Turn ON your mind bulb with Battery!
By: Mahima Rastogi
Tags: Battery Charger, Future Of Technology, Electrical Engineering, Battery, Women In Tech

The race is on around the world as scientists strive to develop a new generation of batteries that can perform beyond the limits of the current lithium-ion based battery. Ever wondered how long it should take & why! Let’s find out the reason.

First of all, let’s quickly go through the basics & life story, I mean history of the batteries. Batteries nowadays have become so ubiquitous that they are almost invisible to us ranging from powering a toy of 3 year old to powering an electric vehicle, we have come a long way. Yet they are a remarkable invention with a long and storied history, and an equally exciting future. In this article, I will take you through the history of the batteries, their working, latest inventions exciting future & the business involved.

Chemical batteries consist of two poles positive (+) and negative (-) and an electrolyte solution. Chemical reactions between the poles and this solution are what generate the electricity.

So by using different substances for the poles and different electrolyte solutions, we can make several types of batteries with different properties and voltages.

Batteries have been with us for a long time. Let’s get into the roots of their discovery & invention.

The battery sample founded for the first time in history was the “Baghdad Battery”, a ceramic pot battery which is known as the world’s oldest battery. This battery is more than 2,000 years old.

This earliest example of battery is surrounded by controversy but suggested uses include electroplating, pain relief or a religious tingle. Moving forward, then came the time of Alessandro Volta, an Italian physicist.Yes! he is the one whom the battery was named after.

He placed copper and zinc into an electrolyte solution like dilute sulfuric acid or saline solution. When the two are joined by a conductor, electricity flows from the copper to the zinc.

Hence, the first true battery was developed named “the Volta battery”, which forms the basis for modern chemical batteries. One of the most enduring batteries, the lead-acid battery, was invented in 1859 and is still the technology used to start most internal combustion engine cars today. It is the oldest example of rechargeable battery.

How do batteries work?

First, let’s know the difference between a primary & rechargeable batteries. The battery in which reaction that produces the flow of electrons cannot be reversed, is referred to as a primary battery & the batteries in which the flow of electrons can be reversed is known as rechargeable battery. One of the earliest rechargeable batteries is the nickel-cadmium battery (NiCd).

Batteries consist of a positive (cathode) and negative (anode) electrode and an electrolyte.

The electrodes exchange electrons and ions, which are usually of positive charge.

Only the ions flow through the electrolyte, which is an electric insulator to force the electrons to flow through the external circuit. Hence the vehicle is powered & the exchange is reversed, to recharge the battery.

Advancements:

First: lithium-ion batteries

The demand for new technologies is often more compact, higher capacity, safe, rechargeable batteries. The most cutting-edge battery chemistry we currently have is lithium-ion. It is agreed by most experts that no other chemistry is going disrupt lithium-ion for at least another decade or more. Three great scientists have been awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize for the development of lithium-ion batteries.

(1) John B Goodenough,

(2) M Stanley

(3) Whittingham and Akira Yoshino

The above mentioned scientists share the prize for their work on these rechargeable devices, which are used for portable electronics.

Working of Lithium ions via pictorial representation

Second: Graphene based batteries

Graphene based batteries are quickly becoming more favorable than their graphite predecessors as a battery based on the “graphene ball” material requires only 12 minutes to fully charge. Graphene batteries are an emerging technology which allows for increased electrode density, faster cycle times, as well as possessing the ability to hold the charge longer thus improving the battery’s lifespan.

Scientists have developed a new graphene based battery material with charging speed five times faster than today’s lithium-ion batteries. This breakthrough by researchers at the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) in South Korea provides promise for the next generation mobile batteries and electric vehicles. Standard lithium batteries require charging time of at least an hour to fully charge, even with quick charging technology, several attempts to explore new innovative materials have been started.

Are Graphene batteries available?

Graphene based batteries have exciting potential and while they are not yet fully commercially available yet, R&D is intensive and will hopefully yield results in the coming future.

Electric cars

The leader in manufacturing this new battery format for vehicles is the Tesla electric vehicle company, which has plans for building “Giga-plants” for production of these batteries. Batteries by Tesla are considered to be one of the best in the world. Depending on the required battery application, use of silicon anode material will boost battery capacity initially by about 20 percent and eventually by 40 percent or better. Hence, providing much larger capacities.

