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Proton Polymer Battery 128

Posted by Hemos from the that's-a-lot-of-baldur's-gate-2-airplane-playing dept.
Reality Master 101 writes: "Saw this originally in Pop Science, but check out NEC's press release. More like a capacitor than a battery, it can be recharged in 5 minutes and has a life of 10s of thousands of cycles. NEC claims it has the highest energy density of any electrochemical device, as well as a current discharge rate 20 times higher than lead batteries (20mAh device: 9A in 10 seconds... electric cars, anyone?). To top it off, they can make it in a credit card-thin format. Very cool, and about time!"
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Proton Polymer Battery More

Proton Polymer Battery

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  • ahhhh, I mis-understood their usage of charge carrier. I thought of it as what generated the current. I see how it was used. I was thinking in that whole.... protons always carry electrons way. Damn QM(quantum mechanics) course has made me forget almost all the chemistry I knew.

    THanks for the clarification

  • Re:9mAH (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10, 2000 @10:46PM (#715694)
    and/or put smaller cells in parallel and series to achieve the desired voltage/internal resistance

    Like a beowulf cluster of batteries?

    Sorry, couldn't resist.

  • Re:mmmmm *drool* (Score:4)

    by Stephen Samuel ( 106962 ) <(samuel) (at) (bcgreen.com)> on Wednesday October 11, 2000 @12:44AM (#715695) Homepage Journal
    One of the questions I have is: Is energy density per volume or per weight? If it's per volume, then it's pretty reasonable. I don't think that it's quite as good as Lithium ion at the start of it's life cycle but it indicates a lot of interesting possibilities.

    One of the most interesting aspects is extremely fast (5 minutes!) recharge times. i.e. the battery might not last as long, but you'd be able to fully recharge it while waiting in line to board the plane (much less while waiting for the plane to arrive). 10K cycles means that you could fully discharge and recharge it 3 times a day and it would still have a 10 year life cycle (In my world, I think this would mean ~5 years ( at 3 discharges/day) before you started to notice serious capacity dropoff.

    For example, you could fast-charge it (full charge) while in transit between customers and not have to worry about battery death. 30 seconds plugged into a wall circuit might give you an extra 2 hours of stand-by power

    THE DOWNSIDE -- SAFETY
    Fuse early, fuse often. &nbsp I've seen a small (VHS casette sized) battery vaporize a 30A fuse without breathing hard. Something that can give you 10 times the discharge of a lead acid battery could couple as an emergency ark welding power supply. As long as you didn't drain it, A furby-sized battery could jump start a car (but you'd still need 2-gauge jumper cables to connect it!). If you shorted it out with 12Gauge (extension cord) wire, you could probably burn off the insulation in under 10 seconds. Now think what would happen to your thigh if you stuck one of these batteries in your pocket and shorted it out on your keys -- We're talking instant branding here (not to mention the hole burnt in your pants).

    ON THE BRIGHT SIDE - QUAKE LIVES
    I think that, with a fuel-cell generator pack, you could probably use one of these things in a man-portable rail gun. The scarey thing is that it would probably work much like the quake-3 unit (fire off a round (or three), and then wait for the power pack to reload).
    `ø,,ø`ø,,ø!

  • You should read "Physics is constipated". I forget the author's name, but I picked this book up at a library just for the title.

    The author is a disgruntled liberal arts major who went on to make millions and declared "Einstein is Super Stupid".

    The main thrust of the book is that units like Coulombs, Amps and Newtons and such make physics too abstract from what is happening. So all of his calculations show all of the units!

    It's a pretty funny read.
  • Bwaah ah ah ah. You seem to have a firm grasp on thermodynamics, eh! Thanks for the laugh.

    --

  • Recapping on the posts on this topic. (Score:5)

    by Cmdr. Zombie ( 80747 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2000 @12:57AM (#715698)
    After reading the various replies in this thread, I couldn't resist...

    By looking at the page of NEC it seems to suggest that their 'cell' is 12V/20mAh, with a connected version of 10 cells for 12V 200mAh. The 200mAh model is about as thick as three or four floppy disks and about 2/3 the height.

    The average laptop-battery is about 1 1/2 the height(length) of a floppy and about 5 floppies think. (well, mine is). My current battery provides me with about 3.5 hours of juice and it provides 3600mAh at 10.8V. (Lithium/Ion)

    Now there's always the difficulty in expressing these things because almost all variables are related. I'll try to calculate the batteries back to their energy-values in Joules.

    3600mAh at 10.8V provides (3.6A * 10.8V * 3600 seconds)== 139968 Joules of power.

    For the sake of argument, let's compensate the 'thinness' of the battery (compared with my current battery) by assuming three fit in the length of the 'current' battery.

    That would provide 600mAh at 12V in a similar battery. This mounts to (0.6A * 12V * 3600s) 25920 Joules. Even in a very positive estimate of 5 200mAh cells in the same size, it would provide only (1A * 12V * 3600s) 43200 Joules of power. (this last figure is slightly under 1/3 of the amount of power my current battery provides)

    As a conclusion, the new battery from NEC won't give us the "durability" most of you have been celebrating about. However, as NEC's article states, it has a significantly higher discharge rate. This 'battery' therefore sooner approaches (as some posters already stated) the specifications of 'burst' capacitors.

    Then again, it has the potential for improvement. As Ericsson is already working with Lithium/Polymer (i.e. Electron/Polymer, as opposed to NEC's Proton/Polymer) batteries in their cell-phones, we should be seeing credit-card thickness batteries with longer lifespans for (to begin with) PDA's/cellphones pretty soon.

    Another thing I noticed in the posts is a discussion about the units of measurement. Things like the 'Coulomb' and the 'KWh'.

    Basically, energy is expressed by Joules. And Power is expressed in Watts, which equals 1 Joule 'consumed' in 1 second. Electrical power (consumption) is calculated by the formula of Power(consumption) equals Voltage times Current (or P=V*I).

    [Start inflammatory bit]
    Up until now, this has all been highschool-level physics. Which means either one of three things:
    1) The posters didn't read the article, clicked on reply and started yapping away,
    2) The posters haven't finished highschool yet.
    3) The posters won't finish highschool.
    [End inflammatory bit]

    So the timespan, potential and current are interconnected. Enter the Coulomb. Coulomb is a measurement of charge. Current can therefore be expressed in Coulombs as well as Amps.

