Research Breakthrough Could Mean 40-Hour Laptop Batteries

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/57832;_ylt=AvL_F2pvQrCNMOZEXTcSNa0DW7oF

In my view, this is the biggest current barrier in electronic device performance. I don't need faster CPUs, bigger hard disks or more feature-rich software. Make my bloody battery last longer!!

It's just that there's a lot of "breakthroughs" in battery tech that never make it to production because what was achieved in research wasn't practical to build or use in the real world. Same thing as all the "breakthough" solar power research that you see people posting about here.

A laptop is a relatively small user of electrical power, to propel a car, its engine, it power source (the batteries) and people take a lot more power.

Do to this greater need for power the push in regard to electrical car has been fuel cells. Fuel cells as an energy storage device is more efficient then batteries (For every watt of power put into the Fuel cell you get .5 watt back i.e 50%, compared to batteries which is only .2 or 20%).

Now this improvement will make batteries lighter and hold more power, but no one is calling it more "efficient". Thus, I suspect you be able to put more power into the battery and given the overall greater energy input you have greater energy output, but I suspect the efficient will be about the same i.e. 20% (i.e. for every watt put in you get .2 watt back).

For a lightweight energy user, like a lap top, not a bad deal. The greater access to more power at the same weight is a good deal, the cost of the electricity being used to store electrical power in the battery 0is NOT really a factor given the low use of electric ty for such a device.

On the other hand, in the case of electrical cars, the cost of charging the vehicle is going to be the biggest factor, given the much larger power requirements for such a vehicle. Here the fact you can store ten times the power is going to be secondary to the fact Fuel Cells can provide 2 1/2 times the power given the same electrical inputs (50% efficiency for Fuel Cells compared to the 20% efficient of Batteries).

I am not saying this will NOT be a factor in electrical cars, but it will be minor compared to laptops, do to the fact the COST of the Electric to provide the power needed is the major restriction on using a electrical car, while the cost of electricity is, at best, a minor concern of laptops.

The Tesla uses 6800 lithium battery packs (http://www.teslamotors.com/display_data/TeslaRoadsterBatterySystem.pdf). Cutting this down by 10x to 680 packs certainly seems feasible. They could probably even get rid of more then that, as the power/weight ratio would be significantly effected.

if it doesn't turn out to 'cold fusion'.......this is a 10x improvement in charge carrying capacity, in a lighter package....

So now all we have to consider is the (limited) worldwide supply of lithium available for battery production.

Some people just can't be positive.

Once you get down to 33rd on the list, you are talking about very small amounts indeed. For example, the top 8 elements make up 98% of the Earth's crust.

http://www.autobloggreen.com/2007/01/30/beyond-peak-oil-are-we-facing-peak-lithium/

"In a story in the Toronto Star, William Tahil, research director with Meridian International Research asserts that there isn't enough lithium available to mine to support the world's 900 million vehicles. Evidently most of the known supplies of lithium are in South America, in Argentina, Chile and Bolivia, potentially making them the new OPEC. Bolivia alone may have fifty percent of the world's metal lithium reserves. Production of 60 million PHEVs with smaller lithium batteries than would be needed for a full EV would require 420,000 tonnes of lithium every year, which is six times the current production level. So it looks like any potential savings from mass producing lithium batteries, could easily get negated and then some just by increasing demand driving up raw material costs."

Like I pointed out, this new battery technology doesn't get more bang for your buck from lithium, it just lets you pack more of the stuff into the battery. It doesn't address the very real limitations on global lithium supplies.