The rub is that silicon expands almost 300 percent in volume when it reacts with lithium during charging. It then shrinks by the same amount during discharge. Repeated charge-discharge cycling causes the anode to begin to disintegrate. That in turn creates more surface area on the anode, which then reacts chemically with the electrolyte, damaging the battery. So batteries with silicon anodes tend not to hold up for long.

Happily enough, silicon’s expansion problem is not insurmountable. Even now, some lithium-ion batteries have anodes that include particles containing silicon combined with silicon dioxide (the stuff of sand) and coated with carbon. Elon Musk revealed in 2016 revealed that the Tesla’s lithium-ion cells are built that way. But till date, the amount of silicon in anodes has been minimal.

Perhaps we are about to witness the next generational shift in energy generation and storage driven by the ever-improving capabilities of the humble battery.

Let’s delve a little deeper and think of some amazing future possibilities of Batteries!

Electric planes! Well that could be the future of aviation. According to the theories, they will be much quieter, cheaper, and cleaner than the planes we have today. Electric planes with a 1,000 km (620 mile) range on a single charge could be used for half of all commercial aircraft flights today, hence cutting global aviation’s carbon emissions by about 15%.

It’s the same story with electric cars. An electric car isn’t simply a cleaner version of its pollution-spewing cousin. It is, fundamentally, a better car. Its electric motor makes little noise and provides lightning fast response to the driver’s decisions. Charging an electric car costs much less than paying for an equivalent amount of gasoline. Electric cars can be built with a fraction of moving parts, which makes them cheaper to maintain.

So why aren’t electric cars everywhere already?

It’s because batteries are expensive, making the upfront cost of an electric car much higher than a similar gas-powered model. And unless one has to drive a lot, the savings on gasoline don’t always offset the higher upfront cost. In short, electric cars still aren’t economical.

Similarly, current batteries don’t pack in enough energy by weight or volume to power passenger aircrafts. We still need fundamental breakthroughs in battery technology before that becomes a reality. Battery-powered portable devices have transformed our lives. But still there’s a lot more that batteries can disrupt, if only safer, more powerful, and energy dense batteries could be made cheaply. But as of now, no law of physics precludes their existence.

And yet, despite over two centuries of close study since the first battery was invented in 1799, scientists still don’t fully understand many of the fundamentals of what exactly happens inside these devices. What we do know is that there are, essentially, three problems to solve in order for batteries to truly transform our lives yet again: power, energy, and safety.

Various companies are working on solutions to the problem. One idea is to replace layered electrodes with something structurally stronger. For example, the 100-year-old Swiss battery company Leclanche is working on a technology that uses lithium iron phosphate (LFP), which has an “olivine” structure, as the cathode, and lithium titanate oxide (LTO), which has a “spinel” structure, as the anode. These structures are better at handling the flow of lithium ions in and out of the material.

Efforts like Leclanche’s show it’s possible to tinker with battery chemistries to increase their power. Still, nobody has yet built a battery powerful enough to rapidly deliver the energy needed for a commercial plane to defeat gravity. If you can do that, the Nobel Prize would be waiting for you!

Some startups are looking to build smaller planes (seating up to 12 people), which could fly on relatively lower power dense batteries, or electric hybrid planes, where jet fuel does the hard lifting and batteries do the coasting. But there’s really no company working in this space anywhere near commercialization. Further, most battery experts suggest that the kind of technological leap required for an all electric commercial plane will likely take decades.

Battery Business

Batteries are already big business, and the market for them keeps growing. All that money attracts a lot of entrepreneurs with even more ideas. But, battery startups are difficult bets! They fizzle even more often than software companies, which are known for their high failure rate. That’s because innovation in material sciences is hard.

So far battery experts have found that, when they try to improve one trait (say energy density), they have to compromise on some other trait (say safety). This kind of balancing act has meant the progress on each front has been slow and fraught with problems.

Surely, there are more battery scientists as compared to the old times with more eyes on the problem. The potential of batteries remains huge, but given the challenges ahead, it’s better to look at every claim about new batteries with a good dose of skepticism.

Conclusion

Hopefully, this article helps you understand more intuitively about batteries. If you are genuinely intrigued by the topic I have presented, I encourage you to research more on batteries to strengthen your understanding. I will be presenting more about simulating battery packs in different configurations & Electric Vehicles in the coming days. If you find yourself interested,

stay tuned!

If you have any queries, you can write me at mahirastogi50@gmail.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mahima-rastogi-16b238165/

Instagram: @mahi__wayzz

Thanks for reading!