although relatively small, use a solid battery which is less than ideal both from an aesthetic and functional perspective.
which is comparable to a 4-volt-500-microampere-hour battery). However carbon nanotubes are still expensive not to mention the fact that there is still some debate about their possible toxicity.
V coin cell battery. In order to reach this energy density, the Drexel team used a technique called natural fiber welding or NFW.
but they all had attached solid battery packs to the shirt, rather than incorporating an energy storing fabric.
#Chemical Battery Can Recharge Itself With Light Batteries, by definition, convert chemical energy into electricity. Once youe sucked them dry,
Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) in Pune, India, have skipped the annoying step by developing a battery that charges directly from light.
Wee not talking about a battery with a solar panel on it: it a hoto batterywhere the anode itself is made of titanium nitride and ambient light.
Under artificial light, this prototype battery has a capacity of 77.8 mah/g. Itl quite happily power a small fan or LED light for about 30 seconds,
Over 100 cycles, the battery retained a bit over 70 percent of its discharge capacity, which at least suggests some potential for longevity and usefulness.
this battery design offers other benefits, including sustainable and economical anode material which will not be consumed as a part of the discharge reactions,
and safety concerns commonly encountered in the state of the art anode materials in aqueous rechargeable batteries. ccording to a press release from the American Chemical Society,
he researchers say their design is a promising first step toward a more sustainable and safer battery technology.
but getting your hopes up for a light-powered battery in your cell phone might be premature by a decade or so.
#Diesel-Powered Fuel cell Produces Clean electricity Although several options to store hydrogen as a fuel for cars have been investigated,
The research group,"Fuel cell Based Power Generation (FCGEN), "which includes researchers from Volvo Technology (Sweden), Johnson-Matthey (United kingdom), Modelon AB (Sweden), Powercell AB (Sweden), Jo ef Stefan Institute (Ljubljana, Slovenia), Forschungszentrum
diesel-fueled fuel cell system that has operated flawlessly for 10,000 hours. The extraction of the hydrogen from the diesel fuel happens through autothermal reforming, a catalytic reaction in
Gap is also able to extract oxygen from the watero you then actually have a fuel cell in
#Porous Silicon Battery electrodes from Reeds Natural structures in reed leaves could find use in advanced lithium-ion batteries,
Silicon-based materials can theoretically store more than 10 times charge than the carbon-based materials most commonly used in the anodes of commercial lithium-ion batteries,
The constant swelling and shrinking as the battery charges and discharges causes the anode to crack.
There only a speakerphone, microphone, battery pack, and a small piece of hardware that connects to the cloud. s a connected device,
There even a built-in 37-watt lithium-ion battery and a USB plug so you can power your smartphone up to six times while on the go.
But should the battery lose power it comes with a TSA-approved master key that will help you
coupled with a battery powered Lifi mobile unit attached to a laptop screen, allows users to roam within a room,
A personal craft that can lift off vertically, fly 200 miles and land vertically, all on battery power.
Battery power and battery weight will have to improve dramatically safety systems will have to be developed and anti-collision infrastructure will have to be deployed.
Drones could spur demand for lighter batteries or a different kind of power source. Drones need to see where they are going
Sony notes that the phone has a two-day battery life. Sony says the phone is waterproof under a few conditions.
and acts like a battery pack but kraftwerk is actually the first hand-held fuel cell generator that can regenerate energy in less than 3 seconds.
Fuel cell technology has been bandied about since the 1950 (Wikipedia says the first reference to it was in 1838)
There have been a few other fuel cell Kickstarters for powering cellphones but none look as slick as kraftwerk.
The Devotec Micro Fuel Charger a key ring sized fuel cell cellphone charger added about 20-30 minutes of extra talk time
There was also the unsuccessfully funded HALO fuel cell charger. Touted as emergency preparedness for the outdoorsy type with an ipad it was a bit clunky looking.
or merchants can charge the reader battery and then connect wirelessly. Charge the battery and connect wirelessly,
or plug it into the Square Stand USB hub. The partnership announcement came during Apple WWDC conference keynote,
and other battery-enabled devices on the go using something that is already abundantly flowing all around us radio waves.
Nikola Labs presented at Techcrunch Disrupt a couple years back with the same idea turning radio frequency signals into battery power.
