5000 cycle Lithium battery, triples e-bike range, charges in minutes - Toshiba

[Deleted member 4210]

This article is almost a year old now, but its a great reminder that we have barely scratched the surface of what's possible with existing Lithium batteries, let alone newer graphene enhanced lithium battery technology.

https://www.bike-eu.com/sales-trend...28.1110740758.1540949825-585769753.1540949825

In less than 5 years, it would not surprise me at all, to see 50 AH to 100 AH batteries on ebikes, that are not too much larger than today's batteries that are 10 AH to 20 AH. They might be rather expensive ebikes, but the technology has been in the works for some time.

For reference, a 100 AH Sealed AGM (Lead Acid) battery weighs about 63 lbs, versus the current 100AH LiFePO4 battery weighs about 29 lbs. In the not too distant future, Graphene enhanced 100 AH Li-Ion battery MIGHT only weigh as little as 13 lbs. And charging time quantified in minutes versus 'hours'.

So it won't be too long from now, when we look back at 2018, and think about how 'quaint' our 'frame integrated' or 'rack mounted' 10 to 20 AH ebikes batteries actually were.

 

[Ravi Kempaiah]

In the not too distant future, Graphene enhanced 100 AH Li-Ion battery MIGHT only weigh as little as 13 lbs. And charging time quantified in minutes versus 'hours'.

This is not happening for the next 5-8 years at least.
I wrote my Masters thesis on graphene. It's a fantastic material but battery technology can't make use of graphene the way journalists portray it to be. It's just sensationalism and misrepresentation of science.
Solid state batteries, charging in minutes vs hours... are all BIG scientific problems. We may eventually see the result but they are all hard problems. Doing it in lab vs seeing in cars/bikes are 2 different things.

Toshiba has been using their SICB batteries in scooters and other applications for years. Schwinn Tailwind that was released in 2009 had this battery.
It uses something called Lithium Titanate that has really long cycle life compared to normal NCA, NMC or LiFePo4 batteries. The problem is, the output voltage is low and the capacity is low. Some pacemakers and low energy medical equipments use them coz of their longevity.

 

[DDBB]

Graphene lithium cells are already widely used in the RC hobby world. I own a bunch of graphene Lipo packs

 

[Ravi Kempaiah]

Graphene lithium cells are already widely used in the RC hobby world. I have lots of them

It's called marketing!

I recently saw $4 water bottle that was "specially hydrogen infused" for ideal pH. H20 is the formula for water and I wonder where they infuse extra hydrogen.



Since 1990's when Sony commercialized the Li-ion battery. We have been using graphite as the anode. Graphene is just one layer of graphite. But a lot of these Chinese companies use the term "graphene" to market these products. There is nothing truly revolutionary about these marketed graphene batteries. Same electrode design and same electrolyte as well. Perhaps they may have slightly more energy density but the longevity is not very different.

 

[DDBB]

my graphene packs have greater cycle life than my non graphene packs. I keep track of every cycle. Of course there are other variables that could explain that but generally speaking the graphene packs outperform and outlast non graphene packs. Then again, I didn't write a thesis on graphene!

 

[Ravi Kempaiah]

So Ravi - tell me who you know at the BIC, what manufacturers you interviewed with for your 'thesis' and are you in any way shape or form still involved in the development of batteries,specifically with graphene ?

Mike,
I am very much involved in the design of batteries. My current PhD thesis is about using computational modeling to design advanced battery materials. Like Sodium-ion and Magnesium-ion batteries and also new materials for Li-ion batteries. If you want to read my old MSc thesis: https://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/handle/10012/6072

I don't interview people, I perform scientific experiments using chemicals, electron microscopes and supercomputers.

I appreciate your enthusiasm for E-bikes. It's one thing to have general chat about the upcoming trends, tech stuff and just enjoy the camaraderie but it's another to make authoritative claims without really vetting the material we are talking about.

 

[DDBB]

ravi; are you saying the graphene lithium polymer packs for rc don't really contain any graphene and it's all marketing and fake labels?

 

[jazz]

These reports come out several times a year, every year and have for years, yet still using practically the same batteries

 

[Ravi Kempaiah]

ravi; are you saying the graphene lithium polymer packs for rc don't really contain any graphene and it's all marketing and fake labels?

@DDBB ,

The reason people in the scientific arena (related marketing field) use the term "graphene" because the inventors of graphene were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 2011. Millions of students, scientists started working on it after its discovery in the mid-2000's. Literally, millions. "graphene" became the buzz word and quite frankly marketing folks have exploited it severely.
While some great technological innovations have happened, graphene is yet to make the kind of revolution that Silicon did to the electronic industry. There are several roadblocks to achieve that kind of wide-spread adoption.

graphene is basically, one single layer of graphite (graphite has been used in batteries for the past 30+ years).

Now, where do you add graphene to this LiPo pack? It has graphite already as anode. May be you can make this graphite into a refined one to enhance the conductivity (HOPG or composite graphite or something else) but the basic design of electrodes is not very different from the previous gen LiPo packs. same current collectors, same electrode design. There are other tricks to enhance the energy density and cycle life but it's not 100% coorelated to graphene alone.

