Patent Sought for Honeycomb Design That Could Extend Battery Life

DooKey

DooKey

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Physicists at the University of Missouri have developed a new honeycomb design that reduces energy dissipation in batteries. They have applied for a patent and have a functioning prototype. Also, this is apparently a real thing because they have set up a company to begin to commercialize the new battery technology. The team lead believes a 5-hour charge may end up being a 500-hour charge once they work the bugs out. I think we can all agree that battery technology really needs to improve to make renewables a viable energy source and this technology might get us there. The team has two papers out that explain their theories. Check out the abstracts for Paper 1 and Paper 2.

With the design, tiny honeycombs are covered with a magnetic alloy that allows for unidirectional current, or current that only flow in one direction, so much less energy is used up internally.
 
A 5 hour charge might turn into a 500 hour charge? I'm assuming they are talking about the natural discharge time with no load, because otherwise they're saying they can increase the storage capacity by a factor of 100 which is a bit hard to swallow.

Disclaimer, didnt RTFA
 
sfsuphysics said:
A 5 hour charge might turn into a 500 hour charge? I'm assuming they are talking about the natural discharge time with no load, because otherwise they're saying they can increase the storage capacity by a factor of 100 which is a bit hard to swallow.

Disclaimer, didnt RTFA
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They are claiming that batteries could last 100x longer, it says it reduces internal stress on the battery by 3 orders of magnitude.... I'm gonna have to read their white papers because if they already have a functioning prototype then this could be a game changer.
 
just wonder if we continue to destroy our environment how many innovative ideas we would lose out on in the future
 
I read the artical. Its screwed up.

The articals auther seems to have misunderstood what they are working on. This isn't a battery, or battery technology. It's a magnetic replacement for diods. It could be used to make circuits that CONSUME much less energy, thus batteries would last longer.

If your tricked out gamming laptop only draws .5 watts total, the batter will last drastically longer. Has nothing to do with the battery itself.
 
mord said:
I read the artical. Its screwed up.

The articals auther seems to have misunderstood what they are working on. This isn't a battery, or battery technology. It's a magnetic replacement for diods. It could be used to make circuits that CONSUME much less energy, thus batteries would last longer.

If your tricked out gamming laptop only draws .5 watts total, the batter will last drastically longer. Has nothing to do with the battery itself.
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Thanks for the clarification :)

On a related note, I don't think it will be worthwhile to back up renewables with batteries in the foreseeable future. The storage capacity is insane, raw materials is another big problem, and the cost will be just stupid.

Right now we back up renewables with natural gas mostly. Defeats the purpose, but this is why gas/oil companies have been dumping piles of money into renewables. Better idea: small modular reactors are nearly a reality. The US company nuscale is doing some wonderful work. Backup the renewables with that. Unlike current designs, these things can operate load following just fine. That means that they can adjust output on the fly. Plus it's really looking like these things are impossible to melt down and they're both significantly cheaper and quicker to build.

Problem solved.
 
I'm liking that these developments are moving along, but I have to say, I don't like the fact that these publicly funded university research grants result in patented developments.

If there are any public funds in research, the result belongs in the public domain, to be used for the benefit of all, not for the financial gain of the researchers.

This ought to be in the contract associated with 100% of all public grants. "Nothing stemming from this research can ever be patented, and must be made available in its entirety with all details to the public"
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I'm liking that these developments are moving along, but I have to say, I don't like the fact that these publicly funded university research grants result in patented developments.

If there are any public funds in research, the result belongs in the public domain, to be used for the benefit of all, not for the financial gain of the researchers.

This ought to be in the contract associated with 100% of all public grants. "Nothing stemming from this research can ever be patented, and must be made available in its entirety with all details to the public"
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Publicly funded university research is usually the property, to an extent, of the university and then to whichever patent troll firm that buys it.
 
Teenyman45 said:
Publicly funded university research is usually the property, to an extent, of the university and then to whichever patent troll firm that buys it.
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That is exactly the problem. Any public funding at all should mean the outcome of the research is in the public domain.
 
From what I can tell, this is all at the theoretical stage at the moment. The abstracts mention some super low temperatures near absolute zero, which would make it impractical for consumer level devices. Maybe in the full papers (which I don't have access to) they talk about higher temperatures, but I kinda doubt it. Maybe in 10 or 20 years this might lead to something, but don't get too excited right now.
 
Lakados said:
They are claiming that batteries could last 100x longer, it says it reduces internal stress on the battery by 3 orders of magnitude.... I'm gonna have to read their white papers because if they already have a functioning prototype then this could be a game changer.
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Yeah such is the problem with science being relayed by news organizations. 100x longer usage of a battery would mean 100x the energy capacity any way you slice it even if you're talking about less loss due to heat, on top of that "3 orders of magnitude" is 1000 isn't it?
 
sfsuphysics said:
Yeah such is the problem with science being relayed by news organizations. 100x longer usage of a battery would mean 100x the energy capacity any way you slice it even if you're talking about less loss due to heat, on top of that "3 orders of magnitude" is 1000 isn't it?
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If you read the papers, the news artical was all messed up. The scientists were not working on batteries at all. They were working on components for electrical circuits that are much more efficent. Diodes. They think circuits could potentially be drastically more efficient and use less energy, thus batteries would last longer because the drain would be much slower.
 
mord said:
If you read the papers, the news artical was all messed up. The scientists were not working on batteries at all. They were working on components for electrical circuits that are much more efficent. Diodes. They think circuits could potentially be drastically more efficient and use less energy, thus batteries would last longer because the drain would be much slower.
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That in itself also sounds a bit out there, as it suggests diodes are less than 1% efficient at moving current
 
Have a read of the papers, they are full of material science porn (mostly magnetism and crystalline structures). Good luck understanding any of it if you haven't taken some college level chemistry classes (which I have).
 
sfsuphysics said:
That in itself also sounds a bit out there, as it suggests diodes are less than 1% efficient at moving current
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I agree. Sounds like they are drumming up capital support. Hard to tell how much the overhype was from the reporting though.

If you are using reverse bias current, then yeah diodes are very inefficiant. Some circuits do make use of that with various types of diods. Some theoretical circuit using reverse bias current but still manages to draw 10c from a battery would see drastic increases of efficency with a reverse bias diode that only drew .01c from the spec battery.

Is that a stupid setup to start with? Yes.

*edit - c is a unit indicating an amperage flow equal to the amperage a battery can discharge theoretically sustain for 1 hour to the targeted lowest discharge level. 10c is 10 times that.
 
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