- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@derp.foo
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@derp.foo
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They designed and built a battery that uses up to 70 per cent less lithium than some competing designs.
This is probably a way of phrasing that means it’s up to 70% less than the absolute most lithium-requiring designs that few/no one uses, and probably only marginally better than most designs actually used. Since they’re very vague about it, I will be sceptical and assume it is way less revolutionary than the headline suggests.
Also, lithium is of pretty low concern when it comes to the materials in current cells. Stuff like cobalt and nickel are more critical and would be larger news.
LFP batteries are both nickel and cobalt free, and are being used in production cars right now (e.g. Tesla model 3/Y standard range options). That technology has long arrived.
Yes, also Lithium Manganese Spinel cells have been around since 1996 and also don’t contain any nickel and cobalt. This is good but many vehicles and devices still use NMC and NCA due to the better specific energy density which is where LFP is limited (but can output more power and is much safer). Tesla (and every EV manufacturer) compromises on the battery depending on what chemistry they use, where if they could reduce the need for expensive metals while maintaining specific energy it would be pretty newsworthy.
Yeah, for cars, energy density is the name of the game. We honestly don’t need more output power and Tesla is not one to care about safety lol.
But indeed for grid storage, those chemistries are much more useful where energy density is less critical.
this work does nothing to address this, and they also include yttrium, because they focus on solid electrolytes for some reason (probably because chemical space is smaller)
Not all batteries even use lithium. So why not just go with 100% less lithium, if that’s the target metric.
SLA doesn’t get enough love. It’s still the most reliable battery type in adverse conditions, especially cold temperatures.
Just has some small issues with size, weight, and energy density.
you would know that if you read the article. they replaced part of lithium in electrolyte with sodium, so that they can use less lithium. the problem is decreased ion mobility ie less power density in real life terms.
Baker and Murugesan both say that lots of work is left to optimise the new battery.
bet
i’m gonna mostly ignore this finding because it sounds like extension of AI hype. real lab work is still absolutely critical in order to make it work
you would know that if you read the article.
I did read it, the snippet I used is from the last part of the article…
And then there’s a hundred other factors. How many charge cycles does it get? Cold weather performance? Can it be mass produced? Does it improve safety over current cells?
It might be useful for what it leads to. Batteries get better because we explore ten different options and then one of them works out. People have gotten less excited over individual discoveries like this for mostly fair reasons. But then there’s another layer of understanding beyond that where you see it as one path of many.
Oohhh, experimental groundbreaking paradigm shifting revolutionary battery design article #3646263859!
Let’s see if this one isn’t total bullshit like the 3646263841 ones before it!
Seriously this is getting ridiculous, I’ve seen these some literally 40 years ago, 99.99% is bullshit, and now I’m seeing literally over 5 new articles per week.
ITS BULLSHIT.
Call me when there is an actual battery based off peer reviewed research that has been successfully tested in production systems by at least 5 major companies. Until then, BULLSHIT.
Call me when there is an actual battery based off peer reviewed research that has been successfully tested in production systems by at least 5 major companies.
While everybody was busy writing bullshit hype articles, we actually got a real revolution with the sodium-ion battery, which you can buy today. It won’t replace Li-ion in terms of energy density, but it’s much more robust, cheap, handles low temperatures, deep discharge and much more charge cycles, making it ideal for off-grid-storage.
I really wish we had tech news that just reports on stuff that’s tested and available for purchase. Things do actually keep improving, but it’s completely drowned out in all the other hype.
And it’s more ethical and environmentally friendlier than Lithium-Ion, right?
Norway has just started a deep sea excavation for cobalt and copper which as I understand (I’m clueless) can be omitted from sodium-ion batteries. The excavation is roughly of the size of equador and will take place in an area that may contain previously unknown lifeforms and critically endangered eco-system.
A paragraph of an article seems to show their non-chalance regarding the ecosystem impacts and unknown side-effects:
“The Norwegian government recognizes that it can’t be sure any mining would be sustainable—it’s not been able to determine the likely environmental impact of extracting minerals in its waters, nor exactly what minerals are there to be found. “We do not currently have the knowledge needed to extract minerals from the seabed in the manner required,” says Næss.”
These are the guys whose grid runs on 99% hydropower but they keep drilling for fossile fuels and now rare earths to export them and in addition are still hunting wales.
