Batteries of the future to charge in seconds?

And here we go again...

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0606/06060901superbatteries.asp

"These new 'batteries' could in theory charge in just a few seconds yet be the same size and capacity as todays rechargeable batteries"

MIT is attempting to "solve" a problem that doesn't exist. There's no reason today's batteries can't charge a whole lot faster. The only problem is, what do you charge them with?

A relatively small battery, typical of modern DSLRs, is 7.4V and 1800mAH. That's 13.32 Watt-hours (7.4V*1.8A-H).

48,000 Watt-seconds.

What's "a few seconds"? 10? To charge that battery in 10 seconds, assuming 100% efficiency, needs 4,800 watts. "Check the UPS, and turn off the oven and TV gang! I'm going to charge the camera now!".

How big is a 4,800 watt charger? The charger that came with your camera is only 5-10 watts, that's why it weighs a couple of ounces. The camera manufacturer thought that you might like to tuck it into your camera bag and take it with you. There's no reason you couldn't charge a battery in 20 minutes with a 100 watt charger, except that 100 watt chargers (look at laptops) tend to weigh a pound or two.

And how much does a 4,800 watt charger cost? A 10 watt camera battery charger can be replaced for $20-40. A 100 watt laptop charger goes for something more like $100.

--
The Pistons led the NBA, and lost in the playoffs.
The Red Wings led the NHL, and lost in the playoffs.

It's up to the Tigers now...
Leading the league, and going all the way!

Ciao!

Joe

http://www.swissarmyfork.com

Stick, end, wrong.

Old news, anyway.

It will just take what comes from the charger I guess.
The capacitor cannot take more than is delivered.

1800mAH are loaded in 10 min with a 8A charger.

the charger is small...but the



is 10kg!!!
and the packs get rather hot!

for RC racing you should load the packs at the time they will be decharged again...they will get hot in use anyways...
Problem is they only last some cycles...

"loading" at 40A is reasonable I guess...under 2minutes is not bad either...

Maybe it even has to be a charger to "load" that thing and a simple and not stabilized DC converter will be enough, there is no chemical to damage.

It wouldn't hurt either if the "charger" would cost 500€...

Imagine what you can save in fuel cost in your car, or batteries that have never to be replaced...

I love these E-Scooters btw...they are fun with faster acceleration than a 50ccm scooter...but the batteries are expensive...
http://www.io-scooter.com/

the maintainance cost is almost 0 because they don*t need to e lubricated...all closed hub motordrive...
0.70€ 100km energy cost

with a capacitor they could run 1/3 longer when converting brake energy...

I really do hope that they will get this one ready some time...

Do you know what capacity the nanotubes yield? what is the weight/energy ratio of these things?

Joseph S. Wisniewski said:

And here we go again...

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0606/06060901superbatteries.asp

"These new 'batteries' could in theory charge in just a few seconds
yet be the same size and capacity as todays rechargeable batteries"

MIT is attempting to "solve" a problem that doesn't exist. There's
no reason today's batteries can't charge a whole lot faster. The
only problem is, what do you charge them with?

A relatively small battery, typical of modern DSLRs, is 7.4V and
1800mAH. That's 13.32 Watt-hours (7.4V*1.8A-H).

48,000 Watt-seconds.

What's "a few seconds"? 10? To charge that battery in 10 seconds,
assuming 100% efficiency, needs 4,800 watts. "Check the UPS, and
turn off the oven and TV gang! I'm going to charge the camera now!".

How big is a 4,800 watt charger? The charger that came with your
camera is only 5-10 watts, that's why it weighs a couple of ounces.
The camera manufacturer thought that you might like to tuck it into
your camera bag and take it with you. There's no reason you
couldn't charge a battery in 20 minutes with a 100 watt charger,
except that 100 watt chargers (look at laptops) tend to weigh a
pound or two.

And how much does a 4,800 watt charger cost? A 10 watt camera
battery charger can be replaced for $20-40. A 100 watt laptop
charger goes for something more like $100.

--
The Pistons led the NBA, and lost in the playoffs.
The Red Wings led the NHL, and lost in the playoffs.

It's up to the Tigers now...
Leading the league, and going all the way!

Ciao!

