Batteries and New Battery Technologies

Hi Brian,

What would be the reason not to use the sodium battery on a boat, if special precautions are taken?. It is a pitty, it is all marketing to get funds from the governement, but nothing to buy for us off the shelve and to use.

There is also an error in the BMT batteries info listings, I highlighted that a few threads back. It is not 17,44 Wh per KG, but per pound. The same for

94,12 Wh/Kg should read 94,12/pound. This means that both new technology batteries are approx the same i.e. 200 Wh/Kg I would prefer the latter one in that case and not the sodium battery.

But again we have to wait for a few years and maybe even longer again.

 

Good luck,

Porta

 

simple battery balancer

Bert,
Here is the simple battery balancer by Lee Hart, EE:

http://www.evdl.org/pages/battbridge.html

Lee also has much more complex systems which can be found if you google under his name prefacing battery charger.

Here is a simple explanation of the different Lithium battery systems and details on charging voltages, helpful hints and very good comparison tables:

http://www.batteryuniversity.com/partone-5A.htm

I was able to locate the quote in your post (writing text was below and I was looking to the left side, looks bluish to me) and see the experiment was with lithium poly. Poly is not referenced in the battery university article, as I recall. But, I'm pretty sure your cells pictured are not poly, anyway.

We use sodium metal in the lab for demos from time to time and it is VERY hazardous, requiring special storage and isolation for safety, even at low room temperatures. Lithium metal is only slightly less reactive. They explode when coming in contact with moisture and are great fire hazards. Even Lithium cells which contain nano amounts of these solid metals impregnated in the electrodes might be a hazard (especially Li poly) in auto size capacities. Some types use a compound of lithium (A123 proprietary) which makes them safer than the metal.

Hope this helps.

Porta

 

Hi Rick, Here the reply from China, I suggest you make contact yourself with her. I suggest, to get a quote for consolidated seatransport, even if it may take a few weeks extra. EWT charge the batteries to the full and thus it can last 4 or 5 months before they need attending to. But again, I don't know whether the price warrants the weight advantage.

*************************************************
Dear Bert,

Thank you for your e-mail.

Our company can supply those large powerpacks, kindly advise the capacity and dimension you need. For weight, do you have any limit?

Thank you.

Best Regards
Anny Guo/EWT BATTERY

TEL:86-755-29043130/81752844
FAX:86-755-81752840

E-mail:sales10@ewtbattery.com
MSN:annyguo1@hotmail.com
Website: www.ewtbattery.com

2009-12-07

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

发件人： Bert Kuijpers
发送时间： 2009-12-04 16:32:05
收件人： sales10@ewtbattery.com
抄送：
主题： Re: Re: Re:LiFePO4 batteries

Dear Anny,

Would you know of a company in China who exports single quantity large Lithium powerpacks.? Special the 48 Volt 10 - 20 Kwhour.for boats. i.e. one off and not 100 or 1000

But a good BMS (battery management system) must also be avialable for such productt.

Will your company make those large powerpacks. Weight is very important.

The consept we are working on , the weight may be our downfall.

Best regards
Bert


----- Original Message -----
From: sales10
To: Bert Kuijpers
Sent: Wednesday, December 02, 2009 8:29 AM
Subject: Re: Re: Re:LiFePO4 batteries


Dear Bert,

Thank you for your e-mail. I understood your situation and hope you will be successful. I will be patient to wait for your further instruction. Are you satisfied with the shape of these battery?

Would you accept to ship by sea? We can find the ocean shipping company. Please help advise your target transportation cost, based on your require, we will select the proper shipping company. I am sorry China postal service really don't accept the batteries because batteries are dangerous goods and also easy to lose during the long course of transportation.

What a happy family! Your daughter is beautiful and intelligent.

