Recharge A Battery in Seconds

[exfileme]

Could it be possible to recharge batteries in seconds rather than hours? Apparently, that's a definite "yes" according to MIT engineers after creating an electrical beltway.

Recharge A Battery in Seconds : Read more

 

[Guest]

Oh joy I will be waiting for that day

 

[hillarymakesmecry]

This is fantastic news. Then we could charge up an electric car at high power high voltage stations in like 5 minutes instead of 9 hours. Gasoline will be history. Thanks Venezula and Iran, your domination of the worlds most valuable resource is comming to an end. We won't really need it as much anymore.

 

[avi85]

very cool...

 

[Niva]

Wow, that's good research right there... which should be patented!

 

[jacobdrj]

Gasoline will never be 'history', because it is a phenominal distributed high energy controllable source of energy (stored solar power). However, it's mainstream consumer consumption should decrease, assuming we have a better way of harnesing solar energy through either wind, water, or direct solar power. Otherwise, we will just be exchanging automotive gas consumption with point source generator crude consumption...

 

[pbrigido]

Not to be a downer, but over the years I have heard lots of promises regarding new battery technology. Sadly, none of it has lived up to its hype. Don't get me wrong, I would love to have a battery get a full charge that quickly, I just wouldn't get your hopes up quite yet.

 

[jp182]

thats not to say that battery tech hasnt improved over the years. Batteries are last much longer than they used to; we just keep finding faster ways to burn that energy.

 

[StupidRabbit]

This would be awesome.. i would just have to find a socket and plug my laptop in for 30 seconds and voila. Ofcourse i would have to wait a couple of years for it to get mainstream.. unless lenovo decides to start making them tomorrow.

 

[jacobdrj]

Yeah, I was wondering why it took THG so long to post this. But better late and accurate than early and wrong.

 

[magicandy]

Hey look another MIT breakthrough battery tech we won't see for another 10 years because the large battery producing corporations are making enough money keeping mainstream tech at a snail's pace. Stretch it out, it'll last longer. *eyeroll*

Just think of how advanced we could be if we used a resource-based economy rather than crippling progress without our money-based economy. Things like this would be incorporated into every day life much more quickly, rather than waiting years and years for a company to decide that it has made enough money stalling the old tech. Lose the money, change the incentive for humanity.

 

[Grims]

[citation][nom]jp182[/nom]thats not to say that battery tech hasnt improved over the years. Batteries are last much longer than they used to; we just keep finding faster ways to burn that energy.[/citation]


It has gotten somewhat better, but it's not advancing at the same rate in efficiency as PCS. All theses new 5-6 hour battery netbooks are the result of severely under powered components, or the effect of just putting a bigger and bigger battery on. Take HPs 12 hour battery laptop they keep boasting...has anyone actually seen that battery? It's a 12 cell mammoth.

 

[apoq]

Yep, i fear the the Man does not want us to have real breakthroughs in battery technology. I sure hope this one sees the light of day but we've been reading about similar technologies for ages and hardly any of them has had any impact in everyday usage of electronics.

 

[jacobdrj]

Well, sometimes the technology is good, but the cost associated with it is terrible. They were saying they had hypercapacitive batteries a little while ago. But I have a feeling they would cost in the multi-thousand dollar range, for even small ones. There are very few applications for 24 hour batteries that cost as much as a car.
This might be different because it uses standard materials, and just changes the manufacturing process.

 

[mavroxur]

Does anyone else not see the fundamental flaw with this? Since energy cannot be created nor destroyed, to accomplish the same amount of work that a 100mA charge for 2 hours would do, you would have to charge at a rate of 12A for 1 minute to get the same effect. 10 Seconds? Do the math. I dont know of a small dainty wall adapter that can chug out 12A, let alone a small charging jack on a cell phone that could take several amps.

 

[Guest]

There already are two competing battery technologies that promises even shorter recharge time and they're already on the market.

Altairnano's lithium-titanate battery potentially offers 250 times faster recharge. Current models can be fully recharged in less than 10 minutes.

A123systems' lithium iron phosphate battery potentially offers 100 times faster recharge with current test models being recharged to 80% capacity in 5 minutes, and full capacity in 20 minutes.

 

[tenor77]

Good possibilities. Of course there's a lot of ignorance when it comes to Lithium Ions from your general consumer. They tend to kill the batteries capacity by treating it like a NiMh.

"You mean I'm not supposed to drain it down all the way?"
No, no you're not.

 

[jacobdrj]

[citation][nom]mavroxur[/nom]Does anyone else not see the fundamental flaw with this? Since energy cannot be created nor destroyed, to accomplish the same amount of work that a 100mA charge for 2 hours would do, you would have to charge at a rate of 12A for 1 minute to get the same effect. 10 Seconds? Do the math. I dont know of a small dainty wall adapter that can chug out 12A, let alone a small charging jack on a cell phone that could take several amps.[/citation]
Yes, but you could at least up it to standard wall amp-draw instead of the measly .5-2.5 amp draw for most AC-DC converters, which never have to be higher, because the batteries couldn't utilize that juice anyways.

 

[mavroxur]

[citation][nom]jacobdrj[/nom]Yes, but you could at least up it to standard wall amp-draw instead of the measly .5-2.5 amp draw for most AC-DC converters, which never have to be higher, because the batteries couldn't utilize that juice anyways.[/citation]

Ok, so lets "up it to standard wall amp-draw" and now you're charging an iPod with....15 amps x 125 volts = 1875 watts. Yay! Now let's imagine what an iPod with a charging jack that could handle that...with charging circuiry to handle that current...Congrats your iPod is the size of a shoebox. Let's take it a step further....charging a notebook battery with 18v at 3a for an hour and a half....to get the same columbs charge you would need 18v at 16,200A for 10 seconds. Gets ugly fast, doesnt it? Hooray for physics. 10 seconds on really small batteries is probable.

 

[grieve]

[citation][nom]jacobdrj[/nom]Gasoline will never be 'history', because it is a phenominal distributed high energy controllable source of energy (stored solar power). However, it's mainstream consumer consumption should decrease, assuming we have a better way of harnesing solar energy through either wind, water, or direct solar power. Otherwise, we will just be exchanging automotive gas consumption with point source generator crude consumption...[/citation]
Although what you say is true...

Never say never, one day, god knows when (50 years?)... Gasoline will be gone.