DescentBB

Hope this isn't just more technology that doesn't go anywhere.

http://www.upi.com/Science_News/Resourc ... 288102816/

If it works, I want one!

Could be interesting.

The battery, based on what DBM Energy calls the KOLIBRI AlphaPolymer Technology, comes with 97 percent efficiency and can be charged at virtually every socket. Plugged into a high-voltage direct-current source, the battery can be fully loaded within 6 minutes, Hannemann said.

need more info on the technology - what does it cost? battery lifetime? replacement issues? maintenance issues? safety issues with charging sources?

etc.

Here is an english translation of the company's FAQ page. The Google translation of this page isn't that great but you get a rough idea.

This is also interesting - seems these batteries aren't prone to catching fire as per regular lithium cells either.

Are there any native German speakers around here that can read the above and shed more light on this?

I am German and quite fluent in English, too.
While I could translate these two pages, I simply don't have the time to translate so much text.

The key difference between this technology and conventional lithium-ion batteries is that these new batteries consist of a lithium polymer and do not contain any (toxic) liquids or gases like the conventional lithium-ion batteries do.
That is what makes them so secure.
They have apparently shot such a battery with live ammo and it continued working and providing power as if nothing had happened.
A regular lithium-ion battery would have exploded.
These batteries can not be ignited because they use some special membrane and coating technology (no further details provided, this is not sloppy translation).

The company page also says that you save 70% of energy if you switch a lead accumulator for such a hummingbird (=Kolibri) battery. This is because of high-precision manufacturing and a special electrolyte that is also contributing to the safety.
Neither article provides any details about the electrolyte.

You also don't need any special charging technology. So replacing older batteries with these new batteries is supposed to be as easy as taking the old one out and putting the new one in.

These hummingbird batteries can be used in temperatures from -40°C (-40°F) to 100°C (212°F) and are insensitive to jolt/shock, vibration and pressure.


If you have any more questions about specific passages of the texts I'll answer them and translate some more.


EDIT: I don't know jack about these batteries and I am in no way affiliated with the company that produces them. I just translated info from the pages Gecko linked to.

Electric cars are all well and good but will they be able to tow my 4000 lb trailer with 3ooo lbs of product in it?

woodchip wrote:Electric cars are all well and good but will they be able to tow my 4000 lb trailer with 3ooo lbs of product in it?

given the right gearing and power; yes.

Ferno wrote:

woodchip wrote:Electric cars are all well and good but will they be able to tow my 4000 lb trailer with 3ooo lbs of product in it?

given the right gearing and power; yes.

Hope you like going 5 mi/hr.

I really wonder what the tradeoff is. Maybe weight.

Traditional L-ions have excellent power/weight and power/size capacity. The tradeoff is that they can burn when damaged/vibrated, and also when over-charged or charged too fast.

These people are claiming to have eliminated both downsides.... so the skeptic in me say that they have to have given something up. From their range claims, apparantly not power density. That leaves either weight, or max discharge rate. Weight probably doesn't matter much, limited discharge capacity would make it feel like it doesn't have enough power. My guess is probably both.

Thank you for the clarification Neumaennl, I greatly appreciate it

Apparently the battery weighs either 100 or 300kg and can provide 100 kWh @ 97% efficiency. They claim the modified Audi A2 they used can carry up to 1.6 metric tonnes (1600kg) in passengers/cargo. No word on pricing or battery life yet. It did the 600kph trip in 7 hours at an average speed of 90kph.

The batteries are currently being used in electric forklifts and are lasting 28 hours between charges (a typical forklift battery would last about 8 hours).

More info can be found here and here.

...Is it just me or is this all too good to be true? Any battery experts care to chime in on the figures above?

