Is This New Battery A Game Changer?

[vt]

This New Battery is a Game Changer

Guest Blogger / 5 hours ago April 8, 2016

Lighter Cheaper More Powerful Battery Changes Renewable Economics
Guest essay by Roger E. Sowell, Esq. Marina del Rey, California
It is not often on SLB that I use the phrase “game-changer.” Most things progress, if they progress at all, in small increments. This time, though, is one of those that deserves the phrase game-changer.
The innovation is the low-cost, light-weight but powerful battery developed by Nobel prize-winner Alan Heeger, PhD of the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB). The company is Biosolar . see link to http://www.biosolar.com
The battery is suitable for mobile and stationary applications such as cars, trucks, grid stabilization, home power storage, and others. The innovation is the use of the Nobel prize-winning plastic-that-acts-like-a-metal, haologenated polyacetylene.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 2000: Conductive Polymers (see link) is lengthy but has this to say about the discovery:

” In 1977, however, Shirakawa, MacDiarmid and Heeger discovered that oxidation with chlorine, bromine or iodine vapour made polyacetylene films 10^9 times more conductive than they were originally. Treatment with halogen was called “doping” by analogy with the doping of semiconductors. The “doped” form of polyacetylene had a conductivity of 10^5 Siemens per meter, which was higher than that of any previously known polymer. As a comparison, teflon has a conductivity of 10^–16 S m–1 and silver and copper 10^8 S m–1.”

The battery, which is now patent-pending at the US and other patent offices, is expected to cost less than $100 per kWh (about one-fourth that of the best batteries today), to weigh less and therefore provide longer range to cars, to have a greater power density (power to weight ratio), have a faster charging time and much longer life. Another substantial positive is the material itself, made from common acetylene. There are no rare earths to mine and extract, no toxic residues. The halogen dopants are also common, cheap, and abundant.
This battery, which continues the use of lithium for the anode, is likely a primary contribution to the Tesla company’s announcement this week of a new mid-price all-electric car.
The renewable energy field, especially those technologies that have variable output due to changes in the wind or sunshine, will benefit greatly from a low-cost high-density battery. A wind energy project would not be limited to selling power at low prices, currently 3 cents per kWh, but instead selling the power as would a gas-fired power plant, on demand and reliably at the market price.

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Added by Anthony:
From the Bisosolar website:
Breaking the $100/kWh Cost Barrier to Mass Market Adoption
Materials account for more than 70% of the cost of a battery. In particular, the cathode material makes up 20-35% of the total materials costs. Therefore, lowering the cost of the cathode is an effective way to lowering the total battery cost. The estimated raw materials cost of our cathode is similar to that of inexpensive plastics, with a very high possible energy density of 1,000 Wh/kg.
Our Super Cathode can be used to manufacture a super battery that is 2 times higher capacity than the batteries currently used in a Tesla Model S, at 4 times less cost.
Processing materials and time are additional cost drivers. Our cathode can be processed from water and eco-friendly solvents, which (i) eliminates the use of costly and toxic solvents, (ii) eliminates high temperature drying processes, and (iii) speeds up the production throughput.
Many analysts in the electric vehicle and solar industry consider $100 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) to be the “holy grail” price threshold. In the case of electric vehicles, $100/kWh will make them undeniably cost-competitive with gas-powered vehicles. And in the case of solar, it will finally be cost effective to store daytime solar electricity for nighttime use and be less reliant on, or completely independent of, the power grid.
Our current estimate of the cost of a full battery using our Super Cathode with a conventional graphite anode is approximately $54/kWh.
Compared to Existing Batteries Based on internal experimental data, other published data, and a calculation model adopted from the Energy Laboratory of Samsung Electronics, we have estimated the energy density and energy costs of a complete super battery that uses our Super Cathode technology.

The BioSolar Super Cathode can be combined with conventional anodes to create different battery configurations to meet specific application or market requirements. Due to the overall low cost, high energy, long life and rapid charge features of our cathode, the resulting battery will be inherently lower cost, higher energy, longer life and faster charging.


Source: http://www.biosolar.com/super_battery.php

[astonas]

Re: Is This New Battery A Game Changer?

It might be. I haven't yet been able to find the formulation details, though, and so that's all I can really say. Polymer electronics is a very real thing, and the higher capacity could well be possible; it's the claim of longer life at the same time that makes me more skeptical.

Polymer electronics in general (and especially Alan Heeger's initial polyacetylene forays into the field) have always been susceptible to lifetime problems. The very thing that makes them conductive (extended pi-bonding systems) necessarily also makes them highly reactive to any oxygen or water that seeps into the packaging. Key materials are generally handled only in Schlenk lines or glove boxes, and depending on exact formulation degrade in seconds to hours once exposed to either water or air.

The company claims long lifetimes, but as far as I can tell, doesn't give any indication how that is achieved. That alone doesn't mean they couldn't possibly have an answer -- there are a lot of promising technologies, such as multiayer diffusion barriers, that they might have tweaked until they were good enough to serve. But without a clear answer on how they justify that claim, I'd have to leave the assessment at a disappointing, if simple, "too soon to say."

The biggest reason for suspicion is the claim that existing battery manufacturers can simply swap in the new material (presumably not changing any other part of the manufacturing) and have a better battery. That implies the new material is intrinsically more stable than existing ones -- even without any new barrier technology. That's difficult to experimentally establish quickly without using accelerated lifetime testing, which in turn requires assumptions about failure mechanisms and a few loose parameters to fit the data. A company rushing something to market could easily find fitting parameters that make their product look good, though whether those results hold up in the field is a different story.

Since long lifetimes didn't seem to mesh with some of Heeger's past work, I also checked out what he's working on these days. I found some stuff on p-FETs, biosensing, and solar cells (including bulk heterojunction devices), but not much on batteries. I could imagine the bulk heterojunction work being close enough to be pertinent, but that certainly wouldn't add stability, only performance. Furthermore, it might indicate that that the battery could do everything it claims, but requires a vastly greater volume to do it, or perhaps adds some other complication that is conveniently left out of this description.

So, we'll see what happens when someone takes them up on their claim, and tries to implement it, I suppose. It would certainly be a big deal if it does live up to its hype. I'd give it ~25% chance of being real, and a lower chance still of being both real, and commercially viable.

[Polish_Silver]

Re: Is This New Battery A Game Changer?

Polymer electronics in general (and especially Alan Heeger's initial polyacetylene forays into the field) have always been susceptible to lifetime problems.

There are far more claims for revolutionary battery chemistry than products that make it to the market. Typically, a side reaction
limits the life time. A contamination issue seems easier to solve, but may not be. Also, even some of the soundest ideas take decades to become practical--the induction motor and fluorescent lamp being just two obvious examples. Li-ion batteries were known for decades before people figured out how to make them safe enough for consumer use. I'd like someone to count up the number of lab fires they caused in the early years.

[shiny!]

Re: Is This New Battery A Game Changer?

Li-ion batteries were known for decades before people figured out how to make them safe enough for consumer use. I'd like someone to count up the number of lab fires they caused in the early years.

I'm not convinced they're safe enough yet. A building near my house suffered a devastating fire a few years ago when the Li-ion battery in a golf cart parked overnight by the front door decided to burn. You can find burned up golf carts all over around here.