|
Monday, November 21, 2005 More Powerful BatteriesA new, fast-charging battery will make drills and hybrid cars more powerful. By Kevin Bullis
Lithium ion batteries have been powering cell phones and laptops for years. But they were not used for more power-hungry machines like power tools and hybrid vehicles, mainly because of their high cost, their inability to provide adequate current, and safety issues.* All this has now changed, though, according to A123 Systems. This month the Watertown, MA startup announced a new lithium ion battery, based on research done at MIT, that's suitable for applications requiring high power output. The battery's high power density -- a measure of the watts of power it can produce per kilogram -- means it's also lighter than conventional batteries of similar size. The battery will get a chance to prove itself soon: it's being incorporated into a new line of power tools, scheduled to reach store shelves next spring, that can outperform plug-in drills and saws. "The first customer is a power tool company, but the cell can be used in many types of applications, such as automotive environments or medical devices -- anything that needs high power," says Ric Fulop, A123's co-founder and vice president of business development. Yet-Ming Chiang, whose work as an MIT professor of materials science led him to co-found A123 with Fulop, says "this is a battery system that could have significant impact on hybrid electric vehicles." At about the same weight as an 18-volt drill battery, the new battery can deliver 36 volts, according to Baltimore MD toolmaker DeWalt, which is producing a new line of seven products that use the battery. Chiang says A123's batteries can produce 3,000 watts of peak power, twice as much as a drill or saw designed to be plugged into a wall outlet. That means that when the blade of a circular saw starts to bind up, the saw can power through it. "Having this high peak power capability allows you to do a great deal more work because you don't get bogged down," says Chiang. The new batteries are based on an advance by Chiang in his lab at MIT's department of materials science and engineering. He was working with a material, lithium iron phosphate, that promised high capacities for batteries. But it had a significant problem: an inability to handle large currents. Chiang found that doping the material gave it very high conductivity. His success in the lab led him to found a startup to commercialize the technology. Chiang declines to give details of A123's current battery, including whether or not it uses iron, but does say it uses an inexpensive lithium metal phosphate in the battery's cathode, the electrode that receives electrons during discharge.
|
Share »
Digg this
Add to del.icio.us
Add to Reddit
Add to Facebook
Slashdot It!
Stumble It!
Add to Newsvine
Add to Connotea
Add to CiteUlike
Add to Furl
Googlize this
Add to Rojo
Add to MyWeb
Favorite
Print
E-mail
Harnessing Kinetic Energy
11/29/2007
Comments
Guest (paul) on 11/21/2005 at 11:57 AM
1
Guest (INTERESTED IN THIS PRODUCT ) on 07/21/2006 at 12:00 AM
1
Guest (paul) on 11/21/2005 at 11:57 AM
1
luvtechrev1 on 10/13/2006 at 11:51 AM
1
Guest (E.Fermi) on 11/21/2005 at 10:09 PM
1
A portable tool delivering 36volts at 3000watts would be conducting 80 amps of current. This would require massive wiring and motor..far too heavy to lift. As for the limitations of plug-in drills, etc, the only limits to torque are motor quality and weight limitations. This article is way off base.
Guest (B. C. ) on 11/23/2005 at 8:19 AM
1
Guest (B. C. ) on 11/23/2005 at 8:19 AM
1
Guest (virginia_wong@goldpeak.com) on 11/25/2005 at 4:02 AM
1
Guest (virginia_wong@goldpeak.com) on 11/25/2005 at 4:02 AM
1
Guest (E.Fermi) on 11/21/2005 at 10:09 PM
1
A portable tool delivering 36volts at 3000watts would be conducting 80 amps of current. This would require massive wiring and motor..far too heavy to lift. As for the limitations of plug-in drills, etc, the only limits to torque are motor quality and weight limitations. This article is way off base.
Guest (E.Fermi) on 11/21/2005 at 10:10 PM
1
A portable tool delivering 36volts at 3000watts would be conducting 80 amps of current. This would require massive wiring and motor..far too heavy to lift. As for the limitations of plug-in drills, etc, the only limits to torque are motor quality and weight limitations. This article is way off base.
Guest (P.D.C.) on 11/22/2005 at 6:01 PM
1
-Army Engineer, Gitmo
Guest (Greyhound) on 01/11/2006 at 12:00 AM
1
Guest (skids) on 07/26/2006 at 12:00 AM
1
Guest (P.D.C.) on 11/22/2005 at 6:01 PM
1
-Army Engineer, Gitmo
Guest (E.Fermi) on 11/21/2005 at 10:10 PM
1
A portable tool delivering 36volts at 3000watts would be conducting 80 amps of current. This would require massive wiring and motor..far too heavy to lift. As for the limitations of plug-in drills, etc, the only limits to torque are motor quality and weight limitations. This article is way off base.
Guest (none) on 05/21/2006 at 12:00 AM
1
underinformedperson on 09/23/2006 at 8:25 AM
2
Just exchange your used battery pack for a fully charged one. It could be done if people really wanted to get the system started. And you could still recharge at home but the drawback is that most people don't park near enough to an electrical outlet. And city people usually park in the street and there are no electrical outlets on streets. It is almost impossible to add electric lines and outlets everywhere for cars to plug into. So exchanging lightweight battery packs seems like a feasible plan.
