VIEWS on BATTERY NEWS: With a delay in posting, we look over the pile of breakthrough dejurs

Quartz to the rescue

Quartz Powder has been found to be a great additive for the electrolyte of lithium-sulfur batteries.

A problem with the Li-S chemistry is the loss of capacity when a battery made from these materials cycles. This is caused by polysulfides, which don't work in a battery, start taking up space on an electrode instead of working materials.

To solve this problem, researchers added quartz to the electrolyte because it binds with the polysulfides which keep them off the electrode.

This effect was found by happenstance when trying to study what is happing in this kind of cell. When they tried to x-ray the offending material, the polysulfides, they had to ground them so the x-rays could "see" them because the x-rays didn't work in a liquid. They used glass for this but found the improvement in overall performance was significant enough to push this idea as far as they could - thus quartz powder which is a large component of glass and has a great surface area.

If it can be made to work, the theoretical capacity of a Li-S battery is greater than that of the Li-Ion chemistry.





Atoms with problems work better

Frustrated atoms describe mixing up matrices of differing solids in order to create surface area and paths for electron transfer inside the combined result.

The idea is to take two different materials with atoms of different sizes and combine them so the internal structure doesn't fit together in such an orderly way. Because a material that has ordered atoms doesn't allow for electrons to reach the interior easily.

The obvious consequences are greater access to many parts of a material that would normally be blocked off by other parts of the material. And these paths to all parts of a material help with electron transport so not only is there more material access, but a cell with this construction would have a greater ability to charge/discharge faster.

Nanotubes bringing the thunder

Carbon nanotubes are a really great solution looking for problems to fix. And in battery labs, carbon nanotubes are being scrutinized closely because they continue to amaze researchers with how well they expose carbon to be used in just exactly the ways needed for good battery performance.

The latest from James Tour et al use the properties of carbon nanotubes coated with lithium with such a high surface area and low density that the anode can reach near the theoretical maximum of energy density!

The cathode will have to be brought up to speed to handing this high-performing anode, but take a look at the next story...



Plating for layers

Thin layers, like a coating of lithium just mentioned, is a big part of getting great performance out of batteries. But making thin and strong layers isn't always easy.

There is a way to make a thin layer that isn't very hard depending on the materials, and that is electroplating.

Electroplating is a way to get a coating on a substrate by drawing a material onto the substrate with an electrical charge. It doesn't work with every material so that is the trick to making it work for cells of the future.

This plating is being used on the anode side of a lithium battery and it potentially increases capacity and durability.

Russia Influenced our Blog! What happened next surprised us!

This blog, despite the hiatus over the last few weeks, is still keen to bring you the news and views of the battery world. Curiously, it is served outside the US as much as inside the US. And Russian is the most translated version delivered to the non-English speaking world.

Why to people in Russia want to read about the fascinating goings on about batteries? Could it be because of the great engineering minds that dwell in those parts? Could it be that batteries are seen as a solution for more problems by more people there?

I'm not sure. Perhaps some of you in Russia could comment. Go ahead and respond in Cyrillic and I'll just push the handy "translate this" button I have here in Chrome, and I hope the online translator will make sense when I reply.

I know just a little about Russia having traveled there 3 times. 1 time for business, 2 times for pleasure. And there are some truly wonderful people one cannot help but meet if you spend some time anywhere in the country. And I noticed that even though I didn't run into a lot of engineers, everyone had an analytical mind.

Take for instance the babushka (babule?) I stayed with on one trip. She was a medical doctor by learning and had a long career. She was retired in her 70's and receiving a pension. The pension she received was the full amount of rubles that were promised to her.

Unfortunately with inflation that entire payment was only a few dollars per month. She wasn't a bitter person, but she supplemented her income by renting her storage room (big closet?) to people like me. And she did doctoring over the threshold.

Doctoring over the threshold was a little trick she understood because if someone came inside her apartment for medical advice, she could be breaking state laws. However, if they stayed out of the house while she talked about their case, then she had some protection if someone told the authorities that she was helping people outside the system.

I hope she is still doing what she loves - helping people and using her very sharp mind.

And that's what I experience in the little time I was there. People always thinking. It's what we will make solar and wind work because there is no getting around the problem of energy storage. There have already been a number of breakthroughs come out of Russia.

And let's not forget that Russia sits on vast unexplored areas that could hold a great deal of raw materials for the unique use in batteries. Not only are they ramping up production in known deposits, but other rare earths will be needed and many areas have yet to be checked.