    1 Coulomb/sec equals 1 Ampere. 1 Ampere equals 1 Watt over 1 Volt. Which in turn means 1 Joule over 1 Volt in 1 second.

    (1sec * 1J) * 1V == Watts * Potential == Current
    1sec * (1J * 1V) == Time * Coulombs == Current
    [Thus Coulomb is the relation between energetic value and potential difference]

    The KWh is merely a 'compound' unit for use by power-companies who don't want to daunt their customers by stating a 9-figure number on the bill as the 'power consumed'. Besides, the cost/Watt consumed are so small, they can't reasonably calculate with it.

    So, the KWh is one KW (1000 Watts), sustained for one hour (3600 seconds), which results in 3.6 million watts. Stating "200KWh consumed" looks so much friendlier than saying "720000000 Watts consumed" (720 _million_ watts).

    Running 4 computers 24/7 in your home (which I do), without the monitors and having saved on the number of harddisks, would probably end up around 300Watts continously. 300 Watts * 3600 * 24 equals 25920000 Watts per day, or 7.2 KWh.

    This, at 365 days a year, ends up in a whopping 2628 KWh on computer power-consumption a year alone.
  • Charge me improperly and I'll blow flaming liquid electrolyte everywhere. Just the sort of thing I want in a computer on my lap.

    My laptop battery (NiMH) gave up the ghost a while back... nowadays when I need to use it 'on the road', I use an external 5Ah lead-gel battery plugged into the 12V socket on the back. It powered my machine for an entire transatlantic flight...

  • These credit-card thin batteries could be used to power robotic spy drones which move along on wheels, kinda like the little thing in Star Wars that Chewbacca hollered at and scared. Is no one safe when a new technology is used in the wrong way?
  • ...and actually sells a product: Check out their cramped site: http://www.electrofuel.com/
  • Didn't that catch phrase come from Mr. Rogers?

    What do you mean "can we say"? What does this phrase mean?
  • Read the language of the press release - this is meant for load balancing the output of some power source that might have big surges and large fluctuations in power output. It is only a capacitor, which can hold a lot of energy but not necessarily keep it for a long time. Capacitors discharge on their own if they're left to their own devices - they discharge to air, even. If these things can deliver such a a huge current, I'm guessing they have a very short time constant. Translation: your notebook battery would be dead in an hour if it were one of these.
  • Two things I'd like to clear up:

    1. The Coulomb, although is energy/potential, is really the electric charge. Current is the flow of charge: 1 A = 1 C / s.
    2. kWh is a unit of energy: 1 kWh = 1000 * 1 J/s * 3600 s = 3.6 MJ. You probably knew this but messed it up in the post :)


    --
  • He must love the smell of burning silicon in the morning....

  • so you're saying that the friction from the breaks against the tires can conserve the battery's energy? this makes sense, it would surely increase the lifespan of the battery's charge and yes, if the laws of thermodynamics were null, city driving would probably produce nearly more energy than expended...
  • With this technology, there wouldn't be a need for a "battery slot", just use that space to put two typeIII PCMCIA slots into the computer, that would reduce both weight and cost.

    i noticed that someone has hoped for a PCMCIA laptop battery, well, this could be a standard, just pop 1 or 2 or even 3 of these batterys in, if you aren't getting online you have 12hours of juice, if you are, pop out a battery and you have 8hours, this would also alow instant "battery trades" without a power down, just pop the new battery in a different slot.

    Ever have a problem with your WinCE device running out of batterys? even though the device is tiny it still sucks a lot of juice, do the same thing with PCMCIA batterys. your digital camera only gets 30 shots before it dies? Flat strap on batterys will fix that.

    After 100 years with the current battery technology with very, very little change or improvement, its about time..
  • It's credit card thin, right? What about stacking 10 of them in the section where the battery slot is and modding the power down to something reasonable? Kind of like when you plug a 9-volt adapter into the wall to power a small piece of electronics, like a phone.
  • An aircraft can easily be 20% or more fuel by weight at takeoff. Suppose you can raise that to 30% for your electric aircraft, and the batteries hold 20 WH/pound; the net aircraft energy-to-weight is 6 WH/pound.

    Compare this to something as creaky and ancient as a Cessna 152 carrying 25 gallons of gasoline and a 25% efficient engine. Gasoline yields about 119,000 BTU/gallon, or 30000 BTU/gallon at the crankshaft. That 25 gallons of gas would yield 750,000 BTU or 220 KWH of work; divided by the aircraft's 1670 pound gross weight, that's 132 watt-hours per pound.

    Even the NEC battery is about a factor of 20 behind what you need to power a real heavier-than-air personal transport. Airplanes will not be electric any time soon.
    --
    Build a man a fire, and he's warm for a day.

  • cars which run on the road, in extremely punishing weather condition, are not necessarily suitable for these easily burning polymer batteries.

    Uh, hate to break it to ya, but gasoline is flammable too..

    How do we get around exploding gas tanks? Good engineering. I don't see it being much different for other volatile energy sources..

    Your Working Boy,
  • The only quiet aricraft are the non powered type -
    Ballons and gliders.
    Personally I would like to see great big zepplins
    make a comeback. Wondering how well they would work out with things like titanium, kevlar, computer controlled everything.

    Then again maybe I played Crimson Skies too much
    recently. Massive airborne aircraft carriers are just such a neat idea.
  • As materials such as metals and halogen are not used, the environmental load of the device is reduced...
    Benzene isn't made from metal & halogens... it's quite toxinc though (and carcinogenic BTW)

    consists of carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen
    Cyanide is plain CN... but it's not wise to sip it...

    It all depends on the processing... if you need truckloads of CNH acid you have quite an environmental issue...

  • Can we nail down the physical size needed for the battery unit? Curious if small enough to be cartridge loaded....

    (Enough playing with the 5hp aircompressor driven golf ball cannon)
  • Ehrm, sorry man I really don't want to slap you but...

    So, the KWh is one KW (1000 Watts), sustained for one hour (3600 seconds), which results in 3.6 million watts...

