Nanoengineered EV Batteries Zap Range Anxiety

November 8th, 2011 by Silvio Marcacci

Nanotechnology could give EV batteries the same range as gasoline engines

Range anxiety, or concerns about how far electric vehicles will travel on a single charge, is one of the biggest limitations facing the EV industry. In fact, a recent survey said only 20 percent of American drivers would consider buying an EV with a 100-mile range. But what if EVs could drive 500 miles on a single charge?

That’s exactly what one of America’s most innovative companies is working on. energyNOW! correspondent Josh Zepps looked under the hood of a next generation battery design that uses nanotechnology to make EVs more powerful than ever. The full segment is available below:

Next-Generation EV Batteries Zap Range Anxiety from Energy NOW on Vimeo.

IBM invented many of the computing technologies we take for granted today: the floppy disk, personal computer, barcode, and hard drive, to name a few. Now, the company is turning its sights on meeting a different type of technological challenge – the electric vehicle battery. “Most people on the planet want to own a car,” said Winifried Wilcke, an IBM nuclear physicist. “I think that’s not going to change.”

Wilcke and his team at the Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California are working on a revolutionary EV battery with ten times the energy density and five times the range of today’s most advanced batteries. Current EV batteries, which use the same lithium-ion technology as cell phones and laptops, only have a range of around 75 miles on a single charge, according to the EPA. In addition to the limited range, lithium-ion batteries are bulky and heavy, and represent much of the cost of an EV.

So what sets IBM’s battery apart? The secret, according to researchers, is air. A lithium-ion battery contains heavy metals like cobalt oxide or manganese oxide and shuttles lithium between a graphite anode and metal oxide cathode as the battery is charged and discharged.

A lithium-air battery, on the other hand, doesn’t carry around all the chemicals necessary to work. When it releases electricity, it borrows oxygen from the surrounding air to form lithium oxide. When it’s plugged in and recharging, it releases that oxygen back into the air. This saves space and mass, meaning a lighter battery that stores much more energy per pound.

The IBM team is also working to reduce the weight of their 500-mile battery by ditching the heavy metal oxide cathodes for microscopic nanotechnology carbon cathodes. Nanoengineering the carbon is imperative in order for the team to increase the battery’s total charge. “We’ve looked at a lot of the different carbons, and we’ve found that if we have a high surface-area carbon, we can get much more capacity,” said Sally Swanson, an IBM researcher.

While a 500-mile EV battery seems far off now, IBM thinks it can start commercial production of the long-range battery by 2020. Even though the project is complicated and might not work, the prospect of an EV engine with the same size, weight, price, range and performance of a gasoline engine is too much to resist for IBM’s researchers. “A high-tech company has an obligation really, to help the environment and the world,” said Wilcke.

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Tags: IBM, Lithium air battery, Lithium-ion battery, nanotechnology

About the Author

Silvio Marcacci Silvio is Principal at Marcacci Communications, a full-service clean energy and climate policy public relations company based in Oakland, CA.

Pingback: Clean Tech News Briefs November 11, 2011 | EarthTechling
http://www.facebook.com/people/Bruce-Miller/100000952005408 Bruce Miller

America’s reactors now store up to four times their design capacity of spent fuel. no realistic solution in sight! before electric cars can be used, this problem must be resolved. http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4971 tells of China’s thrust towards better Thorium fueled reactors. Will Americans be forced to buy these from China? Can China develop a ‘Super-Battery” before the U.S.? Will it matter? America goes through a deliberate, economic “controlled crash” as we speak. Israel plans more ‘War Debt” more dead Americans, even conscription for U.S. citizens, and China backs away from a collapsing Europe as we speak. In a Very frightening world, batteries that would make even Solar, Wind, for Off-Gird folks more convenient, would be a boon, and to expand that, put them in electric cycles, even electric Tuck-Tucks for rural Americans in the aftermath of the economic Apocalypse bearing down on the Western World as we speak. Cars? Who will pay the taxes that build the roads? Even now roadways deteriorate, need replacement and governments cannot oblige.
- Anonymous
  
  Electric cars can be used right now. Today.
  
  We can power them with wind and solar, making it cheaper to drive per mile, and freeing us from purchasing foreign oil.
  
  Focus your energy. Work to get representatives and senators elected who will help implement the transition away from fossil fuels. We have the technology. We need to remove the political barrier to making the changes that need making.
http://twitter.com/openib Guy Fawkes

The problem isn’t just range but cost and charging times.
- Anonymous
  
  Costs will come down. There are no expensive “ingredients” – no pounds of platinum, hours of highly skilled labor, immense amounts of energy. Machines will crank these things out at bargain prices as the process gets underway.
  
  Charging time is not a real issue. Level 3 chargers are already under 20 minutes for an 80% charge. That will improve some. With a 200 mile range you would need only two short stops to complete a 500 mile driving day. That’s only one more that with a liquid fuel car and most people are going to stop at least a couple of times during an all day drive as it is.