Guest (Carl--Troy, MI) on 05/21/2006 at 12:00 AM
1
billdale on 01/01/2007 at 3:44 PM
15
jcmarching on 01/14/2007 at 6:39 PM
1
billdale on 01/16/2007 at 1:34 PM
15
A really outstanding electric battery such as the Nanosafe scares the hell out of GM, Ford, Toyota, Honda, and all of the other car companies because if we start buying really good electric cars, their profits crash.
The only reason that GM or any other car company ever sold an electric car to start with was not because they wanted to, but because the state of California told them that if they wanted to sell cars in California, ten percent of them had to be zero pollution, which in essence means battery power. The car manufacturers sued the state and eventually got the mandate removed, but only after some electric cars had already been leased out.
GM designed and built the EV-1 electric car... but there was an intense internal battle in the company over that car. The engineers, salespeople, and many others involwed in the project were in face-offs- with those in the company interested in nothing but profit, since the EV-1 would cost consumers much less, especially in their parts and service departments in years to come.
Those not concerned about pollution, smog and greenhouse effect were terrified that the EV-1 would become popular and actually motivate people to buy electric.
The ones what were strictly profit-motivated won out... there were hundreds of EV-1 users that were totally in love with their cars, and GM brass knew it... the EV-1 needed none of the stuff ICEs (internal combustion engines)needed: no oil changes, valve adjustments, smog checks, spark plugs, catalytic convertors, mufflers, timing belts, radiator hoses, fan belts, oxgen sensors, and transmission rebuilds that are common in the first few years of a car's life... in later years they are even more expensive to keep running, and more lucrative to the manufacturer-- hundreds of moving parts need to be replaced as they wear out, and GM makes money on all of it.
An electric car needs virtually nothing but an occasional battery charge-- it is quiet, so needs no muffler... it is smog-free, so needs no smog tests or smog equipment... it has ONE moving part-- the motor itself-- and, unlike the movements of the hundreds of parts in an engine that jump up and down and move in so many complicated ways, the electric motor just does one thing-- it just spins... it requires no adjustments or maintenance. WVhen you calulate for all the costs of producing the eletricity for an electric car and all the costs of operating a regular car, the electric car can be driven for just a few cents per mile as opposed to the dollar-plus cost per mile of a gasoline powered vehicle of similar specs.
When GM brass realized that the electric car was capable of depriving them of a huge percentage of the profit they would usually be able to look forward to, and that it would have a much longer useful life than an ICE-powered car, they pulled out all the stops to take it off the road... hudreds of happy EV-1 drivers got notices that the leases on their cars were expiring and would not be renewed. The drdvers (none were owners, just leasees) made huge desperate cash offers to GM to keep their cars, but GM threatened to charge them with car theft if they did not return the cars when the lease was up.
Hundreds of these beautiul cars, in great shape, were taken to lots in the desert and crushed, much to the shock of the former drivers... there were a few dozen more that were left. When the former drivers found out that the last few were due to meet the same fate, they gathered outside the facility where they were being stored, and blockaded the entrance with their bodies and their cars and trucks. Many of them were handcuffed and jailed rather than allow the cars to be trucked off without resistance.
There are only about two or three EV-1s left... GM allowed one of them to be put on display at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles (I saw it recently) but before they released it, GM gutted it of all batteries and running gear... it's not driveable. The only other car I know of was put on display at the Smithsonian Institute. It seems that even as pig-headed as they were at GM, even they could not bring themselves to completely destroying all of these remarkable cars.
Since the oil companies also would stand to lose huge profits if electric cars caught on, they also went to great trouble to suppress EVs: when the legendary genius inventor Stanford Ovshinsky designed an improved nickel-metal hydride battery optimized for use in electric cars, one of the oil companies {I don't recall which one... Arco? Standard?} praised him and bought a controlling interest in the battery. Ovshinsky made a press release to that effect, and the oil company had a fit, saying he had no right to do so. They sat on the battery patent ever since, not allowing it to be used in any cars. If Ovshinsky would have realized that they had intended to do what they did, we would never have sold them the controlling interest.
The only reason GM recently unveiled its "Volt" hybrid was as a PR move... they give no indication they really want to produce it, saying it's far too expenisive to produce, and when they get the cost down on the batteries, then maybe in a decade they'll do something with it... but they're very worried about anything electric. They're far more likely to sell a hyrid than a full electric, since hybrids are even more expensive than regular ICE cars... they have both an engine and a complicated electric management system. And, by comparison, the hybrid that American car companies want to sell us will be far less efficient-- estimated mileage in the range of 25 miles per gallon or so.
Even though GM was the biggest bully in this matter, if you see "Who Killed the Electric Car", you'll see that Toyota, Ford and others did the same thing GM did-- Toyota retrofitted some of their cars for use as battery-only operation to meet California's mandate, but as soon as they had the opportunity, they did the same thing GM did-- they took back all of their electric cars under heavy protest from the customers leasing them, and crushed all of them.
I hope I answered your question.