    Shouldn't that be Joule? ;-)

  • Ahh, 2628kWh (small k is a 1000, big K is 1024, Mr. Units ;) in computer power-consumption a year! Oh my goodnessn, that's like, $80/year where I live! A travesty! :)


    Furthermore, that's for a house with 4 computers running continuously, hardly the usual case.


    Seriously, power (in the US) is insanely cheap (usually between 2 and 5 cents/kWh), and this is for mobile stuff anyway, which are designed to consume considerably less power than their wall-socket-bound equivalents.

  • Battery guys use the following terms:

    Power/Volume = power density
    Energy/Volume = energy density
    Power/Weight = specific power
    Energy/Volume = specific energy

    Interesting bit o' trivia: the theoretical limit for a battery's specific energy is c^2. Disscuss amongst yourselves.
  • thermodynamics predicts simple machines to be the most efficient. efficiency is dictated by the energies in a system. as a system becomes more complex, the energy in that system increases, the entropy increases(lost energy), and the efficiency decreases. Damn that thermodynamic identity: du = t*ds - p*dv + (mu)dN makes life suck

  • This is related to the current nobel prize for chemistry. From watching an interview with the recipient on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, apparently whoever won the prize (the name escapes me...) did so for work on conducting polymers. Apparently they dope a polymer with something (he mentioned iodine, though I don't know if that is what is actually used in any real devices) and it automagically conducts. He mentioned plastic batteries and plastic light emitting diodes as two of the main applications.

    It'd be nice to see a major leap forward in battery technology. I hope this pans out.

  • Re:Take a look at the date... (Score:5)

    by brigand ( 62956 ) on Tuesday October 10, 2000 @11:08PM (#715719) Homepage
    Here [asiabiztech.com] is a more recent article (August 2000), so it appears to be truthful. It includes more correct info pertaining to power vs. energy density as well.
  • OK, you say electric cars, but for aircraft the advantages that apply to cars would be even more attractive.

    I've done a little electric aircraft RC modelling. They were almost as good as the "slimers" (various kinds of petrochemical fuels) but never quite, because the weight of the batteries always kept them from achieving the same power to weight ratios of otherly powered craft. Also they tend to have a run time of less than ten minutes, with performance rapidly dropping off towards the end. Until recently they were limited just to NiCd batteries, because of the high current draw required - LiIon and NiMH just couldn't dump the 80A that some of the big brushless motors like. Lightweight, high capacity batteries will make internal combustion models a thing of the past.

    Extend that idea to passenger aircraft... For a start, it would make them much less flammable (remember KLM in 1973?), and if people were farsighted enough to get a solar infrastructure built for recharging, much, much cheaper.

    Even possibly affordable enough for personal ownership. And of course very quiet, and almost pollution-free - not the sort of thing a neighbour would complain about at all.
  • I've never understood the use of mAh for quatifying charge for batteries, why not use Coulombs? Same thing with kWh instead of Joules for electricity consumption. Where do these "bastard" units come from (historically, that is)? Do their use pre-date Coulombs and Joules, or is there another historical reason why these units are used today.


  • There are a lot of developments into polymers, and most of the time we do not realize that many types of polymers _are_ plastics, and many of them can burn easily !

    While in lab condition, the polymer batteries may have indicated the capacity of being recharged at a certain level of power, and can be recharged for umpteen times, but in the real world, especially if we are talking about applying these polymer batteries into cars, there are lots of fire hazzards we need to be taking care of.

    While the polymer batteries can be safely used for non-volatile situation, cars which run on the road, in extremely punishing weather condition, are not necessarily suitable for these easily burning polymer batteries.

  • The battery itself uses sulfuric acid solution
    somelines further:
    Free of pollutants

    Sounds contradictory to me...
  • Sorry couldn't resist.

  • Remember, this device could change life as we know it. (Electric cars would upset the balance of oil demand, etc.)


    Therefore this technology will be suppressed and nothing will ever come of it. Of course I hope I'm wrong, but look at our record ever since JFK!

  • Lick experiment gives positive results (Score:5)

    by gad_zuki! ( 70830 ) on Tuesday October 10, 2000 @11:22PM (#715726)
    After an exhaustive "9 volt to the tongue" type experiment outside NEC's cafeteria, 98% of the random subjects all reported that the "damn proton battery hurts like a motherfucker." The remaining 2% had tongue piercings and could not legally participate in the in-company experiment.

    Results will be expected on-line shortly at the NEC homepage, with Realmedia clips of the after-effects of licking including slurred incomprehensible speech that may or may not be profanity.

    An NEC engineer was later quoted as saying, "we're working hard on clear and concise warning labels for kids so they don't do the same thing, but it probably won't make much of a difference," probably refering to socially inept and possibly really stupid children like his own son, Samuel, who is often the subject of taunts and dares.

  • The press release compared the energy density of the new batteries to that of lead-acid cells. It wasn't clear whether they were referring to the energy density by volume or by mass. (My guess is by mass, which is more favorable to them because lead is so effing dense).

    Lead-acid isn't all that great for mass density, so don't expect greatly increased range from electric vehicles. The main advantages are that (A) the plastic can probably (eventually) be made cheaper than the lead, and (B) it can be charged quickly (provided that mega-amp charging cables for cars become common, which is another story...)

  • Re:Safety Concerns (Score:3)

    by Morgaine ( 4316 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2000 @02:18AM (#715728)
    I wonder if people have considered the safety issues of batteries with high energy densities and high discharge currents. Under the right conditions, some batteries can explode, catch on fire, ...

    Yeah, people are really worried about such things, which is why gasoline-powered cars never caught on. :-)
  • or 72mA in 1/8th of a hour, etc, etc. - that is, sure you can light an LED to half brightness for an hour, or the same battery can blaze a floodlight for a few seconds, it's the same amount of enerfy, just released slowly or quickly. Heck, I have plans for a 100,000w laser that runs off a 6v flashlight battery, only thing is the pulses are only 10nS long. One Ampere is one coulumb/second - the units get quite comfortable once you work with them and actually build things for a few years, constipated liberal arts majors notwithstanding. Only newbies have to expand a unit of measurement into it's basic physical quantities. After saying "coulombs per second" five hundred thousand times, we find it much faster to just say "amps". "Jake, could you flip off that 20 coulombs per second circuit breaker? Thanks!" Got any 1 millionths of a coulomb-volt capacitors anybody?