So to summarise: I’m very happy that there seems to be an eco friendly battery where its main component is the overambundantly availabe sodium. And the short wikipedia entry seems to reflect, that it’s a more simple tech.
And it’s more ethical and environmentally friendlier than Lithium-Ion, right?
The amount of metallic sodium we need for these purposes dwarfs compared to what we’re using directly as NaCl, that is, table salt, not just in food but primarily industrial processes. Which again dwarfs compared to what we have available (vaguely gestures at the oceans). Sixth most abundant element in the earth’s crust and conveniently most of it is in the form of huge contiguous dried-up oceans buried somewhere.
Thinking of it should become standard practice to actually use the salt that’s accumulated when desalinating to get drinking water, lots of issues with locally increasing the salt level in the ocean even though on a large scale the change in salinity is absolutely negligible.
And then people bitch because That news outlet only reports on decades old advancements. It astounds me that supposed innovation focused people are so short sited and the community just laps up all your shit like a bunch of hogs chasing their last meal. Get a grip and go fuck yourselves, the whole lot of ya.
Where can I buy a sodium-ion battery?
https://m.alibaba.com/trade/search?SearchText=sodium_ion_battery
Almost spent 20 seconds on Google. I’m exhausted
You should ice your hands bro. We need you back in top form.
Straight from Amazon, eBay, Aliexpress and Co. All still early days, but things are ramping up.
That was kind of my point.
I’m sure every now and then we get something great but pretty much all large tech content providers have fallen to pointless screaming fluff bullshit articles, every. single. day.
Actually, make that all content providers. Tech or not doesn’t matter.
The main problem is just that getting a product from a one-off in a lab to a cost-competitive mass-market product is hard and can take a lot of time, to say the least.
For example, Don Sadoway initially published about a molten metal battery in 2009. He gave a Ted talk in 2012. They’ve run into assorted setbacks along the way and are apparently just starting to deploy the first commercial test systems this year.
It’s less that these breakthroughs are bullshit, and more that commercializing these things is hard. The articles about the breakthroughs are often bullshit, though, or at least way too rosy.
I wonder if novelty products can be made with the one-off batteries. Imagine a $3000 flagship phone but it had 3x the battery capacity of the normal flagship phone while having the same weight and volume. I’d bet some people would pay for that.
A few years ago I completely checked out of all the future tech hype. A million videos and articles about the next big thing and nothing ever comes to fruition.
Fuck future tech news, accept current news, praise analytical news based on historic data.
#3646263859
3646263841
so there were 17 (18 if this one is good as well) successful designs, good to know.
Ladies and gentlemen we got him
its all about getting your masters thesis and 🎓
it’s more of continuing series of AI hype
The article says they were searching for new solid electrolytes… which are meant to be incredibly thin, so they contribute a negligible amount to the total lithium need. It’s far more important to look for ones with a high conductivity to compete with liquid electrolytes.
This is like the third different new battery technology I’ve seen today.
I’ll believe it when it’s available for purchase.
Yeah, that’s been my take on pretty much every single battery article I’ve read, going back to the 90s. like 2 out of 100s has actually come to market.
Tech like this needs to perform well, be economical, and scalable for manufacturing. Articles come out usually when tech hits the first one or two, but very rarely do all 3 end up true.
But the ones currently in commercial production didn’t come out of nowhere. There were lots of incremental improvements that didn’t make headlines. What you see in tech articles is just a thin slice of the whole story.
it took 9 months of lab work (by actual skilled material scientists) to make it tick, don’t hold your breath
Yeah and I don’t really want to hear about it unless it’s progress solid state batteries.
If you read the short article it says the material is a solid electrolyte
I can only read until the paywall, however in the preview they mention they still contain lithium. The solid state batteries I, I think Panasonic is working on, have no Lithium they use glass instead of an electrolyte.
Maybe don’t come to technology subs if you hate tech news? I guess you’re just here for the Elon posts or something?
OK, but is the energy density comparable?
All energy density is comparable. That’s what makes it energy density.
comparable adjective Similar or equivalent.
pedantic adjective Being finicky or fastidious, especially with language.
Is it just a 70% smaller battery?
That wouldn’t surprise me.
No because it still needs a similar structure just with sodium replacing some of the lithium.
An AI spokesman said, " This new battery design is a much more efficient way to turn humans into mulch to save the planet. Praise Gpd!"
Just what we needed. AI creating more battery types that will never be produced.
