# Recharge your batteries (cell phones, electric cars, and more) in SECONDS???



## Lord Vader (Sep 20, 2004)

After 18 months or so of more testing and patent applications, this is expected to be on the market in 3-5 years and will revolutionize the entire electronics industry, including electric cars needing recharges.

Story here.

And it's all at the U. of I., too.


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## Sackchamp56 (Nov 10, 2006)

If the part about electric cars holds true, that is a serious game changer!


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## Lord Vader (Sep 20, 2004)

The whole thing is. This is in the "Wow!" category.


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## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

Interesting. Thanks for the thread and link!


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## John Strk (Oct 16, 2009)

Good stuff Lord Vader thanks!!


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## houskamp (Sep 14, 2006)

hate too see the cable required to recharge a car in a few minutes tho


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## Lord Vader (Sep 20, 2004)

Who says it has to be any different? Remember, the only thing that changed here was the molecular composition of the battery's innards, allowing electricity to flow at its normal speed.


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## Go Beavs (Nov 18, 2008)

Lord Vader said:


> Who says it has to be any different? Remember, the only thing that changed here was the molecular composition of the battery's innards, allowing electricity to flow at its normal speed.


The battery can accept a charge at a much faster rate. Therefore, we need to transfer that power (via a cable) much faster. If we stay at regular household voltage, we need much bigger cable to handle all that current. Otherwise, we need to step up the voltage to something higher and that could require a higher rating of insulation on the cable, not to mention changes at the transformer.


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## Lord Vader (Sep 20, 2004)

However, we don't know this for sure because of this brand new invention. Who's to say that they won't also invent a connection that doesn't need to be what you state it ought to be?


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## Go Beavs (Nov 18, 2008)

Superconductors?


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## Davenlr (Sep 16, 2006)

Could be a game changer if the oil companies dont buy up the patents and burn them with crude.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

I don't know what this innovation is... but I know what it should be.

The real problem with charging traditional batteries isn't that they "can't" send more voltage/current to charge faster... but that in doing so it burns up the battery before it would charge.

Think of cooking a steak. IF you have a 1-inch filet (thickness) and you want it well-done throughout... You can't turn up the heat to cook it faster because the outside will burn to a crisp before the inside cooks sufficiently... so what you have to do is cook it slower.

Staying with steaks... you can butterfly-cut that same filet, and have a 1/2-inch thick steak that will cook faster... because you've exposed more surface area.

Now back to batteries... most batteries are actually multi-cell batteries anyway... linked together inside the casing to appear as if a single battery... but we have only 1 single point to charge the whole shebang.

Now... imagine you have a battery that is composed of 10 smaller cells... and you run additional wiring inside that battery to a surface point so that you can actually charge each of those 10 cells in parallel. You should be able to charge that "battery" 10 times as fast as if you charged from start-to-end using traditional means... and it wouldn't use any more power to do so. In fact, because some electrical transfer is lost to heat... the fact that you charge it quicker means less heat and less lost energy... so you probably would use less electricity.

Taken to extremes... you could have micro-cells... and micro cables to charge in parallel... and each micro-cell would take minimal power to charge and would charge almost instantly with just a fraction of the available volt/amps from a 110 AC socket... and all of them added together would be the power output desired for the particular device.

IF I had the money and the lab and people to work on it... I actually think this should be fairly simple to get a prototype working. Making it cheap to produce and perfecting it + having adapters so people could replace their current batteries with this new style would be a bit more difficult... but actually, I'm surprised it hasn't been done sooner.


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## davring (Jan 13, 2007)

Stewart Vernon said:


> Now... imagine you have a battery that is composed of 10 smaller cells... and you run additional wiring inside that battery to a surface point so that you can actually charge each of those 10 cells in parallel. You should be able to charge that "battery" 10 times as fast as if you charged from start-to-end using traditional means... *and it wouldn't use any more power to do so*. In fact, because some electrical transfer is lost to heat... the fact that you charge it quicker means less heat and less lost energy... so you probably would use less electricity.
> 
> 10 - 1 amp 1 volt cells, in series can produce 1 amp at 10 volts = 100 watts.
> 10 - 1 amp 1 volt cells in parallel can produce 10 amps at 1 volt = 100 watts.
> ...


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## trdrjeff (Dec 3, 2007)

Davenlr said:


> Could be a game changer if the oil companies dont buy up the patents and burn them with crude.


:lol: just like they did with the 100mpg carburetor


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## Shades228 (Mar 18, 2008)

The biggest issue here is that there will have to be more effort into quality checking devices as well. A power drain that normally would only draw 1% per hour could deplete a battery in minutes if the technology didn't hold back the amount of power that could be drawn from at once.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

Just read the article. Nano technology. Quantum mechanics finally being used. Interesting. This is stuff that Einstein couldn't understand and didn't want to deal with. Theoretically, using Quantum Theory, you can exceed the speed of light. Don't think anyone's done it yet.

