"The BBC has been given an exclusive look at a new kind of battery charger that can recharge a modern smartphone in less time than it takes to boil a kettle."
Unless I am missing something on Storedot's website, the BBC were actually shown a phone with an ultra-capacitor instead of a battery.
When asked to explain, the spokesman says things like "we use new physics". That alone peaked my bullshit detector.
Every battery tech I'm also aware of cannot handle high amperage charging without things like outgassing, battery seperation, heating effects, and explosions. Even the venerable NiFe battery has problems with high current charging.
It isn't a charging technology for existing batteries, the BBC are doing very crappy reporting. It is an ultra-capacitor made of peptides instead of a battery.
I wouldn't doubt that the BBC is doing bad reporting.
My concern is over using supercaps: their density is still very low compared to Li-ions on a volume basis.
Also, I noticed they are using a Samsung phone. Last time I used a supercap in a project, I had to build a complex circuit that compensates for exponential voltage drop but outputs constant voltage and amperage. I want to know how they got around that issue as well.
It would. But like I said, they were using a Samsung S(something). There's no way, aside using a different mainboard, to make the phone have a charge rate of 5C or higher. That's just the details of the phone charging hardware.
I would have believed it more if they used a MediaTek chip based phone. They could have hacked and modified those all they wanted.
Lithium Iron Phosphate cells can charge at a rate of up to 5C with no side effects - they're used in more expensive hand-tools and as primary power cells for electric radio control aircraft and helicopters.
That said, smartphones don't use these batteries, and anyone who tried to put a couple of amperes into a standard lithium polymer battery is going to have an amusing experience.
5 times the nominal rating of the battery - it's a term we throw around loosely in Radio Control, based on Elec.Eng terminology that is too complex for us laymen :) A 1000 milliamp/hour battery has a C rating of 1 i.e. 1 ampere/hour. So for a typical Lithium Polymer you'd charge this at at most 2 Amperes to prevent damage to the battery. A LiFePO4 could be safely charged at 5 Amperes, which drastically reduces the charge time - very useful if you're at a flying site and are charging packs in between flights to extend your flight time and make use of good weather.
5C is still like 10-15min for a full charge -- and definitely does have side effects, it causes damage to the battery and will result in sagging voltages and lower capacity in just tens of charges. 5C is too high of a charge rate.
I feel like you've mixed up LiFePO4 and LiPo. LiFe has low charge rates, lower energy density, lower voltage, and higher cost compared to LiPo. For R/C aircraft, it's typically used only for the receiver and servos of the really large helis/planes, because its lower voltage is tolerated by the servos whereas a LiPo needs a regulator to step down to 5-6V for driving servos. I can't speak for expensive hand tools, but "everyone" in the R/C community uses LiPo.
No. There are various types of LiFePO4 - some are as you say used for receivers etc but the ones I am specifically referencing (and perhaps should have been more explicit about) are the A123 systems Lithium Iron Nanophosphate batteries, which are capable of 60C burst discharges and 5C charging rates. These are definitely used as primary power-packs for flight - I flew with people who were using them when they first came out.
Sorry. I googled to check before posting too, but didn't consider specifically the A123. It still looks like it is an uncommon choice for main battery pack but I can see how it's at least feasible (I probably wouldn't go for the tradeoff personally).
I have the same doubts. For entertainment reasons, I would be interested in the explosions you mentioned, but other than that I would prefer my battery to survive its first recharge, and many more after that.
Gassing (or smoke, not sure which) starts around 15 sec. Plenty of results for 'LiPo explosion', 'overcharge lipo', etc.
A LiPo fire is a chemical reaction, it cannot be extinguished by traditional fire extinguishers (i.e. smothering does not extinguish, it's creating its own fuel) -- you have to wait for the battery to burn out and then extinguish the remains on fire. Treat your batteries (and electronics with batteries in them) well, folks.
There are specialist lipos used for RC planes/cars/boats that can handle 100C burst discharges but even those can't be charged at more than ~10-20C - and these cells have very high self-discharge and short cycle life, so they're quite unsuitable for mobile phones.
Maybe a nanopore/nanostructure battery[1,2]? They are touted to bring near-capacitor charge/discharge rates from fairly traditional chemistry. This specific application leaves a few questions, though:
1: What is the actual capacity of the battery demonstrated? If it has a high C but low capacity, this isn't really notable. The paper [1] indicates that total charge capacity is a function of how fast the battery is charged; what tradeoff are they making?