Joe

http://www.swissarmyfork.com

Click to expand...

--
******************************
http://85.124.199.50/marcus2/
( http://www.marcus.at.hm )
http://85.124.199.50/IT/

go out and enjoy the sun instead....

Thanks for the math.

Somebody at DPReview is really reaching with this one.

I guess with no camera reviews to print, and now new camera announcements, all they could come up with was a mostly irrelavent technology article.

--

Fuel cell can be recharged in very short time frame also, and most importantly the fuel source can also be portable so one may actually carry a load of fuel together for an extended period in the field.

--
Franka

--They thought about doing something like this with aerogel (a silica material that has millions of tiny pores resulting in a one inch sized cube having

as much internal "area" as a football field. The stuff is light as a feather and almost invisible, a really exotic glass. Somehow coating the pore walls
with the reactive metal and using them as conventional batteries, but the
pores were not uniform like carbon nanotubes. But I wonder what
as yet unforseen quantum effects using nanotubes in this application
might produce?

-Rich
E-1, 14-45mm, 40-150mm, OM 100-200mm, OM 50mm,
Orion 500 f5.6.

The bateries I use are 1.5 V not 7.5V.
If you do the math it works out to 2.7 W.h
or 9720 W.sec

If you make the assumption that you can deliver 1800 W in any given time frame on standard norht america house wiring, it would take 5.4 seconds.

Obviously there are some problems with putting that much energy into a small package in such a short time, but it would/could be in the order of seconds.

I am not usre of the charging characteristics of carbon nano tubes but I would suspect that it would be similar to a standard capacitor which the charging slows as it reaches capacity.

I think this is a great thing, provided the price ain't out of this world. I would invision this as evolving to a point (possibley not in my lifetime) in which the present capacity of a AA, for sake of argument, might be able to be shrunk to the size of a hearing aid battery. Thus the posabilities to drastically reduce the size of the battery would also reduce the size and weight of the camera, or the battery may stay the same but now you would be able to take +5000 pictures on one battery charge.

I don't see this as a waste of time. If it was not for this type of thinking and research, we would all still be shooting with large glass plate cameras.

It is interesting... You can't, of course, "just" charge things in a few seconds at maximum draw for the device if the battery/cap is large without blowing breakers, but a few quick minutes is certainly within reason.

You don't get something for nothing, and a cap isn't self-regenerating at all...
--
Dana Curtis Kincaid
http://www.angrytoyrobot.blogspot.com
http://angrytoyrobot.com

Minolta Scan Dual IV film scanner
Contax G1
Contax G2
Contax 167MT
Sony V1
Sony Video Cameras
Canon S9000
Epson 820

Apple PowerMac Dual 2GHz G5

aren´t capacitors supposed to be charged with voltage rather than power?

Yes it is true that high powered chargers are impractical (for photo cameras) but I think the whole point of the super-capacitors is not that they can be charged that fast but rather to be discharged at very high current.

While it may not matter for a camera that draws 1A it really matter for 20KW motor in hybrid car - amperage draw at start up is usually more than twice the normal load plus it is already > 500A

BMW already announced at looking at super-caps rather than NIMH for their upcoming hybrid. Plus people does not care whether their camera batteries will charge for 10min instead of 1hour but for an owner of a hybrid the difference of overnight charging to less than 1hour can be break it or make it deal . And finally who cares how much such charger weights - it will be in the trunk of the car.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silly_season

This is mostly associated with British newspapers. In the summer, parliament is out of session, the royals are on vacation, a good percentage of the population is also on vacation, and many reporters and writers are on vacation, so there's not much news. Therefore, things get run that wouldn't be considered at more busy times of the year.

--
The Pistons led the NBA, and lost in the playoffs.
The Red Wings led the NHL, and lost in the playoffs.

It's up to the Tigers now...
Leading the league, and going all the way!

Ciao!

Joe

http://www.swissarmyfork.com

Not flaming, I just don't understand.

An electric clothes dryer uses about 6,000 watts, do you turn off your oven and TV when using that?

To charge a capacitor you just need to hold a high enough voltage accross it, that can supply a high enough current. What has the price of charging a chemical battery got to do with it?

so you need 4,800 watts. No big price so far, you can easily get cheap room heaters which are 2,000 watts.

