News IBM Invents Heavy Metal and Cobalt-Free Battery

[Admin]

IBM Research recently announced it has discovered a new battery that does not use heavy metals such as cobalt.

IBM Invents Heavy Metal and Cobalt-Free Battery : Read more

 

[InvalidError]

The obvious thing you can get specifically from sea water in meaningful quantities other than the water itself would be salt, though sodium-based batteries have been available in user-unfriendly forms for 30+ years and wouldn't qualify as "never used before in a battery."

 

[hotaru251]

seawater is more "contaminated" than one would think.

chloride, calcium, potassium, sulfate, magnesium, (inorganic) carbon, strontium, bromide, boron, fluoride, phosphorus, and nitrogen and some organic stuff like amino acids and carbohydrates.

Also have gases from the air such a argon, co2, oxygen.

So there could be many mixtures it could be.
Here is hoping it does only take 2 or 3 years to get it to market.

 

[InvalidError]

seawater is more "contaminated" than one would think.

There may be many things in seawater, but not that many where seawater is a potentially viable alternative to mining or other methods. Getting carbon out of air or water is far less cost-effective than plucking it out of industrial plant smoke stacks or just burning stuff,. Calcium would likely be more cost-effective to get from rendering bones than filtering water.

 

[grimfox]

Those battery specs are pretty ridiculous. It sounds like someone took all the theoretical "possible" maximums and stuck them together to make the result look much better than it actually is. I wouldn't be surprised if the probable specs were more comparable to current market batteries and the actual specs of what they've been able to recreate in the lab are lower than current market batteries. If it's really as good as claimed hopefully they can bring it to market quickly. So many ground breaking work in battery design is hidden behind proprietary patents. We could probably see a 20-30% improvement in battery tech overnight if all the current battery tech patents were opened up.

I could see a low flame battery being very interesting to companies like Boeing. Certainly those Auto companies that have been late to the game in terms of developing their battery supply lines would be very interested in alternate chemistry. Looks like Mercedes will be the first to benefit, as they are partnered with IBM in this research.

 

[CerianK]

From IBM's article: "This unique combination of the cathode and electrolyte demonstrated an ability to suppress lithium metal dendrites during charging". Some of the experts that have been interviewed concerning this seem to have not actually read the IBM blog completely.

Taken at face value, this is still a lithium-based battery, or at least lithium is a major component.
The dendrite issue is well known, so the quote above, if true, would go a long way toward explaining some of the claimed exceptional properties and characteristics.

In any case, I am curious how the full realization of this technology would impact the proposed deep ocean strip-mining for cobalt and nickel (and manganese), as battery production was one of the main example cases used for justifying the cost expenditure to perform such exotic mining operations.

 

[hotaru251]

There may be many things in seawater, but not that many where seawater is a potentially viable alternative to mining or other methods. Getting carbon out of air or water is far less cost-effective than plucking it out of industrial plant smoke stacks or just burning stuff,. Calcium would likely be more cost-effective to get from rendering bones than filtering water.

not saying its a viable thing, just that most ppl dont know that seawater is more than just salt water.
and the article never said it was from seawater itself..just that the stuff can be gotten from seawater.

if carbon was involved (likely not) they could get it from other ways and still claim it can be gotten from seawater.

 

[Giroro]

There may be many things in seawater, but not that many where seawater is a potentially viable alternative to mining or other methods. Getting carbon out of air or water is far less cost-effective than plucking it out of industrial plant smoke stacks or just burning stuff,. Calcium would likely be more cost-effective to get from rendering bones than filtering water.

In Fairness, IBM only staid that the materials -can- be extracted from seawater, not that it would be cost-effective.
But still, there's a lot of non-cost-effective things people do when they think it will save the world, or whatever.

 

[CerianK]

This is likely a lithium-sulfur battery, extrapolated from this new Tom's article that discusses the link between IBM, Daimler/Mercedes-Benz, batteries and quantum computing.

Sweet... I'll take two (but will probably still have to store them at a ~50% charge).