#A Battery to Prop up Renewable Power Hits the Market A new kind of battery that stores energy from solar
long-lived batteries that could make it possible to rely heavily on intermittent, renewable energy sources. Aquion Energy, a company spun out of Carnegie mellon University,
recently delivered the first of its batteries to operators of small power grids, or icrogrids, that can operate independently of the centralized grid.
Batteries can store power from solar panels or wind turbines to provide round-the-clock power. Alternatively, diesel generators can be used.
Aquion batteries use sodium ions from saltwater as their electrolyte. Electrical current moves through this brackish liquid from positive electrodes based on manganese oxide to negative ones based on carbon.
The batteries are large and operate slowly, but they are manufactured also cheaply, using repurposed manufacturing equipment.
The batteries cost about as much as lead-acid ones which are used sometimes now, but they last twice as long,
Storing the Sun. Other long-lived batteries exist, but they cost far more than lead-acid batteries. The new energy storage technology could be crucial to making renewable energy more viable, especially in remote locations.
By making solar power cheaper than diesel fuel in many places, it could help bring clean power to some of the more than one billion people in the world without reliable electricity (see Billion People in the Dark.
the batteries could find new applications beyond microgrids, including stabilizing conventional power grids as they come to rely more heavily on renewable energy.
The company isn disclosing where its batteries are being usedxcept to say the projects are international a
and contains a wireless modem and eight-hour rechargeable battery which means it could be carried around a store or restaurant if needed.
#Internet-Connected Battery Could Bring Smoke alarms Online A startup has come up with a simple way to make smoke and carbon-monoxide detectors more useful:
a nine-volt battery with built-in Wi-fi. The battery can alert you on your smartphone
or the battery itself is about to die. Roost the Sunnyvale California-based company behind the battery plans to sell the batteries starting next year for $25 to $35.
We were approaching the Internet-of-things space not from a perspective of##How can we build a whizzy new device that does something?
Roost has its sights set on other devices battery-powered and not that are excluded currently from the growing throng of connected gadgets.
Roost s first batteries which are based lithium and meant to last for more than five years contain a Wi-fi chip and sensors for audio detection and voltage monitoring.
Using the app you can give a battery a name (like living room or kids bedroom) and connect it to your home Wi-fi
and then insert it in the battery compartment of the alarm. Right now Roost has a working prototype in a plastic box about the size of an external hard drive;
Blackwell expects a battery-sized version to be ready in the spring. Roost plans to go beyond the nine-volt battery in the future##Blackwell says the company is thinking about AA BATTERIES
since they re commonly used in toys and remote controls. He s also thinking about adding other sensors such as an accelerometer or thermometer to the battery o
#This Method of Robotic Pickup Could Stick The sticky effect seen when you rub a balloon on your hair could be used to help robots pick things up,
The Biom T2 uses a battery to power a system of microprocessors sensors springs and actuators;
They also designed it to minimize the battery at the calf to keep it from getting in the way of dance steps.
or two battery charges a day for instance so Herr and his colleagues are working to make prosthetic devices smaller lighter quieter and more efficient.
and powered by a wearable battery pack is the first exoskeleton that can actually lower the metabolic costs of walking as demonstrated in a study published this May in the Journal of Neuroengineering and Rehabilitation.
and battery-powered motors move cables to pull up on the heel or on part of the leg near the hip##adding a propelling tug at just the right moment as the wearer steps forward.
He is also hoping for advances in batteries to help lighten the load further. Whereas a person can walk 3. 5 miles using the energy in a single cookie an electric bike requires a battery weighing 10 times as much to travel the same distance.
Energy storage is still a challenge he says
#Gene-Silencing Drugs Finally Show Promise The disease starts with a feeling of increased clumsiness.
If researchers can figure out how to make the stuff in large quantities it could be used as a structural material for making planes and trucks as well as in battery electrodes.
The new materials might be particularly interesting for use in batteries notes Nicholas Fang a mechanical engineer at MIT who is also working on nanostructured ceramics.
and are lightweight a combination that could make for a fast-charging battery that stores a lot of energy in a convenient package.
In fact Greer says she is collaborating with German electronics company Bosch to apply her designs to lithium-air batteries i
This is tricky because different layershe battery the electronics, and the touch componentsend to be stacked, and the innermost layers have to bend more than the outermost ones.
