Goodenough is more than Good Enough
March 3, 2017 8:51 AM   Subscribe

The 94 year-old inventor of the Litium Ion Battery is at it again. "[Professor John B.] Goodenough’s latest breakthrough, completed with Cockrell School senior research fellow Maria Helena Braga, is a low-cost all-solid-state battery that is noncombustible and has a long cycle life (battery life) with a high volumetric energy density and fast rates of charge and discharge. The engineers describe their new technology in a recent paper published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science."
posted by Slap*Happy (34 comments total) 19 users marked this as a favorite
 


We really need more info, but this guy has the best track record possible.

This could be as big as CRISPR, but save the planet. 3x energy density, works at cold temps, more recharge cycles, works with sodium. Sounds to good to be true...
posted by sety at 9:04 AM on March 3, 2017 [2 favorites]


Posting from CES 2019: all the smartphones still die in twelve hours or less, but that's fine because now they're even thinner!
posted by fifthrider at 9:08 AM on March 3, 2017 [12 favorites]


When they say three times the energy density of typical batteries, that probably means about 1.5 times the best ones. Plus or minus a lot. Don't get too excited until you have some kind of actual number for specific energy.
posted by sfenders at 9:16 AM on March 3, 2017 [1 favorite]


Sounds pretty awesome.
posted by Samizdata at 9:17 AM on March 3, 2017


Usually press releases like this are full of breathless exaggeration. This one seems not to be, which is very good.
posted by Zalzidrax at 9:19 AM on March 3, 2017


Posting from CES 2019: all the smartphones still die in twelve hours or less, but that's fine because now they're even thinner!
If this genuinely reduces how often handheld / laptop devices catch fire and maim people, that would be awesome in its own right.
posted by sourcejedi at 9:20 AM on March 3, 2017 [1 favorite]


I don't understand why Goodenough hasn't won a Nobel yet.
posted by beepbeepboopboop at 9:20 AM on March 3, 2017 [3 favorites]


Posting from CES 2019: all the smartphones still die in twelve hours or less, but that's fine because now they're even thinner!

I used to think I wanted a battery that lasted multiple days, but I've gotten really used to just charging it overnight. It's definitely a fine tradeoff for my iPhone not being as thick as the old Nokia brick that was my first phone.
posted by explosion at 9:23 AM on March 3, 2017 [2 favorites]


Or run for President.

GOODENOUGH FOR GOVERNMENT WORK
posted by zamboni at 9:23 AM on March 3, 2017 [41 favorites]


There is quite a bit of money and research being poured into new battery technology, including a number that are pushing solid state batteries, such as Professor Goodenough.

Here are just a smattering of the battery startups that I found with a quick Google search:
Pellion
QuantumScape
Ambri
Seeo
Sakti3 (now owned by Dyson)
Amprius
Fluidic Energy

And of course, lots of large companies and universities are pouring money into this too.

Battery technology has already improved in the past few years, which is why there is now an electric car costing $37k that can drive 230 miles between charges. Given all the money and research, I forsee it improving much more. One can only hope that low cost, long driving electric cars will be the norm in 10 or 20 years, if not sooner.
posted by eye of newt at 9:31 AM on March 3, 2017 [1 favorite]


Following the choose two of three desirable attributes, there does not seem to be any discussion of cost of manufacture. Does sound much more promising than most energy news items!
posted by sammyo at 9:39 AM on March 3, 2017


The presser describes the tech as "low cost." If all the superlatives they're providing are accurate, the only remaining hidden downsides I can imagine would have to be in fragility, output fluctuation, or thermal performance/scalability.
posted by fifthrider at 9:46 AM on March 3, 2017


Or run for President.

GOODENOUGH FOR GOVERNMENT WORK


Make that "JOHNNY B. GOODENOUGH FOR GOVERNMENT WORK".
posted by Strange Interlude at 10:00 AM on March 3, 2017 [4 favorites]


"Chuck! It's your cousin, Marvin Battery! You know that new low-cost solid-state technology you've been looking for? Well, listen to this!"
posted by Strange Interlude at 10:06 AM on March 3, 2017 [34 favorites]


Sadly unrelated to the creator of the Goodenough Draw-a-Man test which asks kids, "Can you draw a good-enough man?"
posted by straight at 10:41 AM on March 3, 2017 [1 favorite]


I'll be happy with a phone or camera battery that doesn't explosively catch on fire when accidentally punctured.
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:51 AM on March 3, 2017


the only remaining hidden downsides I can imagine would have to be in fragility, output fluctuation, or thermal performance/scalability.

Well, don't forget their threat to the fossil fuel industries and all those coal miners Trump is going to put back to work.

Like the old song says, how you gonna keep 'em buying that coal, now that they've got solar batteries?

Most likely answer: compulsory use of coal-burning stoves in all buildings that aren't Trump Hotels, enforced by heavily armed DHS "Tactical Coal Enforcement Teams."
posted by Naberius at 10:53 AM on March 3, 2017


Like the old song says, how you gonna keep 'em buying that coal, now that they've got solar batteries?