So jump on in. The water's fine. Join us in the US to tackle the energy storage problem. It may not be the catalyst to produce world peace, but it will be a great good for everyone in the world.

Is this the best energy storage ever?

Any energy storage is good storage

A "Power-To-Gas" system is a great idea. Instead of putting energy into batteries to be called upon later, it can be put into producing hydrogen to be burned later.

What makes that a good idea?

The grid needs to match the production of electricity to what is being used. Too much energy production when there is no demand starts to break things; And not enough energy when demand is great causes voltage sags that will cause brown-outs.

So the production of power needs to speed up and slow down to match demand. But the sun doesn’t care. The sun will shine brightly in the afternoon and have our solar panels delivering electricity as much as they can regardless what the grid wants.

Hydro plants have a similar problem. You might think they speed up and slow down a hydro plant to match demand, but that doesn't work. Instead, they just shift the electric production to pumping the water back into the reservoir to be used again later. It's simple and it works.

And the current solutions to solve this problem in grid solar is to either put the excess electricity into batteries or into making hydrogen gas.

Let's take a look at how the hydrogen gas solution, or better known as 'power-to-gas', works.

Does it really work? Wouldn’t that be less efficient?

Yes, it works. And it uses equipment that is already on the shelf so it is relatively inexpensive to design and install. And it can be created quickly for the same reason.

And despite the low efficiency of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, which is worse than battery storage, it’s not a bad trade-off. The lower percentage of energy returned from the energy spent to get hydrogen is mitigated by its simple low-cost implementation and a relatively longer system life.

The secret to its simplicity is that the gas mixes directly into the natural gas system. There are no storage tanks, no pressurizing, no transporting hydrogen by vehicle, or creating a new pipeline distribution system. The gas is added to the natural gas line that is already passing by.

It doesn't change how the natural gas burns. In fact, the hydrogen will be quite dissipated in the natural gas. But it will not go to waste.

Batteries are better

That may or may not be true. We haven't had a situation where solar was over-producing before and solutions haven't been tested over time.

We suspect that batteries give us more control and may be more useful for the grid, but the capital cost of a battery storage system is fairly high. And installation will take some time. So we might consider quickly creating power-to-gas systems now and wait until a better battery solution can be installed over time.

What can chemistry do for me?

This article appeared at Zbattery.com some time ago. I see it needs some updating so I'll reprint it with edits here:

What does Battery Chemistry matter to me?

There are many different chemistries for batteries, each having different facets including: capacity per volume (energy density, shown in the table below as Wh/l) capacity per weight (specific energy, shown in the table below as Wh/kg) capability to deliver current capability to accept charge current price the number of cycles. There are other differences, too, like what temperature range a chemistry will work well within and how quickly a cell will discharge in storage. But the main differences are listed above so that is all we will consider at this time. The obvious question is - Why don't we just use the best chemistry? It's because the differing chemistries have tradeoffs in the main factors listed. There is no best one, just the best one for a particular application. Non-rechargeable Batteries Generally, non-rechargeable batteries have greater capacities than their rechargeable counterparts. They also generally stay charged in storage better. For example; An alkaline AA battery will have a rated capacity of about the same as a single charge of a NiMH AA battery, but the alkaline battery has a higher voltage, meaning overall it delivers more energy. In a typical lower-current application like a small radio, the alkaline batteries should last you about 30% longer than a NiMH AA in the same place. And if the radio isn't used much, the better storage life of the alkaline cells make them easier to work with, not to mention pennies compared to dollars in initial costs. Non-rechargeable lithium has some amazing specific energy and energy density. That's why when capacity is the most important factor, non-rechargeable lithium is king when recharging is not a practical option. Why is recharging a battery not always a practical option? Rechargeable batteries would be great to use all the time because the electricity for a recharge is very little money compared to buying a whole new battery. But there are other costs - The cost of replacing the battery more often, and up-front costs that are much higher than non-rechargeable counterparts. And there is more management involved with switching out discharged batteries with charged replacements. So why don't we use the best of each type; rechargeable and non-rechargeable? Because trade-offs are made with every type of battery chemistry. Which, unfortunately, means we have to pay attention to the different properties of each type. Still, the first difference we note is between non-rechargeable and rechargeable. As far as non-rechargeables go Alkaline is inexpensive, although it doesn't store as well or deliver current as well as some other chemistries. Lithium is expensive and doesn't deliver current as well as some other chemistries (although lithium's higher voltage makes up for this somewhat). Then there is 1.5V lithium, which is a monopoly product by Energizer that is a special case in its own right. There are a few more non-rechargeable chemistries that have niche markets and I'll probably go over them in a future post. Still, when a company designs a product, they generally have to decide on either alkaline or lithium because alkaline is about 1/2 the voltage of lithium. To make it for both, such different voltages would drive up the cost. As far as rechargeables go This could be a topic unto itself. Because the nature of recharging is so attractive designers would like to use it if they can. And a lot of chemical engineers have thought of a lot of different cell types to address problems by designers. But they haven't found a chemistry that will address all problems. Thus, designers use rechargeable chemistries based on cell factors are most important to their design. Some specs on the main chemistries Here is a list of chemistries and their capacity per weight and volume. There are many sub-chemistries and varying constructions used to make the above cells, so these numbers are a general rule-of-thumb comparison: (Watt-hours per kg / Watt-hours per liter) Lead acid 40/100 Alkaline 110/320 Non-rechargeable lithium 700/1100 Silver oxide 130/500 NiMH 90/250 Lithium-ion 150/330 LiFePO4 105/210