Making a flexible battery is another challenge. While the lithium-polymer batteries used in smartphones today are somewhat flexible
they can survive being bent many times. One option is to make a segmented battery, like a segmented watch band, says Kevin Chen,
general manager for energy storage solutions at Applied materials. His company is developing solid-state batteries, which could easily be cut up into small pieces for flexible devices,
and which also have the potential to store much more energy than conventional lithium-ion batteries (see onger-Lasting Battery Is Being tested for Wearable devices.
Apple outlines a similar battery design in another recent patent application. Steady progress means fully flexible devices could be available in just a few years.
Meanwhile we have flexible displays that are fixed in places in the Apple Watch r
#A Nimble-Wheeled Farm Robot Goes to Work in Minnesota This summer a Minnesota startup began deploying an autonomous robot that rolls between corn plants spraying crop fertilizer.
and distribution infrastructure already used for natural gas and eventually turned back into electricity via combustion or fuel cells.
But it can compete with storage options such as batteries says Kevin Harrison a senior engineer at the National Renewable energy Laboratory in Golden Colorado.
Pacemaker batteries are too clunky for tiny devices saddled up to nerves and existing wireless methods such as those used for cochlear implants won t work with devices buried deep in the body.
otherwise need batteries. Wireless systems like the one used in cochlear implants sit permanently on the skin
But several experimental options for energy harvesting or wireless charging might eventually make that possible (see Batteryless Sensor Chip for the Internet of Thingsand obile Gadgets That Connect to Wi-fi without a Battery w
#Longer-Lasting Battery Is Being tested for Wearable devices A type of battery that could eventually store twice as much energy as a conventional one could be about to move beyond niche applications to wearable devices phones and even electric cars.
Solid-state batteries as they re called have been available for a while and are used in some wireless sensors
Applied materials one of the world s biggest equipment suppliers for the semiconductor and display industries says it can make these batteries much cheaper.
In solid-state batteries the liquid electrolytes normally used in conventional lithium-ion batteries are replaced with solid ones
which is flammable can also improve the safety of batteries which leads to cost and size savings particularly in electric vehicles by reducing the need for complex cooling systems (see TR10:
Solid-state Batteries. The manufacturing tools shipped so far by Applied materials which perform extremely high-precision deposition of materials over large areas will be used initially for prototyping and demonstrations of solid-state batteries.
Making high-quality electrode and electrolyte materials over large areas has been one of the challenges to making the solid-state batteries economically.#
#The batteries are made by successively depositing electrical contacts electrodes and the solid electrolyte that separates them in much the way that the many layers of a display are deposited.
If the solid electrolyte has gaps it can lead to short circuits. Applied materials says it can overcome this as well as other manufacturing challenges.
The thing that s holding solid-state batteries back is materials processing and the cost says Andy Chu head of product marketing for energy storage solutions at Applied materials. We re addressing these problems.
Applied materials says customers are using its equipment to make batteries but it won t disclose who those customers are.
however that one of the first commercial applications of its equipment will likely be making batteries for wearable devices such as smart watches where size is a serious limitation.
Solid-state batteries can also easily be made in different shapes because you don t have to worry about containing a liquid electrolyte making them easier to pack inside a watch for example.
Thin solid-state batteries could even be incorporated into a flexible watch band. Applied materials hasn disclosed t how much solid-state batteries made using its technology would cost how much energy they would store
or how quickly they could be recharged. One perennial challenge with solid-state batteries has been that the solid electrolyte
which isn t as conductive as liquid ones tends to limit power output. Applied materials says it is working on ways to improve that conductivity by doping the solid electrolyte
#Mobile Gadgets That Connect to Wi-fi without a Battery A new breed of mobile wireless device lacks a battery or other energy storage,
Battery-free devices that can communicate could make it much cheaper and easier to widely deploy sensors inside homes to take control of heating and other services.
and battery-free sensors behind couches and cabinets could provide the detailed data needed to make such thermostats more effective. ou could throw these things wherever you want
The battery-free Wi-fi devices are an upgrade to a design the same group demonstrated last yearhose devices could only talk to other devices like themselves (see evices Connect with Borrowed TV Signals and Need No Power Source.
Software installed on the phone allows it to read that signal by observing the changing strength of the signal it detects from that same router as the battery-free device soaks some of it up.