    But I still wouldn't accept a ride in his new car.
  • Just the sort of thing I want in a computer on my lap. Something to be said for flywheels and lead acid batteries. Pretty much just dump energy into them and they'll sort it out.

    You want a flywheel on your lap? No thanks. Just a little imbalance or manufacturing imperfection and watch your private parts turn into shreds. :-)
  • LOL! This is so funny. Actually while testing my smoke detector batteries last night I did the ole' battery to the tongue test... I can't imagine what these new batteries would have done, so I guess the warning label should be for adult children as well. :-)

  • New Car battery Coming! (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    My dad works in the Battery business, and as off 2002, this new battery will appear in cars. It should be appearing soon in Harleys and Lawn tractors. INFO on INSPIRA http://www.johnsoncontrols.com/bg/NewTechnologies/ tech_info/tech_info_main.htm Problem with batteries is that there is a tradeoff between discharge rate, and reserve power. Discharge rate is important for starting engines, but reserve is important for say, running you radio. So you got a battery that's okay with both. Enter "Inspira", the Thin Metal Foil Lead Acid battery. These lil buggers are POWERFUL. A 6 cell unit not much bigger than a latern battery can crank out 1200 amps for 30 secs. It recharges in 15 minutes too. Now starting a car of course takes a lot less than 30 secs... ;) The thing can crank a DIESEL SEMI as fast as a car. The glow plugs warm up instantly basically, because of the high current. They're sealed lead-acid, no more need to add water, and they're recycleable using the current means for recycling car batteries. Using a seperate Deep Cycle marine battery for reserve, and this battery for cranking, the combined weight is less than a normal car battery. You can keep a spare cranking battery in the trunk, top it off on a home charger that plugs intoa wall outlet. Keep a spare, if the first cranking battery goes dead, pop it out, and plug the spare in! The circuitry used in the battery docking hardware for power management, well, they're adding car security too it too. You'll get a keychain dongle, and with a press of the button, it will disconnect the battery circuit from the car. Best of all, it's backwards compatible with current cars! You'll be able to go to a store, and BUY a drop in replacement that fits in the current battery tray. Drop it in, plug in the batteries, and off you go! And because that lil battery is so powerful, no more problems starting on cold days. We had a test model in our van for a year. NB, a electric drag racer equipped with Inspiras instead of normal lead acid car batteries, last year did so well, it can no longer compete in the electric class! It will now be racing with conventional fueled dragsters! By switching to inspira, they managed to shave 500 lbs off the weight. Drag races last a lot less than 30seconds, this makes them perfect for large banks of these lil batteries. What NEC is promising, Johnson Controls delivers today... ;)
  • Hmm, carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen ... sounds like an alpha version of the fuel cells used in The Matrix to me. If you ever get hold of one, hold it to your ear and listen for a heart beat.

    Regards, Ralph.
  • (Now's your queue to do an Emily LeTella: "Oh, nevermind").

    The battery uses PROTONS, not PHOTONS, as the charge carrier. Rather than using large ions as the primary way to shuttle charge across the battery, they use H+ ions (a.k.a. protons) to move the charge. The only photons involved are the virtual photons mediating the electromagnetic force.
  • As a friend at MIT told me,

    Twinkle, twinkle little star.

    Power equals i squared r.

    --Ben

  • That should be "whoever", not "whomever".
    --
  • How does one build a quiet, electric, flying, passenger transport within the Earth's atmosphere?
    I think there are bigger issues involved than mere energy storage. An electric helicopter would be almost exactly as loud as a gas-powered one, etc. I'm sure that my neighbors would complain. Heh.
  • If you tap the forward momentum of a car to generate energy, you're going to slow the car down in the process. Unfortunately, so much energy needs to be bled off that current technology can't absorb all the energy, so it's bled off as heat -- ever notice how brakes don't work so well on LONG slowdowns? That's because you've just melted your asbestos brake pads.

    Apparently TheDullBlade feels the ultra fast chargability of these batteries enables them to absorb much of the energy that would otherwise be bled off as heat. Using the power motor as a generator would be the obvious way.

    I agree with TheDullBlade.

  • Pardon?
  • clinko writes:

    This Article [cmu.edu]from Carnegie Mellon Talks about how lead based battery cars would be bad for the enviroment.

    Ohh, man. I hear this too much. I've been participating on the Electric Vehicle Discussion List [crest.org]for over a year now. This topic comes up every now and then, usually in some editorial or article in the news. Lead-Acid batteries of starter battery size or greater are one of the most recycled manufactured products extant today. Forklift batteries are often rebuilt instead of recycled as well.

    Lead-Acid batteries can also be fast-charged. The limiting factor is mostly the supply current! EV drag racers are dump-charging their small high power-density battery packs from large banks of more traditional "flooded" golf-cart style batteries, with currents in excess of 150A. They'd go higher but they don't have to. Discharge currents are up to 1400A in some cases. Quarter mile times are steadily dropping.

    Of course, we'd like more energy density, or as we like to say it "miles per pound", out of the batteries. Nickel Cadmium batteries are currently a good solution, though they cost quite a bit more up front. Their longer cycle lifetimes do, however, make up for much of the difference in cost over the life of the batteries. SAFT is a good source for them.

    These high power density batteries are interesting in that they will probably allow a lot more companies to make viable hybrid cars since the high charge/discharge currents will enable dumping many amps into an assist motor for rapid acceleration. The solid-state construction also lends itself to secreting the batteries all over the car, giving much more freedom to the styling designers.

    As for immediate safety concerns, the spill from a wrecked lead-acid battery EV can be safely neutralized with baking soda and/or simple water dilution will eliminate most of the immediate danger. Gasoline is much worse!!!

    Whew, that's enough for me today...