Best Regards
Anny Guo/EWT BATTERY

TEL:86-755-29043130/81752844
FAX:86-755-81752840

E-mail:sales10@ewtbattery.com
MSN:annyguo1@hotmail.com
Website: www.ewtbattery.com

2009-12-02

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

发件人： Bert Kuijpers
发送时间： 2009-12-01 22:07:27
收件人： sales10@ewtbattery.com
抄送：
主题： Re: Re: Re:LiFePO4 batteries

Dear Anny,

I jsut received the 2 parcels. However I have a technical problem to solve. When I place the batteries in series, they don't make contact with each other. I will have to solve that first before I can buy more batteries from you.

Thank you for the quote. I am very surprised about the Postal services. Here, in South Africa and also in Europe, batteries are only be allowed to be shipped per surface mail, but not per airmail. Are you sure the postman had it correct??

Attached a photo from my family. My wife, youngest daughter when she got her double degree in accounting/law

Thank you so much for the help given ,

Best regards
bert
****************************************************
Anny posted a photo of herself to one of her e-mails, I responded to that.

 

I was planning to keep the BMS simple, If after a number of charge/discharge one of the batteries goes too much out of balance, I would replace it at the appropiate time, and charge the battery in a single charger.

The problem is with new technologies, there is not enough statistical data avialable. Assuming I have 1000 batteries in this pipe-system on a boat,
a) will half of the batteries be out of balance after the first charge/discharge?
b) none at all or only 1?
c) will only after 50 charge/discharge maybe one battery gone out of balance.

If the c) is the case, it means only once per year or half year, I will have to worry about replacing and balancing a battery.

But Christmas is coming up, I like to wish you all, a merry Christmas, a very happy New Year. Thanks for all the help given. The nice chats we had.

I have to start to make it all working, thus you will not hear from me for a while. I need to start getting experience with those batteries and make the BMS up and running. Also start testing the system under load.
Bert

Thank you Porta, I need all the luck in the world.

 

Fuel Cells

What about this on your boat.

http://www.renewableenergyfocus.com...-cell-achieves-2nd-place-in-transat-650-race/

 

Nanotubes + Ink + Paper = Instant Battery

Dip an ordinary piece of paper into ink infused with carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires, and it turns into a battery or supercapacitor. Crumple the piece of paper, and it still works. Stanford researcher Yi Cui sees many uses for this new way of storing electricity.

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/december7/nanotubes-ink-paper-120709.html

...and in case this link disappears in the future....

Stanford Report, December 7, 2009
At Stanford, nanotubes + ink + paper = instant battery
Dip an ordinary piece of paper into ink infused with carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires, and it turns into a battery or supercapacitor. Crumple the piece of paper, and it still works. Stanford researcher Yi Cui sees many uses for this new way of storing electricity.

Jack Hubbard
Post doctoral students in the lab of Prof. Yi Cui, Materials Science and Engineering, light up a diode from a battery made from treated paper, similar to what you would find in a copy machine. The paper batteries are treated with a nanotube ink, baked and folded into electrical generating sources like the one wrapped in foil seen here.
BY JANELLE WEAVER

Stanford scientists are harnessing nanotechnology to quickly produce ultra-lightweight, bendable batteries and supercapacitors in the form of everyday paper.

Simply coating a sheet of paper with ink made of carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires makes a highly conductive storage device, said Yi Cui, assistant professor of materials science and engineering.

"Society really needs a low-cost, high-performance energy storage device, such as batteries and simple supercapacitors," he said.

Like batteries, capacitors hold an electric charge, but for a shorter period of time. However, capacitors can store and discharge electricity much more rapidly than a battery.

Cui's work is reported in the paper "Highly Conductive Paper for Energy Storage Devices," published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"These nanomaterials are special," Cui said. "They're a one-dimensional structure with very small diameters." The small diameter helps the nanomaterial ink stick strongly to the fibrous paper, making the battery and supercapacitor very durable. The paper supercapacitor may last through 40,000 charge-discharge cycles – at least an order of magnitude more than lithium batteries. The nanomaterials also make ideal conductors because they move electricity along much more efficiently than ordinary conductors, Cui said.

Cui had previously created nanomaterial energy storage devices using plastics. His new research shows that a paper battery is more durable because the ink adheres more strongly to paper (answering the question, "Paper or plastic?"). What's more, you can crumple or fold the paper battery, or even soak it in acidic or basic solutions, and the performance does not degrade. "We just haven't tested what happens when you burn it," he said.

