Rechargeable electro-sludge could be a boon for electric vehicles - Polidicks

[quote=New Scientist][img]http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/mg21128246.500/mg21128246.500-1_300.jpg[/img] THE tiny glass bottle in my hand is filled with what looks like crude oil, but it's actually oil's nemesis. If it works, this black sludge will transform the rechargeable battery, doubling the range of electric cars and making petroleum obsolete. Today's electric cars are handicapped by batteries that are heavy, expensive and a waste of space. Two-thirds of the volume of the battery in Nissan's Leaf electric car, for example, consists of materials that provide structural support but generate no power. And those materials cost more than the electrically active components. One way to vastly improve rechargeable batteries is to put more of that deadweight to work. That's the purpose of the secret sauce in the bottle, nicknamed "Cambridge crude" by [URL="http://dmse.mit.edu/faculty/faculty/ychiang/"]Yet-Ming Chiang[/URL] and his colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who developed it. In a standard battery, ions shuttle from one solid electrode to the other through a liquid or powder electrolyte. This in turn forces electrons to flow in an external wire linking the electrodes, creating a current. In Chiang's battery, the electrodes take the form of tiny particles of a lithium compound mixed with liquid electrolyte to make a slurry. The battery uses two streams of slurry, one positively charged and the other negatively charged. Both are pumped across aluminium and copper current collectors with a permeable membrane in between. As they flow the streams exchange lithium ions across the membrane, causing a current to flow externally. To recharge the battery, you apply a voltage to push the ions back across the membrane. The MIT creation is a type of flow battery, which normally has a liquid electrolyte that moves past stationary electrodes. Chiang reckons that the power per unit volume delivered by his lithium "semi-solid" flow battery will be 10 times that of conventional designs ([I]Advanced Energy Materials[/I], [URL="http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/aenm.201100152"]DOI: 10.1002/aenm.201100152[/URL]). "This is probably the most exciting development in electrical energy storage in the past couple of years," says Yury Gogotsi of [URL="http://nano.materials.drexel.edu/"]Drexel Nanotechnology Institute[/URL] in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. "Chiang offers a unique hybrid between a flow battery and a lithium-ion battery." Drivers could have three ways of recharging the semi-solid flow battery. They could pump out spent slurry and pump in fresh; head to a recharge station where tanks of spent slurry would be replaced with fresh ones; or recharge the slurries with an electric current. In the first two cases regaining full power should only take a matter of minutes. Rechargeable batteries are the heaviest and most expensive components of electric cars by a large margin. Chiang estimates that the cost of manufacturing his team's battery will be $250 per kilowatt-hour of generating capacity. So if one were built to replace the 24-kWh battery in the Nissan Leaf, it would cost $6000. That is about one-third the cost of existing batteries, and just low enough to compete with gasoline. Chiang also calculates that Cambridge crude would let a car travel at least 300 kilometres on a single charge, double what is possible with today's batteries. "This is an especially beautiful technology," says [URL="http://www.cuny.edu/site/energy/faculty-research/dsteingart.html"]Dan Steingart[/URL] of the City University of New York Energy Institute, because you can recharge the spent slurry. But he adds that even if the team manages to create a prototype car battery within five years, building the recharge stations to support it would take much longer. Last year Chiang, his colleague Craig Carter and entrepreneur Throop Wilder founded a company called 24M Technologies to develop the battery. They have raised $16 million in funding so far, and plan to have a compact prototype ready in 2013.[/quote] Source : [url=http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128246.500-black-gold-holds-a-charge-for-green-cars.html]New Scientist[/url] Basically, instead of having to recharge a battery in your hypothetical electric car, in theory you could just pump out your flat slurry and pump in new pre-charged slurry, while the "slurry station" or whatever does the actual recharging. What I think is most exciting about this is the fact that instead of this being a theoretical, far off idea, they [i]actually have a bottle of the stuff right there.[/i] Sounds like a plan!

Soon it will vanish into the backgrounds, never to be heard of again.

[QUOTE=Terminutter;32252380]Soon it will vanish into the backgrounds, never to be heard of again.[/QUOTE] It's the Government. If they let electric cars come up now, they'll have to tell us they've been lying about having plenty of oil this whole time. :tinfoil:

[img]http://i54.tinypic.com/x2oy07.png[/img] ?

[QUOTE=Terminutter;32252380]Soon it will vanish into the backgrounds, never to be heard of again.[/QUOTE] the sad truth. atleast BP or shell or someone will magically re-invent this when there's no more petrol to make a killing from

A prototype ready in 2013? This will certainly go places. I'm excited!

Looks somewhat promising, but hydrogen looks like the next-generation fuel, it doesn't have to be refuled frequently, and has better MPG, cars that run off it now get a minimum of 60 to a max of 100+

Yeah lets cut this electric shit and get Hydrogen plz. They already have Hydrogen pumps in California I think. It's the perfect car - not nearly as toxic to produce as eletric, creates Water as its waste, etc Only issue is that Hydrogen sounds like it would be expensive to produce on a wide scale. At least we know it'll never run out.

