Now We’re Cooking With … Batteries

drive less drive smaller vechiles the brillant idea of personnel transport should be just that personnel transport come on think about it electric cars the size of say pruis electricity generated from wind solar nucleur plants together wtih high temperture coal burning which will be clean coal plants sure we will have some waste but not as much as fossil fuel or can we look at it a different way cleaning up combustion engine using ethonal vegatable deisel we have all these how about a minerture nucleur reactor as a power soarch for each car we all much think outside the square

About 1.6% of the energy produced by burning coal in an electric power generating station does useful work (most US coal plants are far from end users, and do not use cogeneration). 65% of US energy comes from oil and and natural gas, and about 20% comes from coal. US oil discoveries per year peaked in the 1930s; they peaked globally in the 1960s. You can't produce oil you haven't found. Each barrel of oil contains about 25,000 person hours of work, and US daily oil consumption divided amongst its citizens comes out to about 1600 person hours of work per person per day. Translated into slaves working 12 hour days, this means that we have about 150 people working for each of us every day. As one can observe by the rather daunting volumes of traffic visible in nearly every corner of the US, we're rather reliant on cheap, liquid energy, if not exactly parsimonious in its use.

Current development of renewable energy sources (i.e. wind, solar) require batteries to store the energy for use when they are not working (i.e. calm or night). This means they are not "base-load" electricity producers. Battery technology is not just the future for automobiles, but for the practical application of any non-baseload technology. But there is a flip side to this as anyone who owns a cellular phone knows: batteries don't last forever and they can't just be disposed of easily.
The only base-load technology that does not produce greenhouse gases is nuclear power and it, too has a problem with its waste stream.
When we are all driving electric cars and pulling into "charging stations" to swap our "empty" batteries for "full" ones as we do now with our propane tanks for our gas grills will we consider the waste stream it produces?
I cannot wait for the day that I can drive my silent, emission-free sports car and feel good about it, but what will provide that energy? Electric cars will require an increase of 30% or 40% (or more) in electrical production, and yet we want to pull nuclear power plants off-line or better yet rely upon the development of mythical "clean-coal technologies"?
Improving our environment and increasing our energy security has never been more important, but we must consider the realities and take common sense approaches to solving them, including increased energy efficiency and effective use of proven technologies such as nuclear.

400 mile per charge 5 - 10 minute recharge time. Cellphone batery that has 40 talk time 1 minute charge. Go to www.cnt-battery.com. What is ironic os that the big three are not even willing to test the battery. There will be Chinease cars, trucks and buses nex year being sold in the US utilizing the battery.

We simply have dropped the ball in the US with regard to lithium-ion battery manufacturing, which is in fact the lynchpin for developing electric drive vehicles, and renewable energy storage (although the chemistry for these batteries differs). We need to invest billions of dollars in creating manufacturing capacity for these batteries here in the US if we are to have any hope for energy and transportation independence.

Electric vehicles has been in use for years - ask anyone who depends on their powerchair to get around. The average chair will move a 300 lb person up to 20 miles on just 2 deep cycle batteries. Of course these are all made in china as most of the batteries are. There is a company called NEVCO that produced an electric 3 wheeler called the Gizmo but they have ceased production a few years ago due to lack of interest. As far as producing hydrogen - it is inexpensive using solar cells, however storage is the problem. There was a man in the early 1970's who drove an American Motors car from coast to coast on hydrogen - he stopped in every town and drank the water from the tailpipe. Unfortunately, he and AMC both 'went away'.
Just food for thought.

Excellent article, although it has a number of factual errors. A123 is no longer in the running to supply Chevy Volt batteries, that contract went to LG Chem. Spending 200 million on battery research and development is a drop in the bucket, we should be spending several billion like the governments of Japan, Korea, and China. Enerdel is a US Company? A major stock holder is ITOCHU, a Japanese company. What good does it do to research new technologies if you can't manufacture them? Case in point; Argonne National Labs developed a new cathode for lithium ion batterires and licensed it to Toda Kogyo, a Japanese company because no US mamnufacturer stepped forward to produce it.
The US lithium ion battery manufacturing capacity is paltry. This has nothing to do with the EV1 and everything to do with the fact that it was cheaper for US battery companies to buy cells from China, Korea, and Japan for cell phones and lap tops in the 90's than it was to go forward with plans to manufacture here. Johnson Controls just built a new lithium-ion battery manufacturing plant with Saft, but it's in Europe, not the US. Exxon Mobile is building a 345 million dollar separator plant for lithium-ion batteries in Korea, not the US. A123 has its cell made in Asia and assembled by continental in Europe. Enerdel''

For the person wondering about using hydrogen:
http://recoverybydiscovery.com/hydrogen.htm

There is no mention ofcapictors because they have yet to store enough energy to run a car like batteries, not even close.

Capictors are great for storing small amounts of energy, but are not efficient for larger amounts of energy. Hydrogen makes a much less efficient and costly battery. see: http://recoverybydiscovery.com

There was no mention of capacitors. To help people understand where we are at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_double-layer_capacitor

"EEStor claims their examples will offer capacities on the order of 200 to 300 W·h/kg. For comparison, a conventional lead-acid battery is typically 30 to 40 W·h/kg and modern lithium-ion batteries are about 120 W·h/kg. In automobile applications gasoline has a net calorific value (NCV) of around 12,000 W·h/kg, which operates at 20% tank-to-wheel efficiency giving an effective energy density of 2,400 W·h/kg."

So to make electric dream cars we need something 20 times better than lithium-ion. At an 8% improvement rate that is 40 years.

Litihium-ion was proposed in the 1970s. Sony made the first commerical version 1991

There was no mention of capacitors. To help people understand where we are at:

"...claims their examples will offer capacities on the order of 200 to 300 W·h/kg. For comparison, a conventional lead-acid battery is typically 30 to 40 W·h/kg and modern lithium-ion batteries are about 120 W·h/kg. In automobile applications gasoline has a net calorific value (NCV) of around 12,000 W·h/kg, which operates at 20% tank-to-wheel efficiency giving an effective energy density of 2,400 W·h/kg."

So to make electric dream cars we need something 20 times better than lithium-ion. At an 8% improvement rate that is 40 years.

Litihium-ion was proposed in the 1970s. Sony made the first commerical version 1991

Add 40 years. The miracle battery/capacitor was proposed in 2010s. Worldsaver Inc made the first commerical version in 2041.

Barring a pleasant postive surprise be prepared to make some comprismises.

1. Federal money is NOT essential - an economic advantage to lightweight high density batteries IS essential. The economic motive has allowed Li-Ion & LiFePO4 to capture market share.

2. For high capacity, I wonder about reversible H2 Fuel-cell technology -- hydrolyze H20 to charge, fuel cell to generat electricity when discharging

Just now coming to the realization that our battery technology is lagging? I heard ExxonMobil bought thepatent and destroyed it in order to keep oil fashionable. Is this true? I hope Obama turns the oil business upside down...lots of corruption going on there.

It is nice to read about his.

However, articles such as this should have been written 25 or more years ago.

News magazines, as well as most of the country were too busy complaingina and not doing.

This topic ahs been discussed in SF stories for years. It is old hat, but I'm glad it is finally getting some notice even if late.