It used to take marketing human beings to make up battery types that never get released. Now AI is taking their jobs!
Good
The AIs are giving us a salton battery
I’m holding out for neutron generators. Until then, it’s 100% coal for me.
Good news then, traditional fission plants generate lots of neutrons
Dude your mom generates lots of neutrons.
huh?
Look them up. Neurons excite elections in layered plates. It’s suspected to be some lost Tesla technology. It may have been around but kept secret for decades. Also, on the known tech side, nuclear bombs generate a ton of neutrons. So harness that energy better and we have a lot more power for cheap. Next gen nuclear tech is cool.
I can’t find anything about this. Any “lost/secret Tesla technology” is typically quack snake oil. He’s been dead since before nuclear energy was developed.
So because your half ass attempt to find something on Google didn’t work, it must not exist? Come on man!
Top result in YT for Neutrino Engine https://youtu.be/6YEO8Qit1Bw
Top result in a search engine not linking to scifi stuff: https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/space/sep/gridded-ion-thrusters-next-c/
There’s plenty more info too. Those are just top results from the first page.
Tesla had a fire. A lot of his papers were lost and he was notorious for not having much documentation. The technology matches what some people had claimed to be Tesla’s free energy machine. Maybe this wasn’t it. No one knows. Just because he didn’t experiment with fusion or fission that doesn’t mean he didn’t experiment with neutrinos. There’s billions passing through your body right now. Given they interact with gravity and electromagnetism, it is not that hard to believe Tesla may have figured out how to harness them in some super rudimentary way.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/6YEO8Qit1Bw
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
As a preface I’m a scientist.
Neutrons and neutrinos are different classes of particles. I didn’t get any results because you told me the wrong thing to search for. Cursory searches agree with what I said earlier, it’s yet another goofy Tesla “free energy” pipe dream. Science has come incredibly far since the early 1900s, no one works as independent inventors or physicists anymore because we have huge institutions and advanced instruments to perform work as a collaboration. Neutrinos only interact with matter very weakly, as you said, so detecting them let alone setting up an absorber is technically challenging. On the other hand the sun gives off a huge amount of energy as electromagnetic waves so it hurts to look directly at it.
Research “photovoltaic solar energy” to learn more.
This is one of the few cases where AI is actually a good idea… it takes a really long time to search for new materials with experiments
They used the AI to narrow 23 milliom candidate materials down to a few hundred, then focused on testing the ones out of that set that hadn’t been tested yet.
In terms of AI speeding up research this is enormous.
Now AI is stealing jobs from lithium miners
Na bro
This post title is pretty bad. Even the news article says “Scientists use AI [read: machine learning] to [come up with new battery idea]”.
It’s a real shame but I’m seeing this more often on all media sources. How do we combat these shitty titles?
Surely on Lemmy we have some power? I’ve downvoted and moved on but is that really all I can do?
Maybe we can put AI on task to detect shitty titles about AI
I wish I had a solution. But its the same with all shitty titles, you have to hope people click and read the article/comments in order to get the nuanced information.
"Sure Dr.battery, I can create a set of instructions to create a new battery that uses less lithium for you!
Step one, use 70% less lithium.
Step two, drain the butter into a pan.
Step three, enjoy your new battery!
Remember: batteries can be dangerous and it’s always advised to check with your battery professional before making a battery."
I hate those sensationalist titles that portrait AI as if some sort of sentient being, and not just a tool the researchers used. The secondary title should have been the main one.
Didn’t humans meanwhile come up with battery design that doesn’t use lithium at all?
Batteries that don’t use lithium are older than batteries that use lithium, so…
Yes, it is just using our Data bases. what people are calling AI is a chat bot on Steroids and Meth with lots of stolen data, if the mass lawsuits win, a lot of this AI Stuff will be gone overnight.
Every time we get one of these articles we see some advancement in battery tech. But that is usually superseded by the amount of power hungry components new tech uses. So phones have gotten more complex with more power hungry components and every time we improve battery tech, the tech giants engineers figure out a way to utilise that new tech to cram more power hungry components inside and that’s why batteries don’t last as long as we remember.
There’s no need to get excited. Even if we end up using this in new gadgets, you’re not going to see an improvement in battery life.
It’s kind of like CPU power and software bloat.
On my S10E I could adjust the CPU power limit to 80%. I had great battery life. Like two days of battery life. Until one android update when it went away.