If there was substantial benefit to graphene, why wouldn't Panasonic, Sony, LG jump on it? Why wouldn't Tesla Model 3 use graphene packs?
Graphene was discovered in 2004. Things started happening in late 2008 onwards... almost 15 years after the discover of graphene, 10 years after discovering it's benefits none of the major suppliers use graphene in their mainstream packs.

here is an interesting thread on reddit discussing something related:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Multicopter/comments/4612it

I have not done extensive research into RC LiPO packs. I have friends who did bulk of their research into this. I will ask them to find out what % of graphene is really enhancing the energy density in LiPo packs.

Graphene enhanced 100 AH Li-Ion battery MIGHT only weigh as little as 13 lbs. And charging time quantified in minutes versus 'hours'.

When I see things like this... it is clear that either the person is trying to attract attention or has no clue what he is talking about.
I am not here to argue. I am only here to share the facts and figures. I really enjoy when someone shares something worthwhile. I enjoy learning and reading but I don't buy into sensationalism of scientific findings.

The internet is full of articles or information that is not based on reality. Mostly gossip. That is why people are always afraid of believing anything on the internet. It's a shame really!
It's one of the greatest platforms humanity has ever invented but we are always afraid of trusting information on the internet because we inherently know that many things are just bogus or served with self-interest.

 

[DDBB]

We are charging current graphene Lipo packs at 5C rate with no loss of cycle life or heating of the pack. Imagine the convenience of being able to charge our lithium ion packs for our ebikes at the same rate.

 

[MarkF]

It takes a lot of money to build a lithium factory and China has invested heavily into it. Any new battery that comes along will take years before the commercial side of things comes our way. If at all. Right now factories are working on making what they have a better product.

 

[DDBB]

It's been implied above than any graphene in our RC hobby lipo packs is a gimmick, or pure marketing. What are your thoughts on that MarkF since I know you are involved in that industry.

 

[Mr. Coffee]

How would you charge a 1000Wh battery in "minutes"???

Assuming 100 percent efficiency, a 1000Wh battery would take 1000 watts for an hour. So if you charged that 1000Wh battery in five minutes it would draw 12kW. That's more than most houses draw at peak load. I'd hate to see what that power cord would look like, and I'd sure as heck want safety equipment on hand when I plugged the damned thing in.

 

[DDBB]

It's done via a buck boost or flyback converter, readily available today and not expensive. regular household outlet and UL standard sized power cord (for the DC power supply). The only catch is power needs to come from a DC supply but those too are relatively inexpensive and readily available. The DC power supply can be a separate unit or built into the charger. It would be a pretty big single unit, larger than the chargers we use now which are basically the same thing. At those currents the unit would most likely need a cooling fan. I'm surprised how hot my ebike chargers get now charging at just 4 amps and around 200 watts... 40 amp 1400watt lithium chargers are available right now for around $250

 

[Mr. Coffee]

It's done via a buck boost or flyback converter, readily available today and not expensive. regular household outlet and UL standard sized power cord

Forgive me if I am mistaken (and it was a long time since I was at University), but my understanding was that a flyback converter can change voltage but not wattage. If you could so easily pump up wattage we could run our entire civilization on a AAA battery.

 

[DDBB]

you're not mistaken. buck/boost converter takes care of the voltage issue but with a powerful enough DC supply there are chargers available today that can charge at 40 amps and 1400 watts made for lithium cells. Compared to our 4 amp/200 watt chargers we are in the slow lane. Charging our ebike packs "in 5 min." would not be possible today but we could be charging MUCH faster than we are now.. I'm not sure about Lithium Ion but Lithium polymer can be safely charged at a 5c rate

 

[Mr. Coffee]

Is that how charging works? (I am NOT an electrical engineer)

So if the battery has certain amount of capacity, it takes identical amount of electricity to recharge it?

I heard the way battery charging works is by making battery molecules unstable/stable.

To a first approximation you would have to put at least as much energy into the battery as you would get out of it.

In practice there would be some efficiency losses. My understanding is that Lithium batteries are very efficient at charging so the losses there would be negligible. I suspect that a faster charging process would be less efficient. You also have some losses from converting from AC to DC, although that can depend a lot on the design of the power supply.

 

[MarkF]

Guys

Here is a video explaining how lipos work and what their made of.

 

[JRA]

This article I found does a decent job of explaining how the heading may not be entirely truthful....

https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/ultra_fast_chargers

At the end of the day you can't fool Mother Science. Not to say there are not ways to fast charge batteries currently but at the expense of longevity which given the cost a a battery may or may not be of concern.

A general rule of thumb is to not charge/discharge a Li chem battery at or above 50% of it's ah rating and even at that you are stressing the batteries involved decreasing life span. Given that a 1000wh battery, depending on the voltage could be 20ah, that would follow that yes it is possible to charge at 10A but following the above info that should only apply up to a maximum of 70% SOC.

 

[Feliz]

I fly RC machines and the good thing in that hobby is many chargers come with a discharge function so if you don't use all your batteries at the field you can put them on the charger when you get home and discharge them down to storage voltage.