Professor Invents Non-Exploding Battery That Holds 2X As Much Power

[Megalith]

Is this another report of a revolutionary battery technology that we will never hear about again? I hope not, since this is the kind of breakthrough we may need to prevent incidents like the Samsung explosions. A professor has managed to create a battery that doesn’t house any electrolyte liquid, which essentially means that it won’t heat and blow up. Furthermore, his batteries use actual lithium metal, providing twice as much charge. Thanks to Kyle for this story.

What Zimmerman has done is pretty amazing: He’s created a battery that eliminates the liquid. In its place: A special plastic film, solid and not flammable. Yet it allows the free flow of the ions, just as the electrolyte does. Zimmerman’s plastic doesn’t catch fire even if you try to light it with a grill lighter. Zimmerman even encouraged me to cut the live battery. Into shreds. Down to nothing. No fire, no heat, no trip to the emergency room. And the LED light panel it was driving stayed turned on. This is, in other words, a completely safe battery. But wait, it gets better. We call them lithium ion batteries because they do not, in fact, use actual lithium metal. That’s too bad, because lithium metal batteries can store at least twice as much power! The only reason we don’t use lithium-metal batteries is that they’re even more dangerous than lithium ion. But if there’s no flammable liquid, there’s no risk of fire. So Zimmerman’s batteries do use actual lithium metal, and therefore hold twice as much charge.

 

[ymer]

Not sure if they failed to mention, but nowhere in the article or the video does it say that it's a rechargeable battery ...

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Is this another report of a revolutionary battery technology that we will never hear about again?

Sometimes new inventions like this take a while to hit the market.

I remember in ~1994 I read in a computer magazine about the future of storage. It was this amazing technology, fast like RAM but non volatile so that you could use it like a drive and store data on it.

I was amazed at how fast our drives would soon be, but then I didn't hear about it anymore and soon forgot about it.

16 years later in early 2010 I was a relatively early adopter when I bought my first 120GB OCZ Agility SSD on sale for $320 after MIR.

Now they are the norm.

Just because we don't hear about these technologies for a while doesn't mean they have died. Sometimes it just takes a while for them to become reality at a cost that is feasible for the consumer.

 

[NeoNemesis]

It seems like every week there's an article espousing the awesomeness of Graphene or Carbyne or whatever Carbon allotrope they come up with that's even more amazing.

Would like to actually see some of these materials used in commercial products before I die of old age.

 

[Dead Parrot]

Lithium metal? Safe? Better hope its well sealed. Lithium tends to react energetically around water.

 

[Revdarian]

It seems like every week there's an article espousing the awesomeness of Graphene or Carbyne or whatever Carbon allotrope they come up with that's even more amazing.

Would like to actually see some of these materials used in commercial products before I die of old age.

Well, usually the difficulty is in the mass production of the new material or in the integration in current processes. In the case of graphene it has the issue of being "too metallic" to be useful in chips, so looking to the sides they found phosphorene which is a semi conductor version of black phosphorus with the same scotch tape+ peel way in which graphene was initially discovered, but phosphorene has issues with mass production in a way that the properties can be kept since it degrades too fast with the presence of oxygen, and that is why we are still using good o'le silicon.

There are lots of teams working in possible solutions but sadly at this point it seems that we will have to wait quite a bit more, but don't desperate, once the breakthrough happens you should expect a jump similar to the ssd vs hdd one.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Lithium metal? Safe? Better hope its well sealed. Lithium tends to react energetically around water.

Don't drop that phone in the toilet!

 

[undermined]

"completely safe" but probably toxic as heck to make and cannot be recycled safely or cheaply.

the world needs batter batteries but the next generation of devices will need to be better at recycling and reuse of materials.

batteries that don't blow up or combust when damaged sounds great but unless disposal and manufacturing are also safe, the improvements are only going to be better at in the short term.

So while I think it is important for the consumer to have safer options in their electronic devices, I'd rather see the innovation pushed into the bigger markets like for storing solar/wind power and EVs were the batteries aren't put into devices that have a 18 month life cycle and not just made so people can have thinner phones.

 

[Deleted member 278999]

Don't drop that phone in the toilet!

Brings a meaning to poo-splosion amiright?

 

[EODetroit]

So what happens when its immersed in water? Lithium metal reacts violently. Anyways, where does this rank on the 1-5 scale Tesla uses to evaluate new battery technologies?

 

[mdburkey]

So what happens when its immersed in water? Lithium metal reacts violently.

Yup. I love the article's brilliant comment that "if there’s no flammable liquid, there’s no risk of fire".
There is no risk -- as long as you don't drop it into water, or spill your drink on it, or allow it to set outside in 100% humidity in GA in July....

There are very good reasons why, in the chem lab at UT where I worked as an undergrad, we always kept chunks of sodium or lithium stored in sealed glass containers full of oil.

 

[Deleted whining member 223597]

It seems like every week there's an article espousing the awesomeness of Graphene or Carbyne or whatever Carbon allotrope they come up with that's even more amazing.

Would like to actually see some of these materials used in commercial products before I die of old age.

That's because these are pretty much always done in tiny lab amounts and costs or scalability become an issue. Always be skeptical about this stuff, usually something that sounds amazing in a lab is not cost effective.

 

[HoffY]

Sometimes new inventions like this take a while to hit the market.

new "inventions" like this simply don't come to the market. They are just puff pieces out to make a big show and get the gums flapping to fool the gullible investors into parting with their money on "the next big thing".

Battery tech... i mean.. the real battery tech. Comes by using measurements of decades. Thats just how slow battery tech moves. Its not easy. And low hanging fruit has been picked.

Short story... ANY battery tech flux capacity world promising "news" snippet you see... just ignore it. Flat out ignore it.

 

[babochee]

Why not have an option for the exploding variety?... that would be a great 007 device to take out our foreign enemy heads of state! Think of the applications! (like my car burning to the ground and me getting a new one!)

 

[KazeoHin]

Well, does it cost exactly 0.00 dollars more than modern lithium batteries?

No?

Then we'll never see it.