    -cajun
  • does your laptop use 200mA? I think not. A small motor uses about that much. And even then, it'd only power that 200mA motor for one hour.
    Bunch of misconceptions in this response.
    1. A 200 mAH cell does not have to be discharged at 200 mA or less. The press release [nec.co.jp] said "in a 200mAh device, 9A in 10 seconds" (whatever that means).
    2. Nothing in the press release [nec.co.jp] mentioned how big this 200 mAH cell is, how much it weighs, or the voltage. That 200 mAH cell might be the size of the end of your pinky finger, in which case a decent-sized battery would be umpteen amp-hours. I can't tell from what's given.
    3. One can make some educated guesses of the density from the description of the materials; the plastic electrodes probably have a density of less than 1.5, and the sulfuric acid electrolyte is probably 1.2 or less. Contrast this with metallic lead's density of (11.3.)
    4. The energy density is comparable to lead-acid, but the power density is far higher. If surge discharges can be done at a rate of 45C for 10 seconds, this implies a peak power output of 450 KW from a 10 KWH battery pack. This is equivalent to about 600 horsepower. With the proper power electronics and motors, an electric car with these batteries could eat Corvettes for breakfast. Taking a full charge in 5 minutes means that regenerative braking is a lot easier, and so is quick charging.
    This battery is looking like a good part of the death of the non-hybrid internal combustion engine car. With this kind of thing, it won't make sense to use non-electric powertrains any more.
    --
    Build a man a fire, and he's warm for a day.

  • At a garage (gas station) they have guys who are clued up about the internals of ICE cars. That is Internal Combustion Engine, cars. That's not to say that they're chemical experts, but think on it - if electrical cars replaced ICE cars, would they really be clued up anymore? No. They'd have to know electrical engineering, EPROM programming, etc. So basically they'd need a combination of programming ability and electrical knowledge that just wouldn't be available - not in your average car mechanic.

    Course, most geeks on /. might prefer these kind of cars, but /. readers are a small minority in comparison with the total driving population - and would need their car seen to as their ICE cars are seen to.

    Get it?

  • Risking the wrath of the copyright police, here is the Popular Science blurb (nov 2000 issue). It gives a bit more info. I typed it fast, so beware of typos:

    Proton Power

    A NEW TYPE of battery that relies on a proton traveling between its poles, rather than bulky molecules, could change how you think about rechargeable batteries. Not only would the new batteries recharge much more quickly, but also they could be recharged an unlimited number of times.

    The new protocol polymer battery, developed by Japan's NEC Corp., works more like a capacitor--which stores an electrical charge--than a conventional electrochemical battery. When the battery is fully charged, hydrogen atoms, which each have on electron and one proton, are bound within the cathode material. When an electrical circuit is opened, the electrons split from the atoms and flow through the circuit toward the anode, giving off electricity. The protons flow through an electrolyte to the anode, where they recombine with incoming electrons, forming hydrogen atoms and binding to the anode material. Recharging the battery reverses the process.

    The tiny protons speed through the electrolyte quicker than the complex molecules that carry charges in conventional batteries. This means a 12-volt proton polymer battery recharges in just 5 minutes. The battery also generates more power in a shorter period of time--important in, say, an electric motor for a car.

    The capture and release of electrons also causes less degredation of the electrodes than the electrochemical reaction of conventional batteries, giving the proton polymer battery a life of tens of thousands of cycles, instead of the hundreds for conventional rechargeables. NEC believes a virtually limitless cycle life--along with the ability to deliver power in pulses--makes the new battery ideal for the recently introduced Bluetooth short-range radio technology, which wirelessly links notebook PCs, mobile phones, and other portable gadgets.

    NEC is showing the battery to other manufacturers, but it's too early to tell when (or if) it will go into production.


    --

  • Can we say new PCMCIA laptop battery?

    Linux drivers anyone?
  • How long before manufacturers start offering these as options on laptops?

    What would be the cost of implementing such a unique battery design into current laptops?


    "This is the way the world ends
    Not with a bang but a whimper."

  • 9mAH (Score:4)

    by warmcat ( 3545 ) on Tuesday October 10, 2000 @10:09PM (#715746)
    9mAH means it can supply 9mA for 1 Hour ... 9mA is enough to light a standard LED to half brightness. For an hour.

    Please don't offer me a lift in your new car, ''Reality Master''.
  • Stephen Samuel wrote:
    One of the questions I have is: Is energy density per volume or per weight?

    Energy density is energy per volume. Specific energy is energy per weight.

    These batteries don't have high energy density or specific energy compared to Lithium-ion/lithium-polymer, but they do have high power density/specific power. Therefore they would be useful in conjunction with lithium-ion/polymer batteries in applications like wearable computing that occasionally require high current (because of hard drive accesses, etc.).

    -Zoyd
  • How much are these going to cost to impliment into our notebooks? I'm sick of only having less than 3 hours of juice.

  • Ummmm (Score:4)

    by bn557 ( 183935 ) on Tuesday October 10, 2000 @10:11PM (#715749) Homepage Journal
    Whomever wrote this has little if any clue about the existance of the universe. Either that or they're trying to be vague to keep secrets. It mentions protons being the electron carrier. Hmmm..... where else is a proton the electron carrier? Every metal in the universe. Proton's ALWAYS carry electrons(with the exception of an H+ ion or any other time you completely ionize an element). THe point in that being, they are using electron carrier to confuse you. They may mean differential carrier.

    If photons are used to knock electrons off of protons and then a barrier created between the two, it'd ceate one of the largest differentials possible.

    But hey, I'm just a physics major.... it doesn't really work in the real world anyways

    forget my typos.... I'm on codeine

  • Re:mmmmm *drool* (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    uhm... does your laptop use 200mA? I think not. A small motor uses about that much. And even then, it'd only power that 200mA motor for one hour. Maybe if you hooked like ten of these things together, but still... (You'd only be able to power 2A for 1 hour)

  • Sounds almost like Sci-Fi (Score:4)

    by Ratface ( 21117 ) on Tuesday October 10, 2000 @10:05PM (#715752) Homepage Journal
    That it is constructed of such simple materials;

    As materials such as metals and halogen are not used, the environmental load of the device is reduced (polymer consists of carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen and does not include any of the pollutants used in other batteries).

    ... and provides such a high energy density, it sounds lmaost infeasible. But then some of the most interesting new technologies I've been reading about in energy creation/storage all sound remarkably simple. Fuel Cells, flywheels and now Proton Polymer batteries.

