the only that this Carnegie melon cuttlefish batteries is not
the only one in development. All of the ones that
I created are food based, aren't they wrote about it.
(35:40):
This car's got forty cuttlefish power. I absolutely want that measurement.
Cuttle Fish are not for eating, there for cuddling. That's
very true. Then you don't eat cuttle fish. They're very nice. Um,
I get really upset about cuttlefish. Okay, But so there's
a team from the University of Illinois that is using
(36:01):
a magnesium foil, anodes and cathodes made of stuff like iron, a, tungsten,
all of which are non toxic in low concentrations UM
and a staline electrolyte, and biodegradable packaging. They're they're estimating
that that with this particular configuration, realistically, with with further
research and improvements, could could create a quarter centimeter square
(36:23):
by one micrometer thick battery that could power a wireless
implant for an entire day. Wow, that's pretty incredible stuff.
That's that's thinner than a sheet of paper. It's tiny.
Have you heard Have you heard about the Robust Affordable
Next Generation Energy Storage Systems a k A. Robust Affordable
(36:46):
Next Generation Energy Storage Systems program also known as RANGE. Yeah,
thank you for repeating exactly what I said. Adding program
at the bottom of it. Yeah. I read an interview
with r PASE Deputy Director Dr Cheryl Martin from last
year and she mentioned some cool battery innovation ideas that
are going on under the Range program, and that's having
(37:08):
to do with vehicles mostly um So, she talks about
the idea of like doubling the role of a battery
in an electric car, so it's not just a battery,
it's not just providing energy, but it also plays some
other important function within the structure of the car that
helps you cut down on the total weight of the car. Say,
for example, it absorbs impact and crashes. She actually talked
(37:29):
about that there was a project led by oak Ridge
National Laboratory where they're creating an impact resistant electro light.
So when the battery gets hit with a strong force,
like if you're in a car crash, the liquid electro
light suddenly thickens up and it absorbs the energy from
the impact. You know. I've also heard interesting ideas of
(37:51):
incorporating new battery uh structures, so it's using using the
same chemicals essentially as as sort of the stuff you're
talking about here, but actually incorporating it so it ends
up like molded to the frame of the vehicle itself. Yeah,
like new solid state batteries to sort of fit the
natural structure of the car instead of just being this
(38:12):
big heavy brick sitting in part of the car. That's
pretty cool. Or on a much smaller scale, if you
use our good friend now technology in order to uh
create materials that have a a larger surface area, then
you can you can improve some of the efficiency of
some of this stuff. Yeah, and again a lot of
the improvements and batteries aren't from the batteries themselves, Like,
(38:32):
it's figuring out how to make more efficient electronics that
make better use of the power, so that if we
do get to a point where we have a real
battery breakthrough, like some of the ones that are potentially
could happen based on the ones we've we've just been
talking about, we're really sitting pretty then, But what about
electronics that don't need batteries at all? So are we
going what back to plugging it into the wall as
(38:53):
I was, you're talking about No, we're talking about wireless electronics,
talking about like Tesla podcast towers. No, no, no, we're
not talking about say, inductive coupling or any of these
things we've talked about before, where it is possible to say,
charge a device without necessarily touching it. Sure, sure an
induction I mean, for examples of those medical applications that
(39:15):
we were talking about. A moment ago is really great
for stuff that could be implanted near the skin, But
if you needed to swallow it or put it behind
a bone or something like that, that would make it
really difficult to use. Right, So that's not what we're
talking about. Instead, we're talking about very small devices that
work on what's called ambient back scatter. So last year,
researchers at the University of Washington announced they had created
(39:38):
a group of small communication devices that did not require batteries,
but they were able to transmix signals based on ambient
back scatter from the transmissions that are going on all
around us. So you've got TV towers broadcasting signals and
your wireless router broadcasting signals. Basically, they designed them in
such a way to reflect ambient train mission signals for
(40:01):
their own purposes, to sort of create a Morse code
of automatic reflection without having local power, so they can
these little devices can communicate with devices around them. Now,
this probably can't be translated into any big power hungry
device like a laptop or a smartphone. But it might
be really useful for small sensors and communication tags. That
(40:23):
would be really important if we were ever going to create, saying,
the Internet of things in our home. Now, this really
reminds me of, uh, you know if I don't know
if you guys ever built your own radio, but the
old crystal radio kits, there are some where you could
just you build a little crystal radio and you didn't
have a battery, You had no power source whatsoever, except
you use the antenna and the antenna would pick up
(40:46):
radio waves and that would generate just enough power to
operate the radio itself. It doesn't need another source. This
sounds to me like engineers have figured out a similar
way based on that same principle to make actual use
of that. Because the little radio transmitter you could make
where it doesn't need external power, it required an incredibly
(41:07):
long antenna to work properly. Like it was not something
that was practical. It was more of a here's how
you can learn about electronics and radios, but not like
this is going to be something that you're not going
to be jamming in your in your dorm room listening
to Pink Floyd on this The models that I saw
were less than palm size, a few inches across. Yeah,
(41:32):
that's pretty cool. Yeah. One of the really cool things
about it that I saw on the video demonstrating this
idea was that it could make in a way ideas
along these lines, could make a technology I've been wanting
for so long, which is the control f function for
the real world. So like when you have lost your
keys despite having had them in your hands no less
(41:54):
than five minutes ago. Right, Yeah, So the idea they
showed was that say you've got your key is or
maybe your couch stamped with these communication devices. They don't
need to have power batteries or anything. They can just
reflect signals that are ambilently going through your home to
send a signal to your phone that says your keys
are on the couch, right, Like your couch would text
(42:15):
your phone and be like, hey dude, you left your
keys here. Wow, And that's a great I mean, that
would save me so much time and sanity. I would
love that. Well, you know, this has been a fun conversation.
We we definitely acknowledge the fact that batteries have been
kind of a a stumbling block for a lot of
(42:35):
the technology we that could be all around us right
now if it weren't for the fact that it's pretty
power hungry and we don't have the power to supply
to them. But I think also people should remember to
be grateful for how amazing batteries are today. You don't
even think about it. You've got a cell phone that
you can carry around with you without plugging in and
(42:57):
it will work for hours. Our batteries today. So yeah,
we were got to wrap this up. But thank you
for coming along with us on our journey down Electric Avenue,
which actually isn't Atlanta by the way, There is an
Electric Avenue in Atlanta I've been down at. But anyway,
thanks so much for coming along with us. We uh,
(43:19):
we're really excited about these kind of topics, you know,
the challenging things in the future that that seemed to
be pretty simple on the surface, but as you start
to dig down you realize, oh, so these are these
are real you know, science and engineering issues that lots
of smart people are working very hard on to try
and get the next development so that we're not held
(43:41):
back by some fundamental issue from our potential. So if
you guys have any potential electricity joke. If you guys
have any suggestions for future topics of forward thinking, you
should let us know. Send us an email right just
as FW thinking at discovery dot com, or drop us
a line on Twitter, Facebook or Google Plus. Our handle
(44:02):
at all three is f W Thinking and we will
pop to you again really soon. For more on this
topic in the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot
Com brought to you by Toyota Let's Go Places,
Fw:Thinking News
Hosts And Creators
Jonathan Strickland
Joe McCormick
Lauren Vogelbaum
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