Under Pressure!

This article was published after a number of people were coming in to replace bloated batteries. This situation didn't look safe and they wondered what happened.

What happened to my battery?!

This battery has been catastrophically overcharged. We recommend unplugging the charger from the wall before unhooking the battery’s terminals. The battery may contain volatile gasses that could react badly to a spark near the battery’s vent. When a battery is charged it creates gasses that re-combine into solution; however, when the charge creates gasses faster than they can re-combine, that gas creates pressure inside the battery.

So what happened to the battery in the picture? Typically, a battery’s vents will expel any gas pressure that builds up faster than the gas can re-combine. The battery pictured above, however, collected gasses faster than the vents could remove them, allowing pressure to build up internally. Luckily for the customer, the additional safety features in the battery limited the damage to the battery only—sparing the charger and the charging environment. The malleable plastic design of this sealed lead acid battery allowed it to balloon without breaking, and an internal shorting design ceased the collection of more gasses. Furthermore, these batteries are designed with the electrolyte, an acid, to be absorbed in a glass mat, preventing the spilling of acid even in the instance of a broken casing. Our best guess is that a large 12V charger was used on this relatively small 6V battery.

How can you prevent overcharging your battery?

The most common overcharging error we see is matching a battery to a charger that is not designed for use with that battery’s capacity even if the voltage is the same. For instance, our 12 volt 3 Amp charger should not, in general, be used on 12 volt batteries that have a capacity below 10Ah. A capacity miss-match will result in a charge that may be harder on a battery than it should be, shortening the battery’s life. As batteries are used, their chemical properties degrade. They will hold less and less energy as time goes by, meaning their capacity decreases over time. If a battery degrades to a level below the range a charger was designed for, the charger may begin to overcharge that battery. In that case, the battery will wear out faster and faster each time it is charged. Of course, if a charger was designed for higher voltage batteries, hooking up a lower voltage battery will overcharge that battery.

Chargers are often engineered with built-in overcharge protection; they charge in stages, stopping or reducing the energy going into the battery when it is full. Yet there are some models that are not designed to stop charging after a battery is full which will shorten the life of the battery, sometimes severely. This will often cause customers to believe they have a defective battery rather than a defective charger and they end up overcharging battery after battery.

These instances will rarely result in the kind of swelling you see in the photo, but it will shorten the life of your battery or render the battery unusable.

So pay attention to the charger you use on a battery. Don’t use a car charger with small sealed lead acid batteries (or, in general, any batteries that use a glass mat to absorb the electrolyte). If you aren’t sure a charger is slowing down its charge after a battery is full, take the battery off the charger when it’s fully charged. A rule of thumb is to not leave a battery on a charger that you are sure will charge the battery in about 10 hours. And last, but not least, pay attention to the voltage the charger was designed for and the voltage of the battery you are charging.

What's on the bench

A number of people have asked what is on the test bench at Zbattery.

The simple answer is 1 battery analyzer and 3 variable power supplies.

That is what is used the most. The variable power supplies charge the batteries, which can be monitored by the analyzer if needed. And the analyzer also records any discharge.