Well you've got the Lithium ion batteries, and the Lithium polymer batteries. These 2 are in all laptops & mobile phones. AFAIK Lithium-ion_batteries are still the reigning king of easy-to-get batteries when it comes to energy density - they hold the most, but not that much more than the other lithium techs, they can all be rather similar:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery (Li-ion)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-io ... er_battery (Li-Po)

Relatively recent improvements to the technology has yeilded these newer lithium battery techs that don't catch fire or explode even when severely damaged, and can be charged/discharged a lot faster (under 10 mins), they are currently a bit more expensive but will in time inevitably replace all of the older Li-ion and Li-Po batteries. They have roughly the same energy density (a bit less if anything). I want to stress that these new safe lithium-ion batteries have been around for a few years already - this is NOT new. They are used on the Killacycle motorbike and various other things:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-titanate_battery (Lithium-Titanate)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_ir ... te_battery (LiFePO4)

The new battery OP talks about (DBM Energy's - KOLIBRI AlphaPolymer - Lithium METAL polymer) is however totally new to me, i've not heard it before but i havn't exactly been keeping up for at least the last few months. Considering how little info there seems to be on it atm - i'm suspicious it's a hoax or sham. But it's possible it's just THAT new.
http://www.dbm-energy.com/
There are plenty of new battery techs with ground breakingly large energy densities - all trying to sort our their mass-production problems and get to market to replace Li-ion. It's possible this is simply one of them that we forgot about.


Here's some figures i've gleaned from another forum about OP's new batteries:

100 kWh from a 300 kg battery pack (3x as energy dense as Li-ion. That's a big claim)
Currently lifetime is at 2500 Charge cycles without any degradation. This is targeting 500,000 km service lifetime or 200 km/cycle. This is 310,686 miles and 124 miles/cycle

So what is the trade off between saving fuel by using electric cars and increased fuel to supply a power grid to recharge the batteries? I realize nuclear power will be a option but remember how the save the earth types put the kabosh on nuclear energy 30 years ago.

woodchip wrote:So what is the trade off between saving fuel by using electric cars and increased fuel to supply a power grid to recharge the batteries? I realize nuclear power will be a option but remember how the save the earth types put the kabosh on nuclear energy 30 years ago.

It's a shame. The "green" people would have us living back in the dark ages without any electricity.
Nuclear = environmentally hazardous
Coal = pollutes the air
Solar = Takes too much land
Wind = pollutes the scenery

They always have an excuse to prevent progress. I imagine they will start saying the lithium-ion (or whatever battery tech is used) is hazardous to the environment therefore we should not use it.

Personally, I think it would be cool to have the roofs of all buildings covered in solar panels. But unfortunately it is too costly and they don't last very long.

If we had a space elevator we could start putting solar panels in space and running the electricity down the wire, back to Earth!

I think half the problem with solar panels is that the Earth has quite limited amounts of some of the rare materials required to make them. Solar lensing equipment is a little less affected by that, but it's also less portable and less efficient (well, not 100% sure on that last one).

With the improvement we've seen in nuclear power over the last few decades, I suspect it's our best option for most of this century, until we find ways to efficiently harness more exotic energy sources...

I wonder how much more nuclear fuel we'd produce if we recycled spent fuel rods to recover the still usable fuel in them instead of throwing the whole thing out as toxic waste.

Gekko71 wrote:Looks like solar power is starting to become more viable

i imagine they compared cutting edge solar tech to OLD nuclear tech.
However if they compare cutting edge solar tech to cutting edge nuclear tech - it changes things.


This is a modern reactor (Hyperion), it requires zero maintenance and are thus be buried underground to work by themselves with no personel required. Note the tiny size, they will be mass produced in factories (ie: cheap and plentiful) and shipped via trucks to their destinations. They are so simple and portable that they are considered to replace diesel generators for remote mining operations (instead of continually shipping diesel fuel, which is expensive).
Universities have been experimenting with these uranium hydride reactors for decades - they routinely overload them and TRY to cause a meltdown, but it is chemically impossible. The fuel only works when it's BELOW a certain temp, get too hot and the fuel itself stops working until it cools.

They are completely sealed units. Every 5 years they can be shipped back to the factory where they take out a soft-ball sized chunk of spent fuel (it improves performance to get the spent stuff out), then ship em straight back out.

Roid, great find. I just have to wonder why this reactor isn't splashed over the news as much as wind power and solar panels. Could it be the reactors would make solar and wind obsolete technologies and thus step on certain powerful investors toes?

I doubt it, if you ask me it's solely the anti-nuclear fears in the general populace (and thus direct democratic influences on politicians' voter base) which keeps nuclear from being used and easily solving all of our CO2 problems.
The likely only way it's going to be accepted is via a huge public education PR campaign to tackle the misconceptions most people have about it.

It's funny, you don't get anti-nuclear sentiment from people who actually know how nuclear reactors work. It's one of those cases of ignorance-based fear.