The battery-free Wi-fi devices can harvest enough energy to receive and decode Wi-fi signals in the conventional way.
To send data to the battery-free device a conventional Wi-fi device sends a specific burst of packets that lets the receiving device know it should listen for a transmission.
which also lack batteries, are the closest technology in use today, says Chandra. But they can only communicate with specialized reader devices,
the LG earbuds connect to a wearable clip that holds the battery and Bluetooth device,
and includes a battery and device controls. But a pair of Performtek-using earbuds that Intel showed off this year at the International Consumer electronics Show in Las Vegaseant to be a reference design for manufacturersvoids this kind of bulk by harvesting power from the microphone jack.
without needing an additional battery or adding much cost i
#Adaptive Material Could Cut the Cost of Solar in Half A material with optical properties that change to help it capture more incoming sunlight could cut the cost of solar power in half, according to Glint Photonics,
#Flexible, Printed Batteries for Wearable devices A California startup is developing flexible, rechargeable batteries that can be printed cheaply on commonly used industrial screen printers.
Imprint Energy, of Alameda, California, has been testing its ultrathin zinc-polymer batteries in wrist-worn devices
and hopes to sell them to manufacturers of wearable electronics, medical devices, smart labels, and environmental sensors.
The company approach is meant to make the batteries safe for on-body applications, while their small size and flexibility will allow for product designs that would have been impossible with bulkier lithium-based batteries.
Even in small formats the batteries can deliver enough current for low-power wireless communications sensors, distinguishing them from other types of thin batteries.
The company recently secured $6 million in funding from Phoenix Venture Partners, as well as AME Cloud Ventures, the venture fund of Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang, to further develop its proprietary chemistry and finance the batteriescommercial launch.
Previous investors have included CIA-backed venture firm In-Q-Tel and Dow chemical. The batteries are based on research that company cofounder Christine Ho began as a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley,
where she collaborated with a researcher in Japan to produce microscopic zinc batteries using a 3-D printer.
The batteries that power most laptops and smartphones contain lithium which is highly reactive and has to be protected in ways that add size and bulk.
While zinc is more stable, the water-based electrolytes in conventional zinc batteries cause zinc to form dendrites,
branch-like structures that can grow from one electrode to the other, shorting the battery.
Ho developed a solid polymer electrolyte that avoids this problem, and also provides greater stability,
Brooks Kincaid, the company cofounder and president, says the batteries combine the best features of thin-film lithium batteries and printed batteries.
Such thin-film batteries tend to be rechargeable but they contain the reactive element, have limited capacity,
Printed batteries are nonrechargeable, but they are cheap to make, typically use zinc, and offer higher capacity.
Because of zinc environmental stability, the company did need not the protective equipment required to make oxygen-sensitive lithium batteries. hen we talk about the things that constrain us in terms of the development of new products, there really two that
One is batteries and one is displays, says Steven Holmes, vice president of the New Devices Group and general manager of the Smart Device Innovation team at Intel.
Despite demand for flexible batteries, Ho says no standard has been developed for measuring their flexibility, frustrating customers who want to compare chemistries.
and began benchmarking its batteries against commercial batteries that claimed to be flexible. Existing batteries failed catastrophically after fewer than 1, 000 bending cycles,
she says, while Imprint batteries remained stable. Imprint has also been in talks about the use of its batteries in clothes
and eird parts of your body like your eye, Ho says. The company also recently began working on a project funded by the U s. military to make batteries for sensors that would monitor the health status of soldiers.
Other potential applications include powering smart labels with sensors for tracking food and packages n
#Protect Society from Our Inventions, Say Genome-Editing Scientists Scientists working at the cutting-edge of genetics say one possible application of a powerful new technology called genome editing has the potential to cause ecological mayhem and needs
which is building a huge igafactorythat he says will reduce the cost of batteries for electric cars.
The proposed plant would have more lithium-ion battery capacity than all current factories combined (see oes Musk Gigafactory Make sense?
and TDK recently licensed Witricity for use in electric car batteries. Energous charging method uses a transmitter with lots of small antennas to send radio waves to a receiver connected to the gadget being charged.
what you pay today for a case that provides extended battery life, though the transmitter for charging things probably would cost around $300.