Wednesday I only generated 15kWh and I normally use 30 (and generate 50) so that's a hell of a lot of batteries I'd need if I didn't have the grid.
posted by Talez at 11:04 AM on March 3, 2017


As the energy density of batteries increases we come closer to blaster rifles. Just saying.
posted by Splunge at 11:13 AM on March 3, 2017 [2 favorites]


That's hardly a good thing, Splunge. Blasters are clumsy and random.
posted by Zeinab Badawi's Twenty Hotels at 11:44 AM on March 3, 2017 [7 favorites]


Let's not give the men all the credit. The project was started by a woman: "[Maria Helena] Braga began developing solid-glass electrolytes with colleagues while she was at the University of Porto in Portugal."
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 11:57 AM on March 3, 2017 [7 favorites]


Blasters are clumsy and random.

Does this look like a more civilized age to you?
posted by zamboni at 12:10 PM on March 3, 2017 [7 favorites]


There's so much hype about batteries I'm very skeptical of just about anything (remember graphene?). This does seem interesting though.
posted by smoke at 1:28 PM on March 3, 2017


closer to blaster rifles.

Blasters are clumsy and random.

Ok, person-portable gauss rifles, then.
posted by porpoise at 2:41 PM on March 3, 2017 [2 favorites]


There is also such a battery on a very recent NOVA episode. But in battery news, flow batteries will probably come to our rescue.
posted by Brian B. at 3:15 PM on March 3, 2017


The project was started by a woman

She is given FULL credit, but people are looking for a reason why this isn't another fool's quest. The fact she got the attention of this guy - and scope that picture, he looks twenty years younger, bright and sharp - means she's brilliant and he knows it and supports her work completely.
posted by Slap*Happy at 5:06 PM on March 3, 2017 [1 favorite]


zamboni: "Does this look like a "more civilized age" to you?"

Sadly, I think we'll look back on it as such.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:50 PM on March 3, 2017 [2 favorites]


I did a survey of battery tech in development quite recently, and discovered that (a) there are a LOT of new chemistiries and configurations being funded, (b) there have been for a long time and (c) most of them don't work out. There are lots of reasons they don't work out - sometimes the tech doesn't pan out during initial experiments in the lab, sometimes it gets as far as multi-million dollar pre-production, but at all stages there are problems to fix that may not be fixable - or economic to fix. Safety, toxicity, cycle life, workable temperature ranges, materials stability, charge cycle profile, internal resistance; you really don't know whether you can get all these right at the right price for the market in the format the market wants until you get into production, and at the performance levels needed to be competitive all these things have to be got very right indeed.

I also discovered that many, if not most of these hopeful monsters are propelled through whatever developmental life they enjoy by press release and breathless reportage. This is fun to write, because you get to talk about bright new futures and weird science and, more often than not, nanotechnology and quantum and cars and phones and saving the planet. You have to work much harder to get a balanced view of what each technology's problems are and what they mean for its likelihood of success, and then you end up with a much less exciting read. Easier to go with the bright new future line.

History is less forgiving. It took decades to get LiIon into consumer markets, and decades for subsequent developments like LiPoly etc, and that's with a very long-standing electrochemistry and a giant pile of cash. Even if you have a somewhat-better battery, you're up against the huge inertia of the established battery ecosystem, which has huge amounts of sunk investment, huge scale and all the advantages of distribution, regulatory awareness and practical knowledge that dominance of the mass market brings. (Look how long it took for LCDs to get dominance over CRTs, and how long its taken OLED to expand into LCD territory.)

Which is not to say that good things won't happen. Just take the stories with a pinch of the metallic salt of your choosing.

(My favourite tech is lithium-air, which has the potential (ho ho) to rival gasoline for energy density but also has the potential to rival gasoline for searing fireballs of explosive destruction. The lab work is, I believe, exciting.)
posted by Devonian at 7:02 AM on March 4, 2017 [4 favorites]


So what is the theoretical limit on energy density for a chemo-electric battery? I had done googling on this a few years ago, and recall reading an article saying that the limit was about double what we were getting from Li-ion at the time—so not a lot of room for improvement.

But this sodium storage technology is being reported as 3x the energy density, and Devonian mentions Li-air as being in the same ballpark as gasoline, which is something like 50x. So what is it?
posted by adamrice at 7:32 AM on March 4, 2017


The only way you get Li-air to have similar energy density to gasoline is to not count the weight of the air (which would make it heavier as it's discharged), and also not count the weight of any other part of the battery besides the lithium itself. So basically you'd just be measuring the energy potential of a raw lump of lithium metal that's going to be combined with oxygen, which would normally resemble an explosion more than a battery. But that would be the theoretical limit you're talking about, I think.
posted by sfenders at 3:45 PM on March 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


A few months ago someone asked me what the deal was with those phones catching fire, so I explained some of the basics of lithium-ion batteries and then I got real enthusiastic and started waxing rhapsodic about the history of battery technology and how centrally important it is, how even small improvements in battery tech can be enabling of the transformation of entire industries. Then I thought that this all needs to be written as a pop-sci book called Batteries!. However, I'm not certain I'm capable of being glib enough to be a bestselling popular science author. I could work harder at it, I guess.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 11:42 PM on March 4, 2017


Here's a recent article in Pocket-Lint, listing an amazing number of battery technologies that researchers are working on.

It mentions that a number of them will be seen in phones or laptops before we see them in cars. But I don't think the transition will be that long. Tesla actually started on a simple premise: laptop batteries were a lot more energy dense than car batteries. The first Tesla cars were actually powered by massive numbers of Panasonic laptop batteries connected together! They still use Panasonic batteries to this day--they are a partner in the Gigafactory.

So as soon as we get a better laptop battery, you can bet Tesla will be putting them in cars.
posted by eye of newt at 12:18 AM on March 5, 2017 [1 favorite]




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