Is it to do with some kind of signal conditioning you'd need to perform? Do you know what is required? Is it the same as for chemical batteries?

musky69 said:

The bateries I use are 1.5 V not 7.5V.

Click to expand...

And do you use only one of them? You probably need to multiply all your numbers by four...

musky69 said:

If you do the math it works out to 2.7 W.h
or 9720 W.sec
If you make the assumption that you can deliver 1800 W in any given
time frame on standard norht america house wiring, it would take
5.4 seconds.

Click to expand...

Again, have a look farther up this thread at the charger heavyweather uses for his RC batteries. 414w, and it weighs 10kg (22 pounds).

musky69 said:

Obviously there are some problems with putting that much energy
into a small package in such a short time, but it would/could be in
the order of seconds.

Click to expand...

22 pound charger? My whole backpack weighs 28 pounds: 2 DLSRs, 2 flashes, a focus rail, 8 lenses, 2 chargers, 6 lithoum rechargable packs for the DSLRs, 30 AA for the flashes.

musky69 said:

I am not usre of the charging characteristics of carbon nano tubes
but I would suspect that it would be similar to a standard
capacitor which the charging slows as it reaches capacity.

Click to expand...

Depends on how you charge it. If you charge it through a resistor and a constant voltage source, yes, the charging slows as you reach capacity, but the resistor gets very hot (kilowatts for seconds?)

musky69 said:

I think this is a great thing, provided the price ain't out of this
world. I would invision this as evolving to a point (possibley not
in my lifetime) in which the present capacity of a AA, for sake of
argument, might be able to be shrunk to the size of a hearing aid
battery.

Click to expand...

And why, from a physics standpoint, would you expect this behavior from a capacitor, and not a chemical cell?

musky69 said:

I don't see this as a waste of time. If it was not for this type
of thinking and research, we would all still be shooting with large
glass plate cameras.

Click to expand...

It's not a "waste of time". But it is exactly as I described: between the reporters and the PR department at MIT, they've managed to come up with a solution to a problem that does not exist. The researchers are probably laughing themselves silly, for the same reasons that I am.

--
The Pistons led the NBA, and lost in the playoffs.
The Red Wings led the NHL, and lost in the playoffs.

It's up to the Tigers now...
Leading the league, and going all the way!

Ciao!

Joe

http://www.swissarmyfork.com

rubank said:

aren´t capacitors supposed to be charged with voltage rather than
power?

Click to expand...

Nope, energy. Voltage determines how much energy is in a capacitor.

--
The Pistons led the NBA, and lost in the playoffs.
The Red Wings led the NHL, and lost in the playoffs.

It's up to the Tigers now...
Leading the league, and going all the way!

Ciao!

Joe

http://www.swissarmyfork.com

Since I´m not adequately fluent in (american?) english I won´t debate this, but I think you´re wrong

what makes you think they are doing this for your little camera batteries? i think bigger, i think electric cars.

Everyone is worried about the charging time... the point is that you can recharge the "battery" just about as fast as you are able to, if you wanted to; you don't have to charge fast. Yeah, not everyone is going to have a 100 amp supply handy, but if you do, you can use it. If you don't, the charging time will still be faster than chemical batteries with a given recharge current source since not as much energy is lost in the charging process. Chemical batteries cannot be recharged without generating heat, and the heat limits how fast you are going to be able to charge them.The capacitor probably generates a little heat being charged too, due to non-perfect plate structure, but it is not going to be as much so you can charge it faster... if you are able to.

I'm guessing, but I think that the main problem with these will be self-discharge due to microscopic imperfections in the "plates". They might be like NiMH cells where you have to recharge every so often.

I'll also bet that one of these would really blow up if it gets damaged. Also, I bet that they have to build in some kind of fuse or internal resistance to prevent accidental discharge at a rate that would destroy the cell.

Well, I beg to differ.

Heater and DC regulator are two incomparable animals.