The flexibility of paper allows for many clever applications. "If I want to paint my wall with a conducting energy storage device," Cui said, "I can use a brush." In his lab, he demonstrated the battery to a visitor by connecting it to an LED (light-emitting diode), which glowed brightly.

A paper supercapacitor may be especially useful for applications like electric or hybrid cars, which depend on the quick transfer of electricity. The paper supercapacitor's high surface-to-volume ratio gives it an advantage.

"This technology has potential to be commercialized within a short time," said Peidong Yang, professor of chemistry at the University of California-Berkeley. "I don't think it will be limited to just energy storage devices," he said. "This is potentially a very nice, low-cost, flexible electrode for any electrical device."

Cui predicts the biggest impact may be in large-scale storage of electricity on the distribution grid. Excess electricity generated at night, for example, could be saved for peak-use periods during the day. Wind farms and solar energy systems also may require storage.

"The most important part of this paper is how a simple thing in daily life – paper – can be used as a substrate to make functional conductive electrodes by a simple process," Yang said. "It's nanotechnology related to daily life, essentially."

Cui's research team includes postdoctoral scholars Liangbing Hu and JangWook Choi, and graduate student Yuan Yang.

Janelle Weaver is a science-writing intern at the Stanford News Service.

Related Information
Stanford professor's battery, made of paper, looks to change the energy landscape
Yi Cui Group, Nanomaterials Science and Engineering
'Highly Conductive Paper for Energy Storage Devices'

 

Schwab's Video Presentation, LiFePO4 Battery Solutions

LFP (LiFePO4, or Lithium Iron Phosphate) batteries represent an exciting development in safe, high-density energy storage.

http://www.bruceschwab.com/battery.htm

 

Hey Brian, thanks for posting the link to my rather casual chat about the Genasun batteries.

Batteries have sure come a long way in the past few years. There are various lithium battery chemistries out there that have proven powerful and lightweight (and some quite reliable). I've seen lithium nano-phosphate packs (by A123, I think) the size of a deck of cards that can start a full size freight truck engine. Or, a few tiny cells inside an otherwise completely hollow "fake" battery for a NASCAR race car that looked like a convenional battery from outside but weighed only a couple pounds.

However, the most dependable chemistry, and now pouring into the EV world is the lithium iron phosphate, or LiFePO4, (or simply LFP) batteries of various sizes.

For anything where low weight is important like cars, bikes, scooters (and even some airplanes), the various LFP brands out there are beginning to dominate the market. The basic cells are easily available. However, what is key with LFP or any lithium system is a smart BMS (Battery Management System). Simply buying the cells without a good BMS is asking for trouble.

Not that LFP is prone to thermal runaway like Li-Ion or some other lithium chemistries, but one could face a large loss of your investment by running the cells dead (they don't like that at all). A good BMS keeps the cells balanced and prevents over-discharging/charging. As far as cycle life they have proven to last well over 2000 cycles at 80% discharge levels. At lower discharge cycles the life is much greater (3000 or more at <70% discharge levels)

In the boating world, there are different brands out there, with Genasun, Mastervolt, Valence, RaceCell, etc. all offering LFP systems with various levels of BMS. I've taken on selling Genasun and RaceCell and it's been pretty exciting to see what they do...after dealing with lead/gel/agm for so many years...

However, for batteries are going to be sitting on land where weight is not an issue, good old flooded lead or SLA is still the best bang for the buck.

Bruce
www.bruceschwab.com

 

Thank you Brian,

Heeeh Guys were is your apology. When I mentioned in thread 324 about painting, I was shot down. I made a mistake , I shouldn't have purchased LiFePO4, but carried on with Super capacitors. Well, I have them here, I better finish this project first, before going back to Super Duper Capacitors. Have a nice Christmas

 

Brian, this whole article is a piece of quasi-scientific rubbish. Amazing what people do to get a few moments attention.

