Alert reader Colin Rush provided this breaking development in battery science. Regular readers will remember Dr. Yi Cui’s name. He’s a Stanford University scientist who has worked with paper batteries, much more powerful electrodes, and means of helping batteries stay together under the continuous strain of expanding and contracting during charging and discharging. He explained that at the third annual Electric Aircraft Symposium at the Hiller Aviation Museum, and has since adopted several tactics to overcome that problem. One commercial outgrowth of his work, Amprius, is working on commercial production that benefits from his insights. Since that internal flexing eventually leads to cracking of electrodes, Dr. Cui’s latest announcement brings some hope that such things can not only be overcome, but literally healed. Just as our bodies have internal resources to fight diseases and repair muscle and bone, batteries can be made to be self-healing. Dr. Cui has been a proponent of using silicon as a major component in electrodes, …
Angela Belcher Continues Making Batteries with Viruses
Three years ago, in one of our earliest entries, this blog reported on the blending of biology and chemistry in a bionic battery created by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Angela Belcher. She was honored with a press briefing with President Obama, MIT President Susan Hockfield and her prototype battery, and used the occasion to encourage federal funding for such ventures. In a later visit to her laboratory, the President accepted a business card with the periodic table, saying he would consult it periodically. She has turned her bionic battery research to improving the chances for lithium-air batteries to reach that magic 500-mile figure ( or at least 550 kilometers or 341 miles), and has explained her approach and progress in a Nature Communications paper and in the video below. Since Dr. Belcher has been using a biological approach in her research for the last decade, it was natural for her to use genetically-modified, non-toxic viruses to grow” spiky surfaces” …
Flying Donkeys – A New Cargo Paradigm
Richard Glassock, of eight-seat, self-launching, sight-seeing sailplane fame, alerted your editor to a different kind of challenge in Africa that could expand the use of drones for positive outcomes. An earlier and ongoing effort to provide “last mile” delivery of small, high-value items such as medicines and electronics to remote villages came from Matternet, a Palo Alto, California based group whose slogan, “Lifting the Rising Billion,” refers to its aspirations to deliver necessities in Africa, but was first demonstrated in Haiti in August and September of 2012. Here they fulfill a mission to Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, at a camp that was set up after the 2010 earthquake. The crowding, seen from overhead, would make expeditious travel through this camp almost impossible in any way other than air. A new group, Flying Donkeys, hopes to raise the weight-carrying capabilities of Matternet’s small packages to 20 kilograms (44 pounds) and has established an “escalating series of sub-challenges” that will lead to a race …
Corncobs as a Source of Supercapacitors?
Researchers at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center at the University of Illinois report, “that wood-biochar supercapacitors can produce as much power as today’s activated-carbon supercapacitors at a fraction of the cost – and with environmentally friendly byproducts.” Junhua Jiang, senior research engineer at the Center, has been reducing wood and cellulose products such as corncobs to biochar by heating the fibers in a reduced oxygen environment. This pyrolysis process creates a porous, black substance that can be used as electrodes in supercapacitors. While other researchers use carbon black or more advanced forms of carbon such as nanotubes, this more humble approach yields equal or better performance at a fraction of the cost of the more labor-intensive methods. Many of the alternatives obtain their carbon from fossil-fuels, making biochar the environmental option. Jiang notes, “Supercapacitors are ideal for applications needing instant power and can even provide constant power – like batteries, but at lower cost,” adding that they are useful in transportation, electronics …
Additive Manufacturing for Electric Motors
United Technologies Research Center (UTRC) is working with the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) on the “Additive Manufacturing of Optimized Ultra-High Efficiency Electric Machines,” or making motors through 3-D printing with metals, possibly obviating the need for rare-earth elements. The $2.7 million ARPA-E award will fund the East Hartford, Connecticut-based project through early 2016 and may lead toward the goal of creating lower-cost, more efficient motors. Because modern permanent magnet motors require rare earth minerals in their magnets for maximum performance, manufacturers must make optimum use of these minerals with minimum waste to be successful. Because these minerals do not exist in large quantities in North America, makers must import a great many of them from Asia, where certain key players maintain control over their distribution. ARPA-E explains the “workaround” possible through improved manufacturing techniques. “Rare earths are naturally occurring minerals with unique magnetic properties that are used in electric vehicle (EV) motors and wind generators. Because these …