2: How many charge cycles is this battery capable of at those rates?
3: What thresholds are they putting in place for temperature, and are all the components of the phone rated for repeated thermal cycles to those levels and back to ambient?
4: What is the failure mode for this battery? Outgassing? What compounds are released in overcharge?
It's 100% believable, technology-wise. It's a 2600 mAh LiPo (or LiFePO4 or other similar lithium battery), and the charger charges it at about 4C == 10A. The tradeoff is that such high charge rate tends to damage the battery quicker (resulting in sagging voltages/lower capacity).
I don't believe their claims that it will last 3 years of regular use, that it will have 1500 charge cycles, or that it has "novel battery chemistry". I'd give it up to a year, and even then you'd probably be experiencing much lower capacity by the end of the year, but that's my rough guess. I'm also a bit surprised that it's deemed safe for consumers and will be certified.
I guess any disruptiv startup not born in california or the US is unusual.
That, plus the fact that israel, as a country, has made the choice of focusing 100% on high tech, so it's always interesting to know if/when that choice pays off.
I think that is a reasonable assumption given the data over the past century. I wouldn't view such a statement as a value judgement, but instead as a (possible) interpretation of the facts... The US has a disproportionate share of innovation relative to the rest of the world. Nassim Taleb (originally from Lebanon and educated in both the US and Europe) suggests that this is due to greater tolerance of failure in the US, as opposed to greater risk aversion on the part of other countries.
Note: I'm not passing judgement either way, but I wanted to point out that the idea that the US is more innovative/disruptive is not at all an extreme claim and is in fact one made by many others.
I do, yes. By unusual i mean statistically. Of course there are great innovative people everywhere, but it seems like the US managed to be exceptionnaly good at having the right combinination of top level university, venture capitalism, and market size, that enable groundbrealink technologies become successful commercialy.
I think it's your choice of word that's wrong. Silicon Valley obviously produces many more disruptive technologies than the rest of the world but that doesn't make it unusual to see something from another country disrupt. Silicon Valley is unusual in that everything is so concentrated allowing a high output. The rest of the world is NORMAL :) It's also important to remember a lot of the people doing great things in Silicon Valley aren't from the US.
I've noticed from years of reading Wikipedia that on articles on people, if the side section or first paragraph contains anything related to their background (religion or race) it almost always is there to state that they are Jewish. I don't know why, this isn't a conspiracy theory, but perhaps somebody thinks it's important that if somebody is Jewish in heritage everybody should know.
On the contrary, most Israelis are quite proud of the fact that 1/4 of the population are not Jewish, as well as the fact that those citizens have full rights and freedoms (more than they would in any of the neighboring countries). Though I have seen very little mention of either of these facts in the inordinate number of media stories about Israel.
Tachat's reply undermines what you're saying more than anything Adalah can, as you're saying that a human rights organisation is pathetic, thus cementing that even though you'll argue that "oh no, we're not racist", you've just expressed contempt for a NGO dedicated to bettering the lives of humans.
I also see that Tachat, you only exist to reply to comments about Israel. How sad your life must be.
Probably because it's not from the U.S.
I encountered a lot of startup descriptions like european based startup, german/berlin startup, etc.
The place isn't that important, but some think that it's mention worthy if it's not from a startup cluster.
I guess it was done to boost the “novelty factor”. Beware, however, that the startup itself is probably not responsible for the crappiness of reporting. I don't presume they control the publishers.
Because it's an interesting fact. Lots of articles talk about SV startups, Berlin startups, London startups etc. I find it interesting to know where the company is from. If the BBC was reporting on a 'British startup' you could consider that nationalistic (although I wouldn't). But a British news company mentioning the country of a foreign startup is hardly nationalistic in any way.
It is very common (almost required) when reporting on companies/startups (and even people) to mention their location. Doubly so if the location isn't where the reporter is located or where you may assume a different location not given that information. Sometimes in the title. Almost always in the body. Including a location is part of journalism.
"US based startup brings families together. "
"Silicon Valley startup revolutionizes washing clothes."
"Researchers in Germany find life on Mars."
"DC defense contractor wastes millions of dollars in government money."