    It'll be interesting to see what new devices come out of the marriage of these technologies. Combine them with low-energy consumption chips such as Crusoe and we could easily be looking at all-day laptops, all month cellphones etc.

    "Give the anarchist a cigarette"
  • Actually, lead-acids are probably the worst as far as deep-cycling. Even ones designated as "deep cycle" batteries should never be deep-cycled the way NiCDs have to be. Rechargable alkalines are similar to lead-acids in this respect...

    I'd say that if anything, the need to "refill" a lead-acid is a disadvantage. Gel-cells are a wonderful thing. :)

  • Enviroment (Score:4)

    by clinko ( 232501 ) on Tuesday October 10, 2000 @10:14PM (#715754) Journal
    This Article [cmu.edu]from Carnegie Mellon Talks about how lead based battery cars would be bad for the enviroment. They also talk about how there needs to be a better technology. Well, of all people NEC did it. I'm really excited about this.
    Imagine this battery and a transmeta chip also. This Is Great
  • They may be a neat idea, but Zeppelins don't have a good track record as warships. Of the four US military Zeppelins I can think of, three met ignoble ends:

    *USS Shenandoah - Ripped apart in a thunderstorm

    *USS Akron - Sank into the ocean (the altimeter didn't work so well in a low pressure area, go figure)

    *USS Macon - Also sank - crosswinds tore up the fins, and the debris pierced the gas cells

    *USS Los Angeles - Peacefully decommissioned after ~8 years.

    They suffer from the problem of being BIG, slow targets. And I shudder to think of how large and tough any kind of aircraft recovery system would have to be to handle jets. And of course, they're pretty susceptible to poor weather conditions, and unlike the wet Navy, any kind of support/escort craft would suffer from similar limitations (other than planes, but fuel is fairly heavy stuff)

    Given that it's not difficult to get airplanes anywhere in the world quickly with a network of bases, already-built wet aircraft carriers and mid-air refueling, I don't think that there's much need for Zeppelins.

    OTOH, there are still quite a few commercial applications, but it'll be tough anyway given that weather is still a problem (they have to be hangared - masts don't work in storms) and that everyone remembers the stupid Hindenberg.*

    *And so do we at my job; one server is Chernobyl. The other is Hindenburg. The theme is, of course, disasters. ;)
  • I havent yet read the story (doing that now).. but from your post I see that this could be very useful as a fuel source of an electric car.. But how would it compare to other enviro-friendly cars like hydrogen and natural gas? Both price was and efficiency.. I guess the efficiency is the same as any electric device.. but pricing would be nice to hear about.. I think this is a topic we'll be hearing more and more of in the next few years, both with the rise of fuel prices and the diminishing world supplies.. and also environmental issues...
  • The only thing exciting about this technology so far is the recharge time. NEC tries to make the energy density sound like a lot by saying its ten times greater than the double-layer capacitor, but it's still small compared to my Li+ battery.

    If you look at the picture, you'll see the chunkier battery is rated at 12V/200mAh. My Li+ has 4500 mAh at not quite that same voltage. So my 1 kg or so laptop battery is equivalent to about 20 of NEC's blue thingy, which looks like it's 25-50% as massive.

    The credit-card battery doesn't have nearly that capacity. I suppose this is alright if these things are *really* cheap and you have the space (and endurance) to lug around the amount that you need to get plenty of stand-alone usage, but this alternative seems like it would be a real pain in the butt.

    Instead of waiting for holy-grail type breakthroughs in battery technology, lets look forward to commercialization of other established alternatives: Transmeta's lower power CPU and Kodak's up-and-coming organic LED display devices.

    Squiffy

  • ooo, the possibilities... (Score:5)

    by Verteiron ( 224042 ) on Tuesday October 10, 2000 @10:08PM (#715758) Homepage
    At last, a UPS that won't outweigh its own volume in neutron star matter...

  • A discrepency... (Score:4)

    by chroma ( 33185 ) <chroma@mindspring . c om> on Tuesday October 10, 2000 @10:16PM (#715759) Homepage
    The press release in no way claims that these things have "the highest energy density of any electrochemical device". In fact, the energy density is only claimed to be equal to that of lead-acid batteries. Lead acid batteries have a much lower energy density than NiCd, NiMH or Lithium ion batteries.

    These wouldn't make very good laptop batteries because they're too heavy. They would be great for BattleBots because of their high power/weight ratio.

  • Weight questions... (Score:3)

    by Adrian Harvey ( 6578 ) on Tuesday October 10, 2000 @10:18PM (#715760)
    The press release claims that the energy density is the same as lead-acid batteries. We can presume that is for weight/unit volume. No clear indication of the weight of this unit though... I would presume much lighter (I associate lead with heavy) and though this would be it's biggest advantage in many cases (esp. cars), don't forget that Lithium/Ion and even Nickel Metal Hydride have higher energy density (erg/vol) than lead acid...

    I think that the speed of recharge might be most useful, as e-cars would not require an overnight charge. 5 Minutes at a servo (with a thick enough cable to carry the amps) wouldn't be so bad.
  • Why isn't this moderated uppity up?
  • Yeah, these ones use sulfuric acid, so if you drop them they could eat through the hull (/me looks down hole going through several floors, then spits).
  • I wouldn't call anything that consists of carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen simple, neccessarily. Sure ,it could be, but then again, living organisms are also made in large parts of carbon(very major), hydrogen(also major), and nitrogen(all proteins need it, at least).

    So there's no oxygen, but still, a polymer of these can be very complex.

  • Nah. (Score:1)

    by xonix7 ( 227592 )

    Unless you set up a chain of electric-device providing service stations, this won't really take off....besides, who is going to pay for the EE students to sit there and consult/fix probs that occur?

  • Erhhh... do you really want to connect a voltage feedback to the input on your cardbus? It's gonna take some interesting 'software drivers' to reroute a "battery" device in the PCMCIA to the powersupply...

    Ouch... Those among us with vivid imaginations can just "see" the circuit-boards frying, "smell" the chips burning out. Not to mention "feel" the smoldering heat of a _lap_top undergoing this process.

