Very well, then the least I can do is supply a heading. :-)
On 2/8/07, Jones Beene <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Terry Blanton wrote: > Sorry, sent this to the wrong list. Jones had posted this here some time ago. http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/18086/page1/ Not to worry - as this PR release is a most important development for all of "alternative energy" (esp. wind and solar) and provides a good segue to a reposting of other valuable prior insight on the bettery ;-). The first ref. below was sent to me by Colin Q. on another subject. Also Robin had posted similar references. For future use, it might be helpful to get it all of this "bettery" stuff together in one longer posting. The dielectric post (boron nitride - BN) http://fusor.net/board/download_thread.php?site=fusor&bn=fusor_hvpower&thread=1122956914 A couple of other references (from RvS): http://www.advceramics.com/geac/products/pyrolytic_bn/ This advceramics site (which is also the one mentioned in the Fusor thread) claims that Pyrolitic Boron Nitride has the highest dielectric strength known, which is 200 kV/mm which equates to 2 MV/cm (200 MV/m). Yet this is lower than EEStor are claiming for Barium Titanate. No doubt the good folks at GE (who competitors refer-to as corporate Nazis) are already getting their competitive act together against EEStor. --------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6TX0-49N98HJ-V&_user=10&_coverDate=12%2F31%2F2004&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=e20c7d9777c4a9257ddf5733c5ee4900 This one claims a "good" dielectric strength for sintered Barium Titanate with deliberate impurities of 65 kV/cm (6.5 MV/m). --------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6TW0-44JDBYS-3N&_user=10&_coverDate=11%2F30%2F2001&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=6ca5ce5ed69bd6a08b50436cb92ee598 While not directly related to Barium Titanate, this one claims strengths up to 16.7 MV/m (not cm) for some thin coatings specifically made to be non-porous. --------------------------------------------------------------------- http://news.thomasnet.com/news/1305 This appears to be from the Thomas registry, and has a mixture of products/manufacturers with dielectric strengths maxing out at about 400 V/mil = 15.7 MV/m (not cm). --------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.aist.go.jp/aist_e/latest_research/2004/20041019_3/20041019_3.html This once claims 150-300 kV/mm of greater (300 MV/m) for Alumina films. BTW the cold AD process may be of use to EEStor. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Commentary (and guess-work) EESTor is apparently pursuing a special nano-version of Barium Titanate in an ultracap. That is what they want you to believe. AS mentioned many times, I have reason to believe that there is something special about barium (induced radioactivity), which as of now, is little more than a 'gut-feeling' (based on the wide range of energy anomalies in the literature on Ba devices) instead of a solid scientific belief. It appears that few Vorts share this belief regarding Barium. According to the Fusor thread, the material made by GE and others and is supposed to have the "highest dielectric strength known" which they cite being 200,000 volts / mm. and it would offer a solid alternative to Barium IF there is nothing special in one of the barium istotpes. Pyrolytic Boron Nitride (PBN) is probably a cheaper to produce high-temperature ceramic which exhibits a unique combination of high electrical resistance and thermal conductivity. But as mentioned before, the dielectric itself may be less important than the integrated Batt-Cap "system" or synergistic design. This is a feature that seems to have been missed by almost every other observer of EEStor. The ultracap approach, by itself may not be enough to understand the situation. This is just an educated guess. To recap (pun intended) the prior postings on the better-battery technology: The main point is the "systems" approach (beyond caps only): Ultracapacitors will help - but are probably only "half" the long-term answer to the bettery ... in that there is an under-appreciated synergy between the capacitor and battery - the so-called batt-cap. This is more than semantics - and more than 'just' a combination of two different and distinct electrical parts. You have to merge the two in the design process itself to get the synergy. The idea is that there is a "cap layer" (thin and planar) which carries/stores the negative charge while the electrochemical ions of the battery-side are the modality to carry/store the positive charge. Sounds simple to say, but it is not so simple to pull-off. The logic is that positive ions move slowly and electrons move rapidly, so why not tailor the storage device for the advantage of both? The result is somewhere in between either device, but it does require an electrolyte, unlike the cap (electrolytic caps blur this distinction). The way that you can merge the two dissimilarities is to go with many thin flat layers and use use a solid electrolyte, rather than the so-called "jelly-roll" of electrolytic caps. Ceramics do not "roll-up" very easily, for one thing. Many people who have analyzed the EEStor patent may have missed this key point about the possibility of the batt-cap (mainly because the patent is artfully written to throw out a number of red herrings). Everyone on the cutting edge of batteries these days seems to be throwing out false-leads ... why? for one thing - basically, all of the important patents expired years ago (or are about to expire now). Now we are down to "improvements" disguised as breakthroughs. Usually this merely involves throwing in the prefix "nano". Oops. Better not be so cynical in print, as you never know which side might want to call you as an expert witness in the patent infringement lawsuits which are sure to clog-up the courts as soon as someone starts making money on this <g>. There is a good argument that lithium, as a charge carrier, is far from ideal despite its light weight and low IP - even if it were cheap. And it is very expensive. And very dangerous. Witness the past decades of Li battery explosions. LENR-related, perhaps?? Even the present demand for small batteries for computers and cell-phones has pushed the price of large capacity lithium way too high for practical automobile transportation. Dead-in-water, IMHO. Plus lithium has a molecular weight of 7 and only one redox state while carbon, which is a thousand times cheaper(literally) as a commodity item, and has a molecular weight of 12 - less than double but triple the number of *usable* oxidation or reduction states (all four are not usable). Less voltage, same or less weight, but hundreds of times better "value" (performance per dollar of cost) All in all, for the goal of "charge-retention per unit weight and cost," on the negative side, carbon is preferable to any other material, especially for only the negative charge carrier in a bifurcated system. http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/batteries-0208.html In terms of cost/weight per stored charge - for the positive side, there is a good case of sodium... which is also low density, cheap, ubiquitous supply, less reactive than lithium, and - best of all ! - there is available a well-engineered technology based(courtesy of FMC forty years ago) but the largely ignored solid electrolyte - beta alumina is seldom mentioned anymore (as it is in the public domain): http://scienceservice.si.edu/001023.htm This concept of sodium used with a solid electrolyte is almost always mentioned in the context of NAS - or sodium sulfur, but I have wondered for a long time why this could not broadened and merged into the bat-cap category. One wonders if EEStor has not made a better solid electrolyte using BaTi. In design, the two positive surfaces of the thin (sandwiched planar) cap (the negative terminal) substitute for the sulfur of the NAS, drawing sodium ions physically through the solid electrolyte on charging. This might require some kind of bellows type expansion mechanism between the layers. If the negative charge carrier is a layer of activated carbon (as in the MIT patent) then in effect you have cut the cost and weight of the NAS in half from the start. Before that - it was already in the same weight per charge category as lithium - at a tenth the cost but with one major drawback - which has kept it from use as a small battery (and out of mass production). The problem remains that beta alumina needs to be "warm" (450 K) to conduct sodium ions, and even though this situation has been remedied by a few hundred degrees since Ford gave up on the project, there are practical solutions. (hint: you always have plenty of waste heat with a hybrid). It could very well end up being the case that what EEStor has accomplished (and is trying to carefully hide) is that they have used Barium Titanate with its extraordinary dielectric strength to either improve on a solid electrolyte or to insulate either polarity (perhaps not for Na as the charge carrier, but that is not known). I got an inkling description of a prototype NAS battery setup recently, which is being researched by a major University (to remain nameless) which will blow the socks off of anything currently available for battery power except EEStor, including lithium and hydrides. It is probably in the same range of value as EEStor, but without all the hocus-pocus and deceptive press releases. This WILL happen in the next few years (the advent of the bettery-age of hybrids) but - sadly because of lack of R&D cooperation and the free-market forces involved - there is little cross-fermentation of ideas. Anything on the cutting edge today (in at least a dozen labs) can probably be easily improved-on if they all were to share technology... but then we have the problem of jealously-guarded IP (intellectual property, not ionization potential). Caveat: This in the opinion of an outsider (well-known for having off-beat opinions) who does not own any stock in any battery company (but would like to have some EEStor shares, regardless of the fact that they may have been carefully deceptive by omitting a few important things in their PR releases). Also, it might be wise to short-sell the shares of A123 (and their dinosaur-patrons: GM) Jones