This is the way forward with the energy crisis, [i]innovation[/i]. Not "We all must live like hermits and walk everywhere and eat leaves!". We're the human race, we shouldn't be looking at reversing things, but looking forward to solve our problems.

[QUOTE=KorJax;32252903]Yeah lets cut this electric shit and get Hydrogen plz. They already have Hydrogen pumps in California I think. It's the perfect car - not nearly as toxic to produce as eletric, creates Water as its waste, etc Only issue is that Hydrogen sounds like it would be expensive to produce on a wide scale. At least we know it'll never run out.[/QUOTE] We drill miles down in the middle of oceans to get oil, i'm sure we can manage to extract some hydrogen.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeiWnLG-G6E[/media]

This is awesome, too bad the oil companies with bury this under money and lobbyists so it never sees the light of day for another 15 years.

[QUOTE=KorJax;32252903]Yeah lets cut this electric shit and get Hydrogen plz. They already have Hydrogen pumps in California I think. It's the perfect car - not nearly as toxic to produce as eletric, creates Water as its waste, etc Only issue is that Hydrogen sounds like it would be expensive to produce on a wide scale. At least we know it'll never run out.[/QUOTE] except we need some way to store hydrogen without it being liable to, y'know, blow up in our faces though apparently we're having some luck using nanobeads [url]http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20055-green-machine-fill-up-your-car-with-hydrogen-beads.html[/url]

Seems interesting to say the least. Electric is a better approach, but I thought hydrogen vehicles were unsafe considering a lot of head on collisions occur each year. Is it true that they are unsafe, or is that the media just talking?

[QUOTE=Irishman23;32253250]Seems interesting to say the least. Electric is a better approach, but I thought hydrogen vehicles were unsafe considering a lot of head on collisions occur each year. Is it true that they are unsafe, or is that the media just talking?[/QUOTE] Car are unsafe? Why did noone tell me this before!?

They'll charge five times as much for it at the pumps, and nobody will buy a car running it.

Neat! I love sludge!

Combine this easily transportable slurry (for use station <-> car) with Hydrogen plants at the stations themselves to recharge the slurry and you're on to a winner - cars don't have to be fitted with hydrogen equipment (rather expensive & volatile), and gas stations can sell off excess electric (har har) to the grid for mass profit.

Electrified Toxic Waste?!

I always figured it'd be some electrically charged liquid. Nice that they specify it can compete economically with gasoline. That makes me think we might hear from this again. As long as the maker doesn't cave to a billion dollar buyout by the oilheads.

[QUOTE=DarkSpider;32253742]I always figured it'd be some electrically charged liquid. Nice that they specify it can compete economically with gasoline. That makes me think we might hear from this again. As long as the maker doesn't cave to a billion dollar buyout by the oilheads.[/QUOTE] if he's smart he'll realize patenting this technology will land you a lot more than what a buyout will

First problem I see with this is gathering the necessary amounts of lithium. Seeing how this pretty much means recycable fuel we'd need MASSIVE amounts of it.

[QUOTE=Test Card F;32253719]Electrified Toxic Waste?![/QUOTE] The stuff that Red Bull is made of?

[QUOTE=Scar;32254009]The stuff that Red Bull is made of?[/QUOTE] Yep.

[QUOTE=Protocol7;32253794]if he's smart he'll realize patenting this technology will land you a lot more than what a buyout will[/QUOTE] He's a goddamn Chinese kid at the MI motherfucking T. Of course he's smart.

Oops patent bought out by an oil company for 100 mil and hidden in their archives because it would make them loose many times more. [QUOTE=Protocol7;32253794]if he's smart he'll realize patenting this technology will land you a lot more than what a buyout will[/QUOTE] The problem is he either gives it out for free (making his lifetime of work unprofitable for him) or he sells the patent. If he'd try to go out with it like you're saying he'd get blocked/blackmailed/threated.

[QUOTE=KorJax;32252903]Yeah lets cut this electric shit and get Hydrogen plz. They already have Hydrogen pumps in California I think. It's the perfect car - not nearly as toxic to produce as eletric, creates Water as its waste, etc Only issue is that Hydrogen sounds like it would be expensive to produce on a wide scale. At least we know it'll never run out.[/QUOTE] It's also explosive, unlike regular gas that just burns. Car accidents would be pretty bad with hydrogen cars.

...Electrified Toxic Waste... Wasn't that a joke in Shepard's Mind?

Fuck that shit, give me a Ford Nucleon. [IMG]http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_krqMnL0eq4c/S9XFrOS9SYI/AAAAAAAAALA/7JJVTHchLWQ/s1600/Ford-Nucleon-Concept-Car.jpg[/IMG]

[QUOTE=chrishind10;32255405]Fuck that shit, give me a Ford Nucleon. [IMG]http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_krqMnL0eq4c/S9XFrOS9SYI/AAAAAAAAALA/7JJVTHchLWQ/s1600/Ford-Nucleon-Concept-Car.jpg[/IMG][/QUOTE] You will die of radiation poisoning before you even make it halfway to the supermarket.