You can make a resistive load that consumes 2KW that weights less than 10 grams (just a bare wire in the heater) while you can not make easily 2KW DC regulated power supply required for charging that weights less than a 1 kg. The main inductor of such power supply will already be too heavy to fit into portable charger. So as long as you are ok with heavy charger that stays at home - fine but how many people will lug around 5kg fast charger so that they can recharge batteries for 2min versus 1hour? Instead of carrying so much weight for the charger simply take a 10 batteries with you.

Riccati said:

Not flaming, I just don't understand.

An electric clothes dryer uses about 6,000 watts, do you turn off
your oven and TV when using that?

To charge a capacitor you just need to hold a high enough voltage
accross it, that can supply a high enough current. What has the
price of charging a chemical battery got to do with it?

so you need 4,800 watts. No big price so far, you can easily get
cheap room heaters which are 2,000 watts.

Is it to do with some kind of signal conditioning you'd need to
perform? Do you know what is required? Is it the same as for
chemical batteries?

Click to expand...

Riccati said:

Not flaming, I just don't understand.

An electric clothes dryer uses about 6,000 watts, do you turn off
your oven and TV when using that?

Click to expand...

In my house, yes, you would. Any unplanned 6kw draw would tax the power system here. We don't have an electric clothes dryer, we have gas.

Riccati said:

To charge a capacitor you just need to hold a high enough voltage
accross it, that can supply a high enough current. What has the
price of charging a chemical battery got to do with it?

Click to expand...

I hope to God that you're not an EE.

Seriously. To charge a capacitor, you need to regulate both the voltage and the current. Charge to too high a voltage, and "poof". Charge at too high a current, and something is going to melt.

Riccati said:

so you need 4,800 watts. No big price so far, you can easily get
cheap room heaters which are 2,000 watts.

Is it to do with some kind of signal conditioning you'd need to
perform?

Click to expand...

Yes.

Riccati said:

Do you know what is required?

Click to expand...

Yes.

Riccati said:

Is it the same as for
chemical batteries?

Click to expand...

Not at all similar. Nor is how you charge a capacitor in any way, shape, or form similar to that cheap room heater of yours. That's just a couple of metal bars with a relatively high resistance.

Now, say you tried to build a low cost capacitor charger. What's the easiest way to efficiently charge a cap? Full wave rectify the AC mains. That gives you 330V across the capacitor (it's no coincidence that flash units are set up to work on 330V capacitors). Remember, we're talking about 6kw to charge the cap, so that's 330V at 20A. And it's DC. Have you any idea what sort of connectors you use for a high voltage, high current DC application. DC isn't like the AC mains connectors in your house or your wall light switches. AC is interrupted 120 times a second, so arcs are self extinguishing. DC draws an arc just keeps flowing across the open switch until the contacts are separated far enough to break the arc. Huge, heavy switches and connectors.

Now, the current flowing into the cap is going to be proportional to the difference between this 330V rectified mains voltage and whatever voltage the cap is already charged to. That means that it's not a "steady" draw of 6kw, it's many times greater at the start of charging, so you're going to hammer the house electrical system with much greater than 6kw at the start of charging, then taper down over the next few seconds.

If you want a gentler start, you need a really big switching power supply, something that can handle 6kw, limit current to charge the cap at a constant 6kw with no massive inrush, and cut off at the proper 330V. I have to watch which circuits I plug my monolights into. They're only 800w-s, not 48,000, and more than two of them on one household circuit will pop breakers.

Now, we've got a 330V cap with 48,000 watt-seconds of energy in it. A 200 watt-second discharge at 330V is more than enough to stop your heart. Discharge it right, and you could kill a whole roomful of people with that cap. Better have really sophisticated self capping, waterproof connectors on the cap. Can you picture this headline? "Photographer drops camera in local pool: entire 10 grade swim team electrocuted".

OK, assuming we get past that point, now we need a switching power supply in the camera that can take 330V safely down to 3.3 or 5v to run the processors. And it has to have enough safety features so in the event of power supply failure, 330V can't get to a connector that the photographer can come into contact with, like the lens mount, the CF slot, the USB port, and it sure adds new meaning to "hot shoe".

(to be continued)

--
The Pistons led the NBA, and lost in the playoffs.
The Red Wings led the NHL, and lost in the playoffs.

It's up to the Tigers now...
Leading the league, and going all the way!

Ciao!

Joe

http://www.swissarmyfork.com