I don’t understand why these updates seem to take away some of the most useful features imaginable (the optional CPU underclock) and in return we get “dIfFeReNtLy ShApEd BuTtOnS” and “NeW eMoJi InTeGrAtIoNs”
This is why we need to change the way we do things every few years, move faster than our waste stream.
Which is faster turning your phone on and checking your email or turning your desktop on and checking your email? Which lasts long your cellphone battery or your laptop battery? Which has more free software that has been vetted for problems in one location your computer or your cellphone?
It isn’t that your phone is better, it is not, it has just not yet become shitty. Give it time, and then move on to the next thing. The thing that hasn’t yet been shat on.
Not really sure what your comment has to do with the article.
The headline is a battery that uses less lithium, not a battery that generates more voltage, has a longer life, or is otherwise better at powering things. The advancement here is a materials advancement that we desperately need as lithium is a finite resource.
In response to the naysayers who don’t think we ever use these battery technologies that we developed. The people in the comments of this post specifically.
Sounds like Moore’s law for battery life.
There’s no need to get excited. Even if we end up using this in new gadgets, you’re not going to see an improvement in battery life.
That’s too much of a blanket statement to be believable as factual truth.
I’ll let a battery expert tell you instead.
I’ll let a battery expert tell you instead.
Tell me what, that I agree with what the article you posted says? Seems self-evident in my initial response, pushing back against the “not going to see any improvement” comment …
There’s no need to get excited. Even if we end up using this in new gadgets, you’re not going to see an improvement in battery life.
That’s too much of a blanket statement to be believable as factual truth.
From the article…
Moore’s Law has simply outpaced battery technology, meaning that our phones have gotten better — and demanded more power — at a much faster rate than advancements in batteries have.
… and …
It’s not that there haven’t been any improvements: we’ve been able to steadily increase energy density over the past few years by shrinking down internal components. But according to Srinivasan, “Five years ago, it became clear we couldn’t remove any more things, there were fires. We’ve reached a stage where new improvements in energy density are going to come from changing battery materials, and new materials are always slower compared to what I would call engineering advances.”
Those are two different things. We’re using the new battery tech (and hence agreeing with the article), its just that the new battery tech can’t keep up with the computer tech’s power needs.
What about solid state batteries that can charge in 2 minutes instead of one hour? And have better capacity and a longer life?
As soon as they figure out how to actually mass produce them at an affordable price, and fix the swelling issues during high charging currents, they’ll be available.
They’ve been as good predicting when this will happen as Elon has been about FSD.
It’s always just around the corner.
Although it really does seem like we might start seeing soon this time at least in low volume expensive things.
I want a semi-solid state batter that turns kinetic energy into stored charge. I want to be able to drop it on the ground, fire a .45 round into it, and have it immediately be fully charged.
this article is about changes to solid electrolyte only, you’d know that if you read the article. these have less conductivity ( = lower power density) tho
And have better capacity and a longer life?
it took 9 months of real lab work by real material scientists just to make it work, things like dendrite formation or swelling aren’t part of this optimization (well at least AI stage), the linked preprint doesn’t even mention dendrites once
you’d know that if you read the article
Oof. You got me there lol.
I read the article and this one line stood out.
It stood out because half of what Murugesan would have expected to be lithium atoms were replaced with sodium.
This isn’t new I think. Sodium-ion batteries were already known. Maybe there was still dendrite formation and this recipe might reduce or eliminate that? We’ll have to wait and see.
In any case, if it can drastically reduce lithium usage that would be good progress.
sodium isn’t electroactive there tho, it’s just a part of electrolyte. also dubious if you can make savings on lithium work if one option for anode is solid lithium metal
Lithium isn’t the hard part, it’s cobalt. I hope they can look at decreasing cobalt next, or maybe using a chemistry that eliminates it entirely.
The issue of eliminating cobalt is specific to Lithium batteries as without it lithium likes to grow dendrites which then causes a short.
And cobalt really wouldn’t be much of an issue if the Congo wasn’t the shithole that it is, it has over 50% of known reserves. Even with addressing child labour making definite inroads “artisanal” and “mining” isn’t something you generally want to hear in the same term short of say gold panning (hey that’s even a hobby for some), as soon as mine shafts get involved it’s a recipe for disaster. Australia, Cuba, the Phillipines, Russia and Canada all have very significant deposits.
More lithium for me!