The analyzer can handle 48V, or 150W, or 40A. That's not too bad in most cases. Sometimes with very large or very small batteries, we have to either split the supply or amplify it. That makes a test less accurate, but it doesn't happen often and the result is usually close enough.

The analyzer is really the center of the test bench.

And we've found the best chargers are the variable power supplies for these reasons.

• They are accurate to a hundredth of a volt and charge almost any cell and pack.
• Variable smart chargers are limited to a range of batteries and packs and we'd need other smart chargers to do as wide a range as the power supplies do.
• We can "rig" up a charging protocol with power supplies if a pack/cell falls outside the immediate range of what they can do natively while smart chargers can only do their native range of cells/packs.
• And sometimes we want to know exactly what the charger is doing - voltage and amperage wise - which only the most expensive of variable chargers will let us do.

It's not to say we don't have smart chargers. We have them for some more common cells/packs. Also, we sometimes need to charge something faster than a variable power supply method will allow which a smart charger does.

Testing is something we love doing. One of the most popular articles is about testing AA alkaline batteries. Who doesn't want to know what the best AA alkaline battery is? Although that set of tests is getting rather old because the latest in alkaline battery technology is a little better than they show. I'll work to update that information and I'll republish the old article here as well.

If there is any question about battery testing, or if there is a specific test you haven't seen, just let me know.

EZ Battery Reconditioning Guide Exposed

Someone was nice enough to tell us what they learned from a part of the EZ Battery Reconditioning guide. Sure, the EZ Battery people got their money, but at least we can give the person that asked an honest opinion on what they bought.

One of the supplementary guides is titled "How To Revive A Dead Phone Battery", and I made sure to ask if the word Dead was in quotes. There is supposedly more information on how to recondition li-ion batteries beyond the supplement. But we'll start with the supplement.

The word Dead is not in quotes. They supposedly put it in quotes later in the document.

Wow... If I had the chutzpah to pull off publishing something like this for money I'd probably be richer in my bank account. Fortunately, I value my soul more than my bank account.

The method they propose is to "jump start" a good battery that has gone below what we call the "threshold voltage".

I'll explain what a threshold voltage is. Every cell phone has a charger in it that takes a 5V USB signal and modifies it to properly charge the li-ion battery. If the voltage of the battery goes below a certain level (the threshold voltage) the electronics in the phone will not recognize the battery and thus won't charge it. The solution COULD be to raise the voltage of the cell just a little so it reaches the threshold voltage and the phone can recognize the battery and charge it. This, again, only works if the battery is actually a good battery that happens to have a low voltage.

Please note, every smart charger has a threshold voltage regardless of chemistry the charger works with. The solution in cases like this, whether it be Lead Acid, NiCd, NiMH, or even Li-Ion is to charge the battery with what we call a "dumb" charger. A dumb charger is just a power supply that delivers a certain voltage whenever electrically possible and thus a threshold voltage is not applicable.

That power supply could be any DC power source in a certain voltage range above the threshold voltage. Even another battery of the same type that has enough charge in it to give a low battery a higher voltage would work.

So the guide says that to revive a DEAD PHONE BATTERY one should apply a straight 5VDC from a USB supply by cutting a USB cable, expose the bare leads, and touch them to the + and - of the battery in the right order.

Doing that CAN raise the voltage of a single cell li-ion battery enough for the charger to start working. Don't hold it on the battery too long, though, because the battery will be taking in the full Amperage that the USB supply will deliver. And it will take that Amperage for as long as the wires are touching the contacts - even after the battery is fully charged. And overcharging a li-ion battery is a bad idea. As far as I understand, the supplemental guide does not give a time limit, but I wouldn't want to hold those wires on there for more than a few seconds. If this trick is going to work, that's all the time it should need.

But is that the kind of dead phone battery that 99.999% of us run into? The kind of battery that is good but just happens to be below the threshold voltage of the phone? No. The dead phone batteries we encounter are ones that have been in use for a year or three and need to be charged at lunch just to make it through the day.

This EZ Battery Reconditioning trick won't work for a battery like that.

I realize the title of the guide and the supplement and all their advertising might lead you to believe that a normal dead battery that you get after using your phone for 3 years can be reconditioned. And perhaps there are other parts of the guide that go into that. But nothing about it has been told to me yet.

Perhaps people can ask me more questions about the methods in the guides and I'll keep giving my opinion on their effectiveness.

Do you have a EZ Battery Reconditioning guide? Have a question about it? Feel free to ask in the comments!