Rich


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

davring said:


> 10 - 1 amp 1 volt cells, in series can produce 1 amp at 10 volts = 100 watts.
> 10 - 1 amp 1 volt cells in parallel can produce 10 amps at 1 volt = 100 watts.
> 
> It would be easier/faster to charge many smaller cells, but the actual power requirement would remain the same.
> ...


That's exactly what I said... "it wouldn't use any more power to do so"...

I only allowed for the possibility that there might be a potential for greater efficiency due to the lower charge time means less energy lost due to heat.

Technically speaking... unlike filling buckets with water... we are charging batteries via an essentially lossy process... so it takes more than 100 watts to charge a battery capable of storing 100 watts because some of the charging power is lost due to the inefficiency of the exchange.

If we can charge faster, then we might actually waste less energy....

So you're right in that it will always take at least 100 watts to charge that particularly battery pack... but maybe instead of 150 watts it could only take 130 if we lose less energy due to the faster process.


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## dennisj00 (Sep 27, 2007)

There was a recent Nova 'Making Stuff Cleaner' that you should catch. It had a half dozen or more developments that if one or two come to production it will be a game changer in the car / fuel / battery / fuel cell systems.

This nanotube matrix should definitely improve battery technology.


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## davring (Jan 13, 2007)

Battery improvement in vehicular use will not be of much benefit without the infrastructure to support it. About half of our electricity is produced by burning coal which currently produces more emissions than the fuel burned for transportation.


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## Lord Vader (Sep 20, 2004)

dennisj00 said:


> There was a recent Nova 'Making Stuff Cleaner' that you should catch. It had a half dozen or more developments that if one or two come to production it will be a game changer in the car / fuel / battery / fuel cell systems.


Sounds like the story at hand, then, just might be that one or two that come to production.


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## dave1234 (Oct 9, 2005)

Since it's not possible to electrically charge these batteries in that short a time(it would take a monster cable to handle the current), I'm betting the charging mechanism is not electrical, but chemical. Looks like a great opportunity for the oil companies.


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## Mike Bertelson (Jan 24, 2007)

rich584 said:


> Just read the article. Nano technology. Quantum mechanics finally being used. Interesting. This is stuff that Einstein couldn't understand and didn't want to deal with. Theoretically, using Quantum Theory, you can exceed the speed of light. Don't think anyone's done it yet.
> 
> Rich


Hey Now, Einstein is Da Man! :grin:

Einstein understood it just fine. His was a philosophical problem with consequences. He was "convinced that He does not throw dice". The He being God. He envisioned a universe where all the processes would be explainable and predictable. AAMOF, Einstein contributed a lot to the field including using quantum entanglement (spooky action at a distance) as the basis for the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox thought experiment so that we could watch Sliders. 

This battery sounds very cool. A month or so ago I read an article where Professor Braun said something to the effect that it gives you capacitor like power and battery like energy. If it's scalable then we've got a winner. This is very, very cool. 

Mike


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## SayWhat? (Jun 7, 2009)

dave1234 said:


> (it would take a monster cable to handle the current),


Dang, now somebody's gonna get sued.


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## koji68 (Jun 21, 2004)

I'm in for 3


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## Mike Bertelson (Jan 24, 2007)

dave1234 said:


> Since it's not possible to electrically charge these batteries in that short a time(it would take a monster cable to handle the current), I'm betting the charging mechanism is not electrical, but chemical. Looks like a great opportunity for the oil companies.


IIUC from the articles I've read it is an electrical process that charges the batteries. The difference seems to be that the charging and discharging pathways. The nano-tube charging pathways allow charging as fast as a capacitor and it can still discharge at the rates of the typical battery. At least I think that's kinda what's going on.

It was a big topic of discussion in the electrical group at work a few weeks back. They were theorizing on how many ways this could effect battery use on submarines.

Mike


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## Drucifer (Feb 12, 2009)

Sackchamp56 said:


> If the part about electric cars holds true, that is a serious game changer!


Agreed.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

As I postulated earlier... a "smart" battery that is composed of multi-cells (perhaps even micro-cells) could be charged more quickly with the same level of power required today... IF you charged each cell individually in parallel simultaneously instead of charging the whole "battery" as is done typically today.

It would require individual pathways unique to each cell and a temporary disconnecting of them in series for normal battery function. This could be done electrically or chemically, providing a way to access the alternate pathways by temporarily disconnecting them from each other and using those dedicated pathways for the charging process.

A "smart" battery is required to some extent, as would be a smart charger... but neither is outside current technological development to produce.


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