I just Googled for a second and found "Wipro sells 8% stake in US-based startup Axeda, bought after Rishad Premji took over as strategy head"
This was on Slashdot the other day - "European Researchers Develop More Accurate Full Body Polygraph"
None of those sound odd or are nationalistic labels. Why do you assume that simply mentioning Isreal is being nationalistic?
No, but my pain point as a user is that I want a fully charged phone right now. I don't care that the spares sit in a charging station for an hour or two; that's an uninteresting detail of the implementation.
And then battery technology improved to the point where it became better for most people to have a slimmer, sturdier device without the user-swappable part and all the doors and connectors such a thing entails.
I can't imagine it would be that hard to make the battery removable? (I don't know for sure, just pure speculation). At any rate, I'd expect at least some phone manufacturer to create a modern smart phone like that.
It's not hard, but it takes up more space than a permanently affixed battery (which doesn't need a user-facing battery bay, can be permanently wired in, etc.) and introduces moving parts (I recall having my battery cover open and the battery skitter across the floor whenever I'd drop my old flip phone).
https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/PTdAj6LheOiy2Vu1.m... shows 8 of the 16 RAM chips (the others are on the other side) in a Macbook Air. Having them soldered straight on the board means you can't replace 'em, but it also means they use a lot less space than a stick of RAM.
From what i can understand the biological process is used to construct non-biological parts in this case very small semi-conducting crystals. The "battery" it self i would assume is some sort of a high density bank of MIS capacitors or any other semi-conductive capacitor.
According to some of the more business oriented reporting about the product their current end goal for 2017 is a 100-150$ batter capable of 1500-2000 discharge cycles this means that if it will be put in a phone it will give you a life time of 3-4 years depending on your discharge rate.
Their goals at least seem to be very realistic, even if the price will be a blocker even for most high end phone users. I do see this technology having many applications tho especially for military and emergency services. Considering that the US Army has trialed multiple Samsung phones so far with specialized software an "ultra battery" like this would be very appealing to them even if it will have a horrible life time and a very high price compared to commercial batteries. The Army can and will pay very high amounts if it means that the turn around for a soldier's computing package will be minutes instead of hours.
The company so far raised 40-50 million $ and not via "kickstarter" some of the investors are rumored to be phone giants including Samsung, and in any case venture capitalist firms don't ten to put 50M on the table for snake oil.
> in any case venture capitalist firms don't ten to put 50M on the table for snake oil.
You have a much higher view of VCs then I do then. I'm personally aware of a few tech companies that exist solely to siphon money from the investors to the founder. Rich people aren't always careful with their money, particularly when they are putting it into something hot, like tech, that they know nothing about.
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[ 6.0 ms ] story [ 107 ms ] threadUnless I am missing something on Storedot's website, the BBC were actually shown a phone with an ultra-capacitor instead of a battery.
When asked to explain, the spokesman says things like "we use new physics". That alone peaked my bullshit detector.
Every battery tech I'm also aware of cannot handle high amperage charging without things like outgassing, battery seperation, heating effects, and explosions. Even the venerable NiFe battery has problems with high current charging.
But this startup has beat it? [Citation needed]
My concern is over using supercaps: their density is still very low compared to Li-ions on a volume basis.
Also, I noticed they are using a Samsung phone. Last time I used a supercap in a project, I had to build a complex circuit that compensates for exponential voltage drop but outputs constant voltage and amperage. I want to know how they got around that issue as well.
I would have believed it more if they used a MediaTek chip based phone. They could have hacked and modified those all they wanted.
That said, smartphones don't use these batteries, and anyone who tried to put a couple of amperes into a standard lithium polymer battery is going to have an amusing experience.
Minor correction: battery capacity is measured in ampere-hour, i.e. ampere * hour.
I feel like you've mixed up LiFePO4 and LiPo. LiFe has low charge rates, lower energy density, lower voltage, and higher cost compared to LiPo. For R/C aircraft, it's typically used only for the receiver and servos of the really large helis/planes, because its lower voltage is tolerated by the servos whereas a LiPo needs a regulator to step down to 5-6V for driving servos. I can't speak for expensive hand tools, but "everyone" in the R/C community uses LiPo.
(Edit: Clarification)
Gassing (or smoke, not sure which) starts around 15 sec. Plenty of results for 'LiPo explosion', 'overcharge lipo', etc.