Lithium-ion batteries are just about everywherehey power almost all smartphones, tablets, and laptops. Yet Elon musk, CEO of Tesla motors, says he intends to build a factory in the United states three years from
now that will more than double the world total lithium-ion battery production. The plan is still in its early stages,
would by 2020 make enough batteries for 500,000 electric cars. It would produce enough batteries annually to store 35 gigawatt hours of electricity, hence the name.
Second, battery companies normally announce factories only after theye funded and a site is selected. And they typically scale up gradually.
Why announce plans to build such an enormous factory specially when electric car sales so far come nowhere close to justifying it?
The project seems more puzzling in light of the hard times at other electric car battery factories in the United states. In 2009,
President Obama announced an ambitious $2. 4 billion grant program intended to launch an electric car battery industry in the United states. That effort,
All of the battery makers involved have struggled (see oo Many Battery factories, Too Few Electric cars, and one, A123 Systems, went bankrupt.
He seems to be betting that a huge factory will significantly reduce the cost of making batteries,
Tesla has a good track record for reducing battery costs (see riving Innovation, and even incremental improvements at conventional factories could reduce costs by 15 percent by 2020,
says Menahem Anderman, president of Advanced Automotive Batteries. But it unclear where the remaining 15 percent might come from.
with batteries built from raw materials rather than assembled, will also help. Usually, the components of batteries are made in many different places.
Electrolytes are made often at a large chemical plant and graphite electrodes at a plant that also makes graphite for tires and other applications.
and the cells are assembled into complete battery packsith cooling systems and electronic controlsn yet another factory.
complete battery packs come out the other. The factory will also be able to take old batteries apart to recycle the materials,
and Musk even plans to use solar and wind to help power the factory. Brett Smith, codirector for manufacturing, engineering,
Panasonic, Tesla current battery cell supplier, benefits from the know-how of workers in Japan, many of whom have decades of manufacturing experience. anufacturers have tried both approaches.
Battery manufacturing is a complex process involving many steps. If these steps are all dependent on each other,
there would likely be no alternative market for those batteries, making it a risky investment.
One potential market, using batteries for storing electricity power on the grid, is still in early stages of development.)
#High-capacity batteries made from wood pulp NEW YORK: Ever heard of a battery made of wood pulp?
Here is developed one by researchers from KTH Royal Institute of technology, Sweden, and Stanford university, US. Using nanocellulose broken down from tree fibres,
foam-like battery material that can withstand shock and stress.""It is possible to make incredible materials from trees
A 3d structure enables storage of significantly more power in less space than is possible with conventional batteries,
In fact, this type of structure and material architecture allows flexibility and freedom in the design of batteries,
Hamedi said the aerogel batteries could be used in electric car bodies, as well as in clothing, providing the garment has a lining.
Ever heard of a battery made of wood pulp? Here is developed one by researchers from KTH Royal Institute of technology, Sweden,
foam-like battery material that can withstand shock and stress.""It is possible to make incredible materials from trees
A 3d structure enables storage of significantly more power in less space than is possible with conventional batteries,
In fact, this type of structure and material architecture allows flexibility and freedom in the design of batteries,
Hamedi said the aerogel batteries could be used in electric car bodies, as well as in clothing, providing the garment has a lining g
*The BMW i8 electric sports car has a carbon fibre passenger compartment to make up for the weight of its heavy battery.
*The BMW i8 electric sports car has a carbon fibre passenger compartment to make up for the weight of its heavy battery.
and relies on lighter weight batteries. It also has a new bait system for luring mosquitoes,
and relies on lighter weight batteries. It also has a new bait system for luring mosquitoes,
while the batteries store surplus energy and take over the power supply at night, 'explains Cedric Tomissi, one of the two young designers behind the project.
The electrolyser uses nine litres of water plus the solar energy collected, coupled with the batteries inside the housing, to produce the gas needed to inflate Zephyr in half a day.
while the batteries store surplus energy and take over the power supply at night, 'explains Cedric Tomissi, one of the two young designers behind the project.
The electrolyser uses nine litres of water plus the solar energy collected, coupled with the batteries inside the housing, to produce the gas needed to inflate Zephyr in half a day.
One of the project's prototypes features a twin battery back on both sides of the dog, a mounted webcam,
One of the project's prototypes features a twin battery back on both sides of the dog, a mounted webcam,
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