Graphene Battery Development

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The young Edison posing for the camera

Battery Development
The Lies and the Reality!!

By looking through the content of this blog, you will find extensive writings on battery development going back several years. 

Almost all of the projects that I have written about to date have come to naught. So much hype and so many of the breakthroughs and inventions have proved to be nothing more than mist in the morning air, that I decided to stop covering news of these so-called battery breakthroughs.

On Batteries Thomas Edison in 1883 says it all:

I will let Edison say what I, and many others think:

"The storage battery is, in my opinion, a catchpenny, a sensation, a mechanism for swindling the public by stock companies. The storage battery is one of those peculiar things which appeals to the imagination, and no more perfect thing could be desired by stock swindlers than that very selfsame thing. ... Just as soon as a man gets working on the secondary battery it brings out his latent capacity for lying."

So why am I writing about battery breakthroughs again? Because a brand new super material, almost magical in its qualities, is becoming readily available. This new super material is Graphene.

Go make some in your kitchen:

 Crann Research Centre Dublin Ireland 

(Crann meaning Tree in Irish and pronounced - crown)

Major breakthrough in graphene production techniques in Dublin Ireland Crann research centre.

(My interpretation) Take the leads from some nice soft 4b pencils and crush them into a fine powder. Add some water and "Fairy Liquid" dish washer fluid. Place in a blender and set to high. Then blend for 30 minutes or longer. You will have some graphene in the blender. 

Not that you will be able to identify it or use it, unless you have some really high-tech equipment and a fair bit of scientific knowledge.

The outcome is that graphene will become many times less expensive to produce, and large quantities can quickly become available.

One of the Graphene 

based Developments

Lithium - Graphene - battery breakthrough?

The word is out in the news agencies that there are several new batteries currently in development. One in particular is at a testing stage and appears to hold a promise of being able to hold twice as much as the best current batteries can hold and thus be able to power an electric vehicle for more than 480 Km about 300 miles before recharging. The defining name of this new battery is Lithium Sulphur Graphene.

Current lithium ion batteries achieve 200 Wh/kg. The century plus old lead acid type battery can hold about 40 Wh/kg. Another key factor is how the battery performs as it goes through cycles of charging and discharging, and for an electric car you would want more than 1,000 cycles without serious deterioration. It's also good if the batteries don't catch fire when being charged!

Recent breakthroughs.

One battery that showed some promise was the lithium sulphur battery. This battery started life as one of several modifications of the common lithium ion battery. The development was soon shelved because the chemical process rapidly deteriorated after only 15 to 20 charge cycles.

Now add some Graphene

Very recently a research team at the Lawrence Berkeley Labs California found what was causing the breakdown in the Lithium Sulphur cells, and were able to add a graphene based layer to prevent the deterioration. They also adopted a different electrolyte and modified the cathode of the cells.

This resulted in a re-born battery which has more than double the capacity of a standard Li ion battery. Tests to date have shown that it can achieve in excess of 1,500 charge cycles without deterioration.

Will this battery make it to the shops for Christmas, or join the ranks of the dozens of others in semi-permanent development? Who knows. But with the Fairy Dust of Graphene in the frame - who knows what might emerge.

Another Graphene Energy Development

The Super Capacitor is another very exciting energy storage device. Up till now, it has not made any quantum leaps in its evolution. But with out new super material Graphene becoming available in many new forms and in quantity, this exciting storage device will also take a big dive forward.




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The Graphene Battery Race - is ON

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The Graphene Race

is

Hotting Up

Monash University in Melbourne have published research on what they describe as a viable graphene super capacitor battery. It has a power holding capability equal to lead-acid batteries. That means size for size, it will hold the same amount of electricity. It will be very much lighter, be able to charge up in minutes, last 10's of years, not go on fire, and cost less to manufacture.

While this super capacitor battery is much less than the storage capacity of lithium-ion based batteries, it represents a really encouraging kick start to development of real-life, as distinct from vapour-ware, viable chemical-based battery replacement.

The MonashDepartment of Materials Engineering say they have developed a completely new approach to making graphene-based super capacitors. The team have created a super capacitor battery with an energy density of 60 Watt-hours per litre, which is about the same as lead-acid batteries.

The team used a graphene gel film sheets and a liquid electrolyte. The graphene gel sheets were made using a method similar to that used in paper making. This makes the process very easy to scale up for industrial production.

The research is funded by the Australian Research Council. Good luck with the development – and good on ya Auz.

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Graphene Research Project for Trinity College Dublin

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Ireland to Have a Direct Hand

in the Development of

The New Super Material

GRAPHENE

I have just been reading some news reports that the Crann (meaning Tree in Irish - and pronounced 'crown')  Research Centre at Trinity College Dublin is to receive major research grants and thus become a significant player in the exciting development of the new super material Graphene.