A LiPo fire is a chemical reaction, it cannot be extinguished by traditional fire extinguishers (i.e. smothering does not extinguish, it's creating its own fuel) -- you have to wait for the battery to burn out and then extinguish the remains on fire. Treat your batteries (and electronics with batteries in them) well, folks.
That's the only thing that will save you.
Techcrhuch had some articles about them this year http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/07/storedots-bio-organic-batte...
There are specialist lipos used for RC planes/cars/boats that can handle 100C burst discharges but even those can't be charged at more than ~10-20C - and these cells have very high self-discharge and short cycle life, so they're quite unsuitable for mobile phones.
1: What is the actual capacity of the battery demonstrated? If it has a high C but low capacity, this isn't really notable. The paper [1] indicates that total charge capacity is a function of how fast the battery is charged; what tradeoff are they making?
2: How many charge cycles is this battery capable of at those rates?
3: What thresholds are they putting in place for temperature, and are all the components of the phone rated for repeated thermal cycles to those levels and back to ambient?
4: What is the failure mode for this battery? Outgassing? What compounds are released in overcharge?
[1] - http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/v9/n12/abs/nnano.2014.24...
[2] - http://www.google.com/patents/US20060216603
Which sounds rather more believable, and like it might be useful this year. I can live with 15-minute charging, and it being an external battery.
I don't believe their claims that it will last 3 years of regular use, that it will have 1500 charge cycles, or that it has "novel battery chemistry". I'd give it up to a year, and even then you'd probably be experiencing much lower capacity by the end of the year, but that's my rough guess. I'm also a bit surprised that it's deemed safe for consumers and will be certified.
That, plus the fact that israel, as a country, has made the choice of focusing 100% on high tech, so it's always interesting to know if/when that choice pays off.
Seriously? You really think disruptive startups made outside the US are unusual?
Note: I'm not passing judgement either way, but I wanted to point out that the idea that the US is more innovative/disruptive is not at all an extreme claim and is in fact one made by many others.
Tachat's reply undermines what you're saying more than anything Adalah can, as you're saying that a human rights organisation is pathetic, thus cementing that even though you'll argue that "oh no, we're not racist", you've just expressed contempt for a NGO dedicated to bettering the lives of humans.
I also see that Tachat, you only exist to reply to comments about Israel. How sad your life must be.
"US based startup brings families together. "
"Silicon Valley startup revolutionizes washing clothes."
"Researchers in Germany find life on Mars."
"DC defense contractor wastes millions of dollars in government money."
I just Googled for a second and found "Wipro sells 8% stake in US-based startup Axeda, bought after Rishad Premji took over as strategy head"
This was on Slashdot the other day - "European Researchers Develop More Accurate Full Body Polygraph"
None of those sound odd or are nationalistic labels. Why do you assume that simply mentioning Isreal is being nationalistic?
Apple has been moving in the same direction for laptops. http://ifixit.org/blog/2763/the-new-macbook-pro-unfixable-un...
https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/PTdAj6LheOiy2Vu1.m... shows 8 of the 16 RAM chips (the others are on the other side) in a Macbook Air. Having them soldered straight on the board means you can't replace 'em, but it also means they use a lot less space than a stick of RAM.
ftfy
According to some of the more business oriented reporting about the product their current end goal for 2017 is a 100-150$ batter capable of 1500-2000 discharge cycles this means that if it will be put in a phone it will give you a life time of 3-4 years depending on your discharge rate.
Their goals at least seem to be very realistic, even if the price will be a blocker even for most high end phone users. I do see this technology having many applications tho especially for military and emergency services. Considering that the US Army has trialed multiple Samsung phones so far with specialized software an "ultra battery" like this would be very appealing to them even if it will have a horrible life time and a very high price compared to commercial batteries. The Army can and will pay very high amounts if it means that the turn around for a soldier's computing package will be minutes instead of hours.
The company so far raised 40-50 million $ and not via "kickstarter" some of the investors are rumored to be phone giants including Samsung, and in any case venture capitalist firms don't ten to put 50M on the table for snake oil.
You have a much higher view of VCs then I do then. I'm personally aware of a few tech companies that exist solely to siphon money from the investors to the founder. Rich people aren't always careful with their money, particularly when they are putting it into something hot, like tech, that they know nothing about.