Call for EAS VIII Papers
Dr. Brien Seeley, founder and president of the CAFE Foundation, shared this message today. “The CAFE Foundation is accepting presentation proposals for the 8th Annual Electric Aircraft Symposium, to be held April 25-26, 2014 in Santa Rosa, California. This international graduate level program will cover a comprehensive range of topics and will emphasize the latest breakthroughs in the rapidly growing domain of electric powered aircraft. Faculty and attendees will include experts from leading aerospace, electronics and energy companies. Topics will include aerodynamics, motors, energy storage, energy harvesting, control systems, recreational aircraft, propulsion, robotics, avionics, airspace integration, manufacturing, business cases and airport land uses. “Interested parties should email inquiries and abstracts to: cafe400@sonic.net“
Cheap, and It Gets Better With Age
Mixing a form of rust and water might help to make inexpensive battery electrodes with long cycle lives a real possibility. If they have much higher energy densities than more expensive “conventional” electrodes used in lithium batteries, so much the better. Zhaolin Liu of the A*STAR (Agency for Science, Technology and Research) Institute of Materials Research and Engineering, Singapore; Aishui Yu of Fudan University, China, and co-workers have created an electrode material that’s not only inexpensive, but scalable to large-scale manufacturing. Normally, lithium batteries “shuttle” lithium ions between two electrodes connected in a circuit. According to A*STAR, “During charging, lithium ions escape from the cathode, which is made from materials such as lithium cobalt oxide. The ions migrate through a liquid electrolyte and into the anode, which is usually made of graphite riddled with tiny pores. When the battery discharges, the process runs in reverse, generating an electrical current between the electrodes.” That norm for lithium batteries tends to reduce …
Aerovel Autonomously Performs Takeoff, Flight, and Landing – Twice!
As explained on their YouTube posting, Aerovel’s autonomous flight of their Flexrotor aircraft shows a remarkable level of adaptability and control. “In what are believed to be the first-ever flight cycles of an unmanned aircraft based on an unmanned boat, Flexrotor launches from a remotely-controlled skiff while underway, climbs out as a helicopter, transitions to wing-borne flight, images the skiff while flying at low and high speeds, transitions back to thrust-borne flight, and retrieves autonomously onboard. The aircraft then shuts down, is automatically refueled and restarted, and repeats the first flight, finally being secured onboard in a docking station.” Aerovel notes that the boat was radio controlled, but the Flexrotor Pandora flew the mission on its own and without human intervention during the October 16 flight over the Columbia River in eastern Oregon. This repeated maneuver is as thrilling as it looks. Tad McGeer, the founder and president of Aerovel, wrote of an earlier flight, ““transition requires a climb, pitch-over, …
Perlan Project Gets Good Press in the New York Times
Science reporter Matthew Wald visited the Perlan Project in Bend, Oregon recently to see for himself an aircraft that just might conquer the heights – 90,000 feet – in a world-record attempt that will investigate the polar vortex and the ozone hole. His report in the October 21 New York Times highlights the intellectual investment in the project, with extremes of aircraft design reaching toward extreme goals. Perlan II will fly higher than any powered or unpowered aircraft in a sustained fashion. Zoom climbs in which American and Russian fighters emulated rocket ships to reach altitude records were more ballistic than controlled. Those who recall The Right Stuff will remember Chuck Yeager’s frantic and finally unrecoverable tail slide back from the edges of space. The on-line version of the story has the advantage of including a video that very nicely explains the goals and aspirations – as well as the hazards, associated with the flight. The article has brought a …
SolidEnergy Teams with A123 for High Energy Density Battery
Take two Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) business incubator realizations, mix their strengths and watch for the potential breakthroughs that could come in the form of high-energy-density batteries. According to its web site, “SolidEnergy is developing a safe, high energy density, and wide temperature capable rechargeable battery that has the potential to transform the consumer electronics, electric vehicle, and downhole exploration (as in well drilling) industries. The core technology is called a Solid Polymer Ionic Liquid (SPIL) lithium metal battery.” Founded in 2012, “one of the toughest years in the battery industry,” SolidEnergy’s “…objective is to develop an insanely great next generation battery and commercialize it in the fastest and most efficient way.” This decidedly brash approach needs a steadying hand at the wheel, which is where its partnership with A123 Systems comes into play. A123’s first collaboration under its expanded research and development model combines SolidEnergy’s SPIL technology with “the mature cell design and prototyping capabilities of A123.” This would help …