    :)
  • Then, try this one [asiabiztech.com]

    Some figures from the article:
    NEC's proton polymer battery, however, offers a power density of 1,000W/kg and a weight energy density of 10-20Wh/kg - a reasonable combination of power density and weight energy density. Performance is roughly midway between existing double-layer capacitors and batteries.

    ____________________
  • Rats, my post is redundant in regard to t his one [slashdot.org]
    So much for karma :(


    ____________________
  • The acidity is definately dangerous in the event of a leak, but it doesn't stick around. Once it reacts with something and is neutralized (like by eating your latptop.. :-P) you're left with sulfur and water, neither of which are dangerous pollutants.
    ---
    Where can the word be found, where can the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.
  • umm.. i know little about electrical theory, but....

    isn't that supposed to be watts? if not, at what voltage is this LED? w = v * a (IIRC)
  • From what I recall, lead-acid batteries DO have the highest energy density of any battery - at least by volume.

    Unfortunately, all that lead makes them very uncompetitive when speaking of energy density with regards to weight... :(
  • These batteries won't have much effect on your first complaint, but they could have much more effect on the latter. One problem with them is going to be getting the optimal charge current into them. To chargea 2000maH battery you'd have a few choices:
    20min@9A, 2min@90A 15sec@900A.

    The battery might actually be able to take the 900A, if you could design it so that the wiring wouldn't melt in the process. The most probable approach for most consumer items would be between the first 2 options. (charging a 12V battery at 90A is actually doable with household current. It would translate to ~10A at 120V, but a power supply that could do that would be rather bulky -- you're talking a 1100W power supply. It might be doable as a base station. The lower range is more likely for a portable. The 900A range might be used for industrial/military applications.)

    If the connectors for the battery were standardized, you might actually see units in the airport where you'd pay $2 to charge your battery in 2 minutes or less. (Images from half-life keep flashing in front of my eyes (HEV charging units)).

    If they go commercial, these units might actually be made with cheap Titanium [slashdot.org] cases because a puncture could result in a catastrophic energy release.
    `ø,,ø`ø,,ø!

  • meant "18 mA for 1/2 Hour", or "36 mA for 1/4 Hour", etc.
  • OOhh... this sounds good. If I put one of these suckers in my tv remote control, I might never have to get up off my ass again.

  • And this is an important consideration in hybrid electric vehicles.

    In my final two years of college (ME degree,) I got involved in a project to build a hybrid. We participated in the 1995 Hybrid Electric Vehicle Challenge, and won our class. I drove this car (a converted Saturn SL-2) all around California.

    In watching the performance of the car, we noticed that we used power from the batteries in a very "spikey" manner. The engine would drive the car, then stepping on the pedal would cause a > 300A draw from the batteries. This would drop to less than 30A in about a second. This is from a 180V (nominal) battery pack.

    As for energy density, that's the problem hybrids solve. The energy for this car came from the fuel. We never recharged the batteries from the grid, only by running the engine, and almost always while driving. We even drove the thing from Fresno to Yosemite valley, and put more energy into the batteries than we removed.

    I'm rambling, I see, but my point is that these batteries would rock in a hybrid meant for performance. While ~350 lbs of these things would probably send the car ~4 miles before running out, a hybrid would replace the energy before you ever got that far. That is the beauty of hybrids - use the great acceleration of electric motors without having to cart 3000 lbs of lead to get anywhere useful.

    Later

  • As long as you didn't drain it, A furby-sized battery could jump start a car (but you'd still need 2-gauge jumper cables to connect it!). If you shorted it out with 12Gauge (extension cord) wire, you could probably burn off the insulation in under 10 seconds. Now think what would happen to your thigh if you stuck one of these batteries in your pocket and shorted it out on your keys -- We're talking instant branding here (not to mention the hole burnt in your pants).

    I once saw a friend of mine fix a car without taking off his wedding ring.

    It was a Ford, with an external starter solenoid. He shorted the positive terminal on that to ground and lost the finger.

    If you heat it fast enough, gold will glow red before it drips away and breaks the circuit.


  • I love cars. Old muscle cars, big-assed V8 engines sucking back huge amounts of gas. I love the mechanism, and I love the elegance of them.

    I've always been someone who has put down the electric car. Not for loss of that romance - oil is evil, but until now, there's been no practical replacement for it.

    I look forward to the improvements and things that will definately come of this NEC innovation. I think we're finally at a stage where the electric car is going to become practical.

    Now, we've gotta start building nuclear power plants so that when people start plugging in their cars to charge them, it won't kill the country's electrical grid.

  • First, the press release said this was supposed to be sampling in October. It's October. Did it ship?

    Second, this is really a device for high surge power output. That's a specialized application. The classic in that market is the PolaPulse battery inside each Polaroid film pack. As others have pointed out, this new device is down there with lead-acid on energy density. The NEC article mentions Bluetooth devices as an application. They're thinking of "somnolent computing", devices that sleep most of the time.

  • Cruddy battery time is a big factor in my choice to not have a laptop for personal use. I fly overseas occasionally and it's always a disappointment when my work laptop runs out of juice or when on a trip wondering when I can get the time to charge up the batteries again.
  • I'd go for the keeping secrets theory myself. They did say that this was immersed in sulfuric acid. This is a strong acid, and would supply large numbers of H+ ions....

    I'm not sure I understand what they're doing either, but it looks more chemical and "battery" (cell to the accuracy-obcessed) like than physicsey and capacitor like.

  • Yes the POWER density is high..... (Score:5)

    by deglr6328 ( 150198 ) on Tuesday October 10, 2000 @10:29PM (#715799)
    The power density is high for this material, NOT the ENERGY DENSITY. Power density is a measurement of high-current discharge per unit of time per unit of volume(or weight).

    The power density for these devices is in excess of 1,000 Watts/Kg, much higher than the few hundred for lead acids/NiCd's etc. Although--- the energy density of the NEC proton batteries is still rather dissapointing at 10-15 WattHours/Kg compared to the 20-30 WattHours/Kg of lead-acids'. But since it's such a new technology IMHO there is much prospect for improvment in this area, and getting competitive(in terms of batteries) energy densities out of these things is only a matter of time.