My previous post expressed my hopes for Graphene as the genesis and major component in the development of a new breed of Super Capacitors.

This news that Trinity College and Ireland is to have a direct hand in the development of this exciting material is most heartening in these times of recession and lots of bad news. Congratulation Crann, Trinity, and Ireland!



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Super Capacitors and Super Batteries

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New Hopeful

in the Hunt for a

Safe Super Battery

Boeing Dream-Liner Burned-out Battery

I have written fairly extensively over the years about the universal world need for a quantum leap in battery design. The recenty reported battery electrical problems that grounded the entire stock of Boeing's Dreamliner has again brought into sharp focus the urgent need for safer, lighter, and higher-capacity batteries.

BATTERIES

Batteries are essentially CHEMICAL FACTORIES. Electricity is both stored and retrieved by changing the chemistry of the substances inside the battery. These chemical reactions cause the release of both heat and gasses. As Boeing have to their great expense now fully realised, heat and gasses are very much not wanted in an enclosed space.

Another disadvantage to batteries is that they take a long time to charge up, and cannot release the charge very quickly either. If you try to charge or discharge a battery too quickly - they go on fire or blow up, as Boeing are only too painfully aware.

The reason the all-electric car has not taken off is because the batteries are:

(1) Way too expensive.
(2) Don't hold enough electricity for long journeys.
(3) Take WAY too long to charge.
(4) Are too bulky and heavy.
(5) Are too Short lived - a few years - where a capacitor could out-live the car twice over.
(6) Are prone to overheat or blow up.

CAPACITORS

By contrast, capacitors, to date, have only TWO of the above disadvantages - bulk and weight, and charge capacity.

The other way to store electricity is by the use of a CAPACITOR. A capacitor stores energy in a very different way to a battery. It is a charge device - meaning it does not generate ANY chemical reactions, heat or gasses. This is a huge advantage.

The problem with capacitor storage has been the charge capacity to size/weight ratio. In other words, you needed tens if not hundreds of times more space and or weight to hold the same amount of electrical charge.

In recent years nano technology has made great advances in the development of Super Capacitors. But till now they still need to be too large for many uses, for instance, as a main power source in electric cars.

FAILED PROMISES

In posts to this blog ranged over years, I have outline some of the many hopeful contenders in the race for a better battery. To date all have failed to produce the holy grail of energy storage, and many would appear to be no more than "vapour ware".

There are lots of hopefuls out there ferreting away trying to develop viable batteries but nothing much has actually been delivered in more than 5 years of development.

THE NEW HOPE

Now on the horizon appears a new hopeful, it is based on a cheap, natural, safe, non toxic, and plentiful substance. The form of this substance was only discovered some five years ago.

Graphene, a form of carbon, is what I speak of. The above picture is the form of graphine first produced using almost a school boy low tech method of Scotch Tape to peel and peel and peel layer after layer of graphite to arrive at the all important single layer.

Graphene is a matrix of carbon atoms in a single layer - looking something like chicken wire. It has some truly amazing properties, one of these properties may lend it to the development of a compact and efficient Ultra-Capacitor. Developers have come up with new ways of producing graphene in usable quantities.

STORAGE CAPACITY DEMONSTRATED

Graphine is known to have amazing electrical properties. A tiny but viable capacitor has been demonstrated that can hold electrical charge many many times greater than anything previously demonstrated in a capacitor.

Now the development chase is on full-speed - to learn to produce industrial quantities of graphene and turn it into amazingly high capacity capacitors.

Mobile phones that would charge in seconds and last a week, electric cars that could re-charge in 10 minutes and travel 300 - 400 miles before re-charging. We will hopefully wait and see.

This - at last - is looking hopeful.


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Ultra Capacitors & Nano-Technology Batteries?

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What has happened to the Greatly Hyped

Super Capacitors and Mega Batteries?

Answer - NOTHING!! I have been writing about several companies for several years who have hyped on about the way they are going to change energy usage - cars, trucks and buses - computers - wind generating stations etc. - with their fantastic super batteries and their UltraCapacitors of mega capacity.

EEstor, Ecolocap, NextAlternative, and Fluidic Energy, to drop just three names - four actually - out of a long enough list - into the bag, have all produced NOTHING for the consumer, other than rumours and hearsay.

When will we see an electric car with a 300 mile per charge capacity, a laptop with a 20 hour charge etc?. - I would not hold my breath.

Ecolocap appeared to have produce hard scientific proof of such capacity in a battery over 16 months ago, there was talk of production units in India and elsewhere - but - for such an astounding product with a potentially massive market, and a world waiting with bated breath - NOTHING on the shelves as yet - NOTHING concrete so to speak.

EEstor have been keeping us holding our breath for many time longer than Ecolocap - they have produced by way of a commercial product: NOTHING.

O Arse - why do I get my hopes up??

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