A piece of paper powering a LED is a poor magician's trick. I've seen a guy holding a bright light bulb in his hands with no wires at all and he still didn't make it to Las Vegas.

There will certainly be an application for nanostructures to keep ions from wandering all over the electrode surface but this story is so distorted by lack of insight of the author it is impossible to determine if the Chinese couple has discovered something new or just tried to impress a journalist.
To make a battery (or a capacitor) you need two metal electrodes separated by a layer containing the electrolyte. Open any NiMh battery and you will find two rolled up strips of metal with a most strip of paper between them, cut an electrolytic capacitor and you'll find the same.

Approximately 20 years ago I received a few samples of a revolutionary battery from Matsushita that was about to change the world of portable equipment. They were flat, pliable plastic bags which could be bent or folded; the manufacturer offered to produce them in any desired shape, capacity, both one-way or rechargeable. They were made from very thin sheets of plastic and paper. For a zinc-carbon battery the material was vacuum coated with zinc on one side, carbon on the other and a silver coating around the perimeter to interconnect the individual cells; for rechargeables nickel and cadmium deposits were used.
Because of the large surface, current capabilities and storage capacity were staggering. Portable equipment would need no battery compartment anymore, just the plastic envelope on the backside of the circuit board.

But there was no internet back then. And the project died without hardly anybody noticing it.

 

CDK: Your post is total bunk. You did not go to the available battery datasheet to see if the numbers add up, instead you are referring to power drills, SLA, and locomotives. Also you don't know or pretend to not know the difference between energy and power.

It is very simple math, goes like this:
Volts*Amp=Watt (unit of power)
1 watt during 1 hour is one watt hour (unit of energy)
You can take that with you, and go to the A123 site, read, calculate, and then come back with numbers to support your rants.

Even if you are an electrical engineer, which I doubt, you cannot convince me that SLA figures are more accurate for A123 cells than the A123 datasheets. Keep in mind that max discharge ratings for cells are somewhat arbitrary in that it is a balance of durability and power and depends somewhat on available heat transfer of the pack. IIRC they were rated to 60C burst before, now only 52.17.

On the face of it, it seems the claims, compared to the datasheets, are slightly exaggerated (such as will happen when voltage sag is not accounted for), but maybe not; they (he?) have been building white zombie since 1994, maybe they actually have acquired a multimeter by that time...?

 

Sigurd, you are entitled to your own opinion.
You are correct in doubting that I am an electrical engineer, I am not and didn't state that I am (read that line again please).
In fact, if someone, familiar with my career, would qualify me as such, I would feel insulted. Coming from you, I don't care, you may even call Einstein a fool.

This is not a dissertation (I would have expressed energy in Joules in that case) but a popular discussion. The illustrated Oxford dictionary defines energy (Phys.) as "power of doing work possessed at any instant by a body or system of bodies". But it has a multitude of meanings, from what is stored in a moving mass to the number of electrons in a semiconductors band-gap.

For my estimate of the required storage capacity I used data from a respected battery manufacturer (in this case Varta) concerning cranking power rating of a 12 volts battery especially designed for that specific purpose. It takes into account the internal resistance of the battery conductors and that of the electrochemical process itself. In a real situation the internal resistance of the wiring must be added.

I'm fairly sure the plasma boys have a multimeter. They surely have a large fridge and a toaster as well, but with none of these accurate power measurements can be made.

 

Ricardo, QinetiQ-new high performance hybrid battery

Hi all,
just found this thread:
The Reduced cost Li-Ion (RED-LION) project – a two-year collaboration between UK-based Ricardo and QinetiQ – has demonstrated the potential of a new, low-cost lithium-ion cell chemistry and associated flexible battery management system for hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs)
.... more

 

CDK:
1: It is a popular discussion but energy is still not the same as power. Do you think energy capacity is directly relevant on a single run on a drag strip?
(it is a "you don't need to answer" question)

2: Yes I know you used lead battery to estimate whether the claims for zombie could be true. I pointed that out. I don't want to know why you did not rather go and look up the relevant cells. You still haven't, apparently.

3: Accurate? The humor eludes me. This discussion is not interesting at this point any more.