    There is an article in the "Nikkei BP AsiaBizTech" site here: http://www.nikkeib p.a siabiztech.com/nea/200008/cmpo_108677.html [asiabiztech.com]
  • Fast charging, fast discharging, add these babies on top of the main battery in your electric car (or hybrid) and you have the potential to regain maybe 80% of the energy when you stop and use it to start moving again.

    In city driving, that means probably doubling the range of an electric car, and not having to worry too much about low mass for efficiency. This means having an efficient city car that carries enough batteries for long-range highway use. Sweeeeet.

    Sure, there are plenty of other applications for something halfway between a battery and a capacitor, but this is the one I bet you're most likely to end up using, and the one that saves you the most money.

    --------
  • This battery technology has high power/weight and mediocre energy/weight. To me that sounds ideal for applications where you have a steady low-power energy source and want short bursts of much higher power from time to time. Where is this, we ask:

    1. Small planetary exploration robots: charge slowly off the solar cells, then use a burst of power to move/dig/analyze/transmit, then go back to sleep and recharge.

    2. Similar story for remote sensing -- run the sensors and slowly charge the battery of a small solar cell, then use a burst of power to run the radio transmitter and report

    Steve
  • NEC claims it has the highest energy density of any electrochemical device, as well as a current discharge rate 20 times higher than lead batteries (20mAh device: 9A in 10 seconds... electric cars, anyone?)

    Hmmm, 9A in 10 sec = 25 mAh, that is more than the 20 mAh battery capacity. There is something wrong here !

  • Re:Do the math ! (Score:3)

    by geirt ( 55254 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2000 @12:43AM (#715807)
    OK, I found the error (a slashdot quoting bug), the NEC press release says:

    "9A in 10 seconds in 200mAh device"

    Which boils down to slightly more that 10 %, which is OK considering the large current surge.

  • A more complete hosts file is at: http://www.smartin-designs.com/

    Add to this a miniscule http server in C I wrote (ask and it's yours), which returns a 1x1 pixel transparent GIF, and you're set. The web looks a *lot* better.

    Oh, yeah, and of course, remap www.nytimes.com to partners.nytimes.com (get the IP). ;)
  • Therefore this technology will be suppressed and nothing will ever come of it.
    Yeah! And if it weren't for the conspiracy, we wouldn't still be using room-sized computers made with tens of thousands of discrete transistors. Instead someone would have figured out how to fabricate hundreds of millions of transistors on a single piece of silicon, and there would be some computers so small you could carry them around with you. And there would probably be some giant computer network to allow us to spread our conspiracy theories to everyone!

    But unfortunately, due to the conspiracy, we'll never get this kind of technology. :-(

  • NB, a electric drag racer equipped with Inspiras instead of normal lead acid car batteries, last year did so well, it can no longer compete in the electric class!

    Say what? Are you sure you aren't just talking out your ass? Go dig up the issue of Wired magazine from around April 1999 or so. They've got an article on electric drag racing in there, and the reason electrics are in a different class is because they blow away fuel-powered racers. Fuel-powered dragsters have no chance against an electric, because electrics can dump so much energy so quickly.

    The reason we don't have electric cars on the highway is not because of strength, but because of duration. You can get great performance out of an electric vehicle for half an hour or so, and then it drops way off.

  • A reality check guys,

    This document is dated the 30th of March this year (Probably available to the world on the 1st of April!) and claims that the technology would be presented on the 4th of April in Japan with actual products becoming available in October this year...

    If this is as big as it sounds the whole world would be raving about it, no i think this is a April fools joke.

    Damm shame.... *sigh*

  • Re:9mAH (Score:4)

    by RevRigel ( 90335 ) on Tuesday October 10, 2000 @10:33PM (#715817)
    Well, technically it's mAh, if you want to get picky with case. And..what the hell are you talking about? Some existing lead acid batteries are as small as 80mAh, and some are thousands of Ah (like on submarines, only banks of batteries that size). Just increase the plate size and/or put smaller cells in parallel and series to achieve the desired voltage/internal resistance (and hence power density). Higher energy density => less weight per Joule => feasible electric/hybrid cars. Of course flywheels still have my favor, but hopefully these new batteries will be a little less bitchy than these newer, high tech, poorly designed battery technologies. Ooh, look. Lithium Ion. Charge me improperly and I'll blow flaming liquid electrolyte everywhere. Just the sort of thing I want in a computer on my lap. Something to be said for flywheels and lead acid batteries. Pretty much just dump energy into them and they'll sort it out.
  • Every time I see an article about the next "super battery", I wonder if people have considered the safety issues of batteries with high energy densities and high discharge currents. Under the right conditions, some batteries can explode, catch on fire, go into thermal runaway while being charged, or cause burns when shorted. Lithium ion batteries are already banned in some applications.

  • Re:Ummmm (Score:3)

    by Dr. Zowie ( 109983 ) <slashdot.deforest@org> on Tuesday October 10, 2000 @10:41PM (#715819)
    Well, actually, no, protons aren't charge carriers through many things other than acidic solutions.

    The charge carrier is the electrically charged thing that carries the current by moving from place to place. In metals, the carriers are typically all electrons, while the nuclei stay put. I'm surprised that they managed to get a patent on proton charge-carrying, though: IIRC the protons ("H+ ions") *are* the charge carriers through the solution of many conventional liquid cells. (In lead-acid batteries, the SO_4^2- ions are doing the charge carrying...)

  • well, except for the fact that in the 'story' for the article it SAYS more like a capacitor. How else can you use photons to generate electricity? I'v taken two upper-level optics courses, two quantum courses, and enough frickin physics classas that I think I'd've heard about another thing a photon can interact with.

    A photon hits an electron, exciting the electron to another energy level and then scatters a new photon of a lesser wavelength.

    If the charger had an IMMENSE positive charge on one electrode and an immense negetive charge on the other, and also a STRONG high energy photon emitter(prolly well into the ultra-violet or maybe into the radioactive particles); you could excite the electrons enough to get them to cluster on the positive electrode. A insulating barrier could then be introduced inbetween the twe electrodes which would only allow for a current to disipate if the elctrodes were connected. Sounds like a capacitor.

    